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Red Hat Software Businesses

Technical Review for Red Hat Linux 9 208

Posted by michael from the what's-in-it-for-me dept.
ewilts writes "Dax Kelson from Guru Labs has posted a technical review for Red Hat Linux 9. It's a definite read if you want to get away from the marketing fluff that focuses on eye-candy and instead read about the release from a sysadmin's point-of-view."
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Technical Review for Red Hat Linux 9 More

Technical Review for Red Hat Linux 9

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  • great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Triumph The Insult C ( 586706 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:41PM (#5640649) Homepage Journal
    i spend 2 full days downloading the isos, only to read the review and determine i shouldn't bother

    ip security bit stories are good enough ... FOR ME TO POOP ON
    • Can anyone comment on the difference compared to the Phoebe beta? Specifically, the beta is unresponsive and laggy as hell under any sort of IO load.

      A better IO reponsive kernel might make me bother.

  • A Real Article? (Score:4, Funny)

    by DarkKnightRadick ( 268025 ) <the_spoon.geo@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:41PM (#5640651) Homepage Journal
    OMG!

  • The big question (Score:5, Funny)

    by lseltzer ( 311306 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:41PM (#5640654)
    Does it support RFC 3514?

  • First Post of the First Real Story! (Score:4, Funny)

    by puto ( 533470 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:43PM (#5640663) Homepage
    Thank you lord, finally back to my normal nerdiness. Yes, we can now return to our opinionatd, often un-substatiated, rants!

    No more April Fools.

    Of course the real joke could be that no one gonna say the following.

    1. Red Hat Sucks
    2. Debian Rules
    3. Been rolling my own with Gentoo since the dawn of time.
    4. PROFIT

    That would be the real April Fools. No my distribution is better than yours. THAT is what would shock the hell outta me.

    Puto

  • Does anyone know (Score:5, Funny)

    by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:45PM (#5640685) Journal
    if it supports the George Foreman iGrill? I'm waiting on the boxed set, and could really use the functionality.
    • There are problems with the RFC 3514 security bit, the grill bad meat sensor does not work reliably and thus sets the bit inappropriately. The real hazard is violating the DMCA (Dead Meat Consumption Act).

      A workaround is in progress. Rumor has it that a full fix will come out later this year.
  • hahaha, i love these april fools arti....oh, wait. this is actually a review. well in that case, it looks promising. tho, i wish someone would explicitly tell me how well it handles wireless, cause mandrake was really disappointing, and i am running out of options....

    xao
    • Disappointing? Did you try the newly released (and _great_) Mandrake 9.1 [mandrakelinux.com]???
      • yes, but im using the linksys wdt11, which is the pci adapter to the pcmcia wpc11. for whatever reason, tho it may be that i am on a really anal network (private university). who knows.

        xao
        • If that's anything like the D-Link DWL-520 (Prism2 based PCI adapter, wouldn't be surprised if it's nearly identical.), then I'm not surprised you're having problems.

          Linux does support the Prism2 PCIs, don't know if the default RHL kernel does. I used linux-wlan-ng, which has the best Prism2 support bar-none.

          But the PCI Prism2s (like the DWL-520) are pieces of shit. Horrendous packet loss under Linux, very unreliable. Don't blame it on Linux though - At least it worked under Linux! While it had 25% pa

  • Text of Review (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Red Hat Linux 9 Technical Changes

    (or when the RELEASE-NOTES are just not enough)
    by Dax.Kelson@GuruLabs.com
    Copyright 2003 Guru Labs, L.C.

    Intro
    Over the past eight years or so, I've been excited each time a new version of Red Hat Linux gets released. During the past few years, people have even been writing reviews of each release. As a general rule, I've been dissatisfied by the superficialities, inaccuracies, and irrelevancies in the reviews often times performed by someone who does not have intimate

    • Re:Text of Review (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 )

      This review of RH9 documented so many Linux quirks, caveats, workarounds, and incompatibilities that I, as a Windows user, first assumed it was an April Fool's joke. Having read the entire article, I sadly admit this must be real..

    • THE REVIEW HAS BEEN UPDATED (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I made several edits, and added a whole new section on devlabel.

      Please honor the copyright, and don't cut-n-paste the review into a /. post. I would like people to visit the web page.

      I'm OK with being Slashdotted, in fact everything is holding up fine here.

      Dax Kelson
      Guru Labs
    • When someone cuts-and-pastes the entire freeking article into a post, it is a copyright violation and REDUNDANT. NOT informative, interesting, or insightful. Please mod accordingly!

      I can't believe that post got 5 "up" mods. Please use your points for people who have something to say!

      Metamoderators: please check this kind of thing as Unfair.

  • Possible Comprimise? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the_pooh_experience ( 596177 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:49PM (#5640717)
    A nice feature for authors of documentation (such as myself) is the ability to take screenshots during the installation via SHIFT+PrntScrn. The images are placed in /root/anaconda- screenshots/. Previously large hoops had to be jumped through to get screenshots of the installation process.

    Is it just me, or does this seem like a hole waiting for a compromiser? Does anyone know of if there a way to turn this off?

    • It's an easy fix, once the install reaches about 10% of the way through, reach around back of your box and give the thickest cable a good solid yank. No more screen-shot option.

    • Re:Possible Comprimise? (Score:4, Informative)

      by velkro ( 11 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:36PM (#5640966) Homepage
      This is during the installer, not after install So if you're worried about someone compromising your system during the install process, and you've already removed the network cable/wireless card, then you have a larger problem to deal with :)
    • A nice feature for authors of documentation (such as myself) is the ability to take screenshots during the installation via SHIFT+PrntScrn. The images are placed in /root/anaconda- screenshots/. Previously large hoops had to be jumped through to get screenshots of the installation process.

      Is it just me, or does this seem like a hole waiting for a compromiser? Does anyone know of if there a way to turn this off?

      I'm sorry, I maybe just don't get it, but what *possible* hole does this create? Some hacke
    • Just use this and you won't have to worry about it anymore.

      Security Fix [zapatopi.net]





      In other news....it look like the mods are still in an April Fool's day mood judging by the fact a post like the one above was modded up.

  • BitTorrent! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Professor Bluebird ( 529952 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:50PM (#5640722)
    I've had BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] going since last night, and I have about half of the ISOs so far.

  • ...considering that at 9KB/second nobody has gotten past ISO 2 of 3 to install and review the thing...

    • Re:This must be an April Fool's article... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:11PM (#5640841) Homepage
      ...considering that at 9KB/second nobody has gotten past ISO 2 of 3 to install and review the thing...
      Hardly.

      BitTorrent worked excellently, and I was pulling it down at 100-400 KB/s yesteday, and already have it burned. Haven't installed it yet, however ... but I could have!

      • Obviously someone didn't read the /. article about RH9's release and BitTorrent. :)

        I downloaded all three binary ISOs in about 2-3 hours. Not sure, had it in the background with screen. Also leeched MDK9.1 in about the same time.

        I'm waiting for the source ISOs to become available on BT so I can get them and burn everything onto a DVD.

    • Re:This must be an April Fool's article... (Score:5, Informative)

      by pcardoso ( 132954 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:15PM (#5640861) Homepage
      well, I used BitTorrent and in about 20 hours I had the ISOs burned to a cd... I'm connected via a 256Kb cable connection, so for the 1.7GB download that wasn't too much... At some point the transfer rate was going at the maximum possible (32KB/sec), although I got about 26/27 KB most of the time I cared to look at it...

      Bittorrent is amazing. Guess I'll give it more use from now on... I left the client running for a couple of hours after the download finished, but I had to stop it. My cable connection allows me a maximum of 1,5GB per month of upstream (and 5GB downsteam) traffic and it's the first frickin day of the month and I am already at 700mb! Well, at least during the time it took for the download some folks got some parts of their ISOs from me...

  • Red Hats? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <shadow.wrought@g ... minus herbivore> on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:52PM (#5640731) Homepage Journal
    So now in addition to White Hats and Black Hats, we're supposed to buy into Red Hats? Next thing we'll be getting reviews of Blue Hat, Orange Hat, and Green Hat, or even software named after obscure African antelopes.
  • This is an excellent review of the Red Hat 9, way better than the review over at OSNews; I'm still not sure if it justifies upgrading from Red Hat 8.0 and it's stability though. For all those people that blame 9.0 for WINE's new problem, you're DEAD WRONG...blame WINE for that.

    On a side note, I have no idea how those OSNews people stay in business. They may be exclusives, but their writing is HORRIBLE.

  • nice to see... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EZmagz ( 538905 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:54PM (#5640747) Homepage
    It's nice to see a review like this. Usually with stuff like this (whether it's a distro, software package, etc.) there's a generic CHANGELOG that might say "Updated to Gnome ver. 2.x" but it won't say WHAT is new! I admit that I'm lazy, but I don't want to go to each software package's website to see what they've done on my own.

    Just a pet peeve of mine, and I would like to see more reviews/articles like this. Now, back to the fake-RFC's and slew of other shitty April Fools jokes.

    • Re:nice to see... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hutman ( 551773 )
      I Agree - most reviews I see lean way too far in the political direction and don't say much about what I will actually see. It's also great to know what I will have problems with.

  • Multiple network profiles! Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:57PM (#5640764)
    This is one of the most immediately handy things about the new release. The ability to choose how interfaces behave via a grub boot menu item means that a laptop that is trundled around to be used in different places is now very easily usable without extra tweaking. No more hitting "I" for interactive boot to make sure that I skip "eth0" configuration when I power up on the train!
    • Hear hear!

      I'm sure there must be a tweak to keep sendmail from flailing if it can't resolve the hostname on bootup, but the only one I came up with is to not start sendmail by default, and hope that I remember to start it once I've got the right network settings on.

      But now that'll be a non-issue... yay!

      [TMB]
    • Not meaning to sound like a troll but give me a little room for criticism here... (Keep in mind that I am a hardcore Linux user: RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, Debian, Linux from Scratch... just to name a few distros I've used)

      Selecting a network profile from the GRUB menu is OK, but it implies rebooting. Who wants to reboot just to change their network configuration? I know you don't NEED to reboot if you know what you are doing. But, if you are "Joe User" who just decided to try RH 9 because people are saying

    • You should check out ifplugd. It's a daemon that automaticially configures your network device when a cable is plugged into it, and unconfigures it when the cable is unplugged.

      I don't believe it currently works with all network cards, but it does work on many of them (read, works fine in my laptop)

      http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/lennart/proje cts/ifplugd/ [uni-hamburg.de]

  • What a review should be like (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:57PM (#5640767)
    I very much welcome the post of this informative review of RH 9.0 . I hope this starts a trend in Slashdot, and that childish, bitching, immature first-person-experience reviews (should we even call them "reviews"?) are no longer posted here. Posting serious Journalism is a way to promote it. Slashdot Editors: please stop feeding trolls

    On the bright side, I think that RedHat's decision to split their software in a publically available, bleeding edge distribution and a more conservative, corporate version is just great. The former is a test bed for the latter. Donwnloaders and enthusiasts do the stress tests, corporations get a stabilized product. Excellent scheme !

    • Personally I think RedHat is shooting themselves in the foot with the short support cycle. The business I work for, for instance is a small buisness. There are customers who just want a Linux distro that gives them support - RPM and up2date lower the learning curve dramatically and can free a business to really start leveraging the power of Linux without worrying so much about watching for bug fixes and security holes. I certainly can't justify getting Redhat Enterprise for something like a small time w

      • archen says: Personally I think RedHat is shooting themselves in the foot with the short support cycle.

        There could be an opportunity here for another party to provide an alternative to the Red Hat Network -- one with a longer product support cycle than Red Hat offers. There is the price gap between the $150 top-end Red Hat 9 and the $1500 Red Hat Enterprise. There's no reason why folks who want support need to buy from Red Hat. Go for it -- pick a price small businesses can afford and show Red Hat the

    • I very much welcome the post of this informative review of RH 9.0 . I hope this starts a trend in Slashdot, and that childish, bitching, immature first-person-experience reviews (should we even call them "reviews"?)

      I think that's what makes this an April Fool's joke - it's actually a legit article on Slashdot of all places.

  • devlabel (Score:3, Informative)

    by lerhaupt ( 231905 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @05:58PM (#5640772) Homepage
    He left out a feature in his review: 9 includes devlabel.

    www.lerhaupt.com/linux.html [lerhaupt.com]

  • This is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frodo from middle ea ( 602941 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:00PM (#5640776) Homepage
    This is the FP after completely reading the article
    Seriously a very nicely written article worth reading. This article has one thing i always look for in reviews of New distros. and this is diff. between OLD and NEW distros.
    Most s/w release notes has a section called "What's new", but this is grossly inadequate to make a decission whether to upgrade or not. What is needed is the exact diff. in terms of functionality rather than a CVS code change LOG. and this article makes an effort to provide that.
    Having said that, I just finished completely configuring and customising my RH8.0 so i guess I wont be upgrading. I will wait till 2.6 comes out. (I am speaking of the kernel version for those of you who dont get it)
  • this lets me know that there is nothing worthwhile in it for me to get.
    which saves me time and effort.

  • BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:04PM (#5640796) Homepage
    Yeah, it's not quite on topic, but I figured someone should mention it...

    As of this posting, 26 hours after it began being distributed via BitTorrent, 5400 people have received copies of the ISOs using that protocol, and over 11 terabytes of data have been transmitted over that torrent.

    There are now also torrents available for the source and documentation ISOs. To download either set, please visit f.scarywater.net [scarywater.net].
    • For a peered download scheme my download times are pretty crappy. It fluctuates anywhere between 0 and 15K per second but usually closer to the 0.

      • Re:BitTorrent (Score:2, Informative)

        by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 )
        You may have technical issues; the AVERAGE bandwidth not too long ago was running about 50K/s.

        To get BitTorrent to function optimally, make sure ports 6881-6889 (can be reconfigured if you're running the full version and not the windows install) aren't blocked by a firewall.
        • 0 to 7k on average. With other P2P systems I routinely get 100k+.

          Bittorrent has some issues.
        • I started getting 80KB/s, but it soon dropped to 4-15KB. So I started a download at school, and peaked out at 675KB!!! It averaged around 475-500KB though, it finished in just a couple hours. I'd never seen RH iso download speeds on the first day in my life before! I never did figure out why my download speeds sucked so bad at home though. I even made sure to run it on my firewall box to make sure NAT wasn't a problem.
      • If you're using Linux, try this. My cable modem has a crappy upload cap of 128kbit/s. Prior to this tweak I was getting 10kB/s downloads and afterwards, I was getting 165kB/s downloads.

        su -c '/sbin/tc qdisc add dev eth0 root tbf rate 128kbit latency 50ms burst 1540'

        Play with the 128kbit (upload speed) and 1540 (MTU size) depending on your own system.
      • You probably have some sort of technical issues.

        Yesterday even without opening up ports 6881-6889 on my firewall, I got download rates of around 270KB/sec. Fastest RedHat download I've ever done, especially on a cable modem.
    • Just curious, how do you get these stats on a distrubuted system like BT?

      So if a company made an ISO available by BT, can it _really_ track how many downloads were done using BT?

      thanks
      LinuxLover
      • BitTorrent's transfers are distributed, but a central server is used, both to introduce clients with each other, and to track the performance of the network. Tracker bandwidth runs about 0.1% of the total aggregate sharing bandwidth. If the company were running the tracker, then yes, they certainly could track how many successful downloads were made.
    • Thanks for the torrents and running the tracker.

      BitTorrent is great for recent and popular distribution, but eMule is [slow and] steady, so I'm sharing all the RedHat 9 ISO's on that network instead (with upload priority set to 'release').

      Slashdot doesn't like ed2k links, so here they are in plaintext for copy/pasting (remember to remove the spaces /. adds in the MD4 hash):

      • ed2k://|file|shrike-i386-disc1.iso|668991488|56 4 16177D0E94B0B049351B57C1D3B50|/
      • ed2k://|file|shrike-i386-disc2.iso|677511168|0FE

    • Here are some nice graphs of BitTorrent's network traffic before and after RH9. Now that is some bandwidth!

      http://f.scarywater.net/graphs.html [scarywater.net]

  • My review using Whitespace (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rudy Rodarte ( 597418 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:04PM (#5640799) Homepage Journal


    Thanks
    • Your source wouldn't compile for me.

      I think on line 2 you typed [space][space][tab][cr][space] when you should have typed [space][space][tab][space][cr]. When I made that small change, it worked just fine.

  • New Features -- get 'em all out now (Score:5, Funny)

    by guacamolefoo ( 577448 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:06PM (#5640804) Homepage Journal
    From the RedHat site:

    "...evil bit support under IPv4..."
    "...Volkswagen-sized packaging..."
    "...support for /lib/congress/..." [um...I'll leave that one up to the imagination]
    "...support for new hardware, including the Foreman iGrill..."
    "...networks with Windows versions, Macs, and all one version of BSD..."
    "...guaranteed to filter dupes at /...."
    "...guaranteed to filter dupes at /...."

    GF.
  • Come on, it's obviously an april fools joke. I can't believe you all fell for it. "Red Hat Linux"? It's obviusly just a piss take of Yellow Hat Linux [newsforge.com]. They even ripped off the logo.

  • I just installed it on a dual P4 mobo (Score:5, Informative)

    by elwinc ( 663074 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:14PM (#5640855)
    I just installed RH9 (shrike) on a dual P4 mobo. It installed both an SMP and a regular kernel, automatically, whereas RH8 only installed a regular kernel (i.e. failed to sense dual CPUs). So this better sensing of multiple CPUs is an advantage in RH9.

    While I have your attention, I'm gonna make a tiny little rant about gnome, which I generally like. In gnome-1.4, gnome-terminal takes arguments like --foreground=lightblue --background=black. This annoyed me when I first encountered it because it breaks the standard color choice arguments that work in so many X11 appsl for example: xterm -fg lightblue -bg black.

    But now gnome 2 breaks the old 1.4 convention! As far as I can tell, the only way to choose your colors is to create a bunch of profiles, and then use --window-with-profile. This business of manually creating profiles is doubly annoying!

    The reason it matters to me is that I admin several boxes, and I use different color codes for terminals and editors on the different boxes. I have to keep on re-creating my admin scheme with each new iteration of gnome. Why keep changing it?

    OK, rant over; thanks for bearing with me.

    • Sympathy from one who shares growing pains.

      Eterm is a better terminal, IMHO, but even *it* changed its argument processing between 0.8 and 0.9 (yep, there's that low-version-number open source thingy again).

      I have a shell script that "randomizes" the background for each new Eterm I launch, and plays an equally "random" sound file at the same time. I had to change the script when tiling vs centering changed.

      It's irritating, but come on, you don't actually type in that stuff from the command line, do

    • I installed RH8 on a dual athlon and it detected both processors and installed both the SMP and UP kernels -- no problem.
  • So...
    a well thought out review on SD? Say it ain't so! Regardless...the meat of the review sums what other reviews have said...most of the changes are rev bumping of utilities. A new kernel is used, which will probably break Free/SWAN, and UML. Does the freeswan break matter? People who are running firewall and or VPN boxes aren't likely to be rushing out to get an upgrade, and the same can probably be said for UML, although that is more of an issue.

    For me, the biggest thing to change is the availability

  • just when I'm about to give up slashdot... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mo ( 2873 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:17PM (#5640872)
    ..a wonderful article like this comes along. Granted I had to wade through the 10 previous posts of reviews on RH9 that catalogued every change to the gui, but this one made it all worthwhile.

    In fact, it's articles like this that make me wade through the oodles and oodles of whining about jobs, or the DMCA. Gems like this make it all worthwhile.

    I'm not sure when slashdot decided to turn all political, but I really miss the technical stuff like this. Does anyone have any suggestions on slashdot alternatives?
  • Maybe I'm not thinking in my right mind, but why is it so great?

    I have 3Com switches with VLAN configured. Makes sense, you've got 24 ports concentrating down to 1 to go to a switch on the other side of the building. Conceivably, you carve up the switch into 24 VLANs. Nice feature, you can move 24 logical segemnets over 1 Cat5 cable or one pair of fiber.

    Now I'm sitting on my linux machine. What uses could I possibly have for VLAN? What's the intended use by packaging VLAN tools with Redhat?

  • Is this a review or....? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @06:29PM (#5640923)
    Is this a review or a April Fools Joke? Reading Slashdot today, is like watching Fox "News".
  • Isn't a jump between whole version numbers supposed to have a significant change somewhere? I'm not seeing _significant changes anywhere. It all but proves that the 9.0 is a marketing stunt.

    • Re:Is this really worth a 9.0? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ubernostrum ( 219442 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @08:02PM (#5641524) Homepage
      I have two words for you: binary compatibility. If the new release means things compiled for older releases will not work, then they bump the major version (i.e., 8 to 9). If not, they bump the minor version (i.e., 7.2 to 7.3).

      Red Hat 9 includes a new threads implementation that breaks compatibility, most notably with things like Java VMs and WINE. So, they bumped the major version.

      See this mailing list post [redhat.com] by RH manager Matt Wilson for more on the reasoning behind the numbering.

  • Pricing model (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OSgod ( 323974 )
    Has anyone else reviewed the pricing model? Why does the Enterprise Workstation Edition cost $299? This seems kind of steep for an enterprise license... Or do most Slashdotters buy one copy (or download one copy) and copy it across the world?

    Most enterprises go for a 1 to 1 -- one license for each desktop to ensure they have legal and proper support. Does that model not work for RH Enterprise Workstation Edition?

    Does the upgrade path (upgrades of the stable product yearly, supported for only one year

  • Linux for the masses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cenonce ( 597067 ) <{anthony_t} {at} {mac.com}> on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @08:35PM (#5641718)

    Everytime a story comes out on Red Hat, we get the "Red Hat is the MS of Linux" posts and the "F@ck Red Hat, roll your own with Gentoo" and the "Debian Rules" posts.

    First, I think Red Hat is far from the MS of Linux. I paid 60 bucks to be a part of RHN and I actually downloaded RH 8.0 without paying anything. Now, I will complain (as I did in a previous story) that it pisses me off that I pay that 60 bucks for "priority ISOs"and I am on my fifth try of downloading RH 9.0 disk 1, but that is a different issue.

    It was my understanding that the "goal" of the open source community was to get a "desktop Linux" up and running to compete with MS. Gentoo and Debian are way too complicated for that... I can install Debian and Slackware with difficulty (never had success with Gentoo). But I am a "regular user" with just enough gumption and knowledge to be dangerous to myself when it comes to Linux installs. Frankly, that is why I like Red Hat. I have never had an install problem and I always have a working "desktop computer" to use.

    Yeah, rolling your own kernel is great, I guess... I've never actually done it... I frankly don't have the time to sit down and figure it out. I count on solid, trouble free distros like Red Hat to get me a working Linux "desktop system" and then I'll compile Apache the way I want on my own (and I still have to do some planning to get it right). But, most desktop users are just fine and happy with the "easy install" of the system and the software they want (Apache, Open Office... whatever).

    If the community ever wants to get Linux out of the background for desktop computing, more time has to be spent on easy installs from ALL distro providers and easy (basically meaning, no command line) configurations. Rolling your own kernel and command line configs will always be be there for the hardcore geeks.

    • Re:Linux for the masses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AELinuxGuy ( 588522 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @12:14AM (#5642565)
      It was my understanding that the "goal" of the open source community was to get a "desktop Linux" up and running to compete with MS.

      It is a misunderstanding to say that the goal of the Open Source community is merely to produce a desktop software that competes with Microsoft Windows. If that were the case it would not even be worth bothering...if you want an alternative to Windows then go buy a Mac. Rather, the goal of the Open Source community is more along the lines of re-gaining control of the software that runs our lives. It is about freedom, it is about community, and it is about hacking for the fun of it. I don't disagree with what you are saying about the importance of a simple installation and maintenance for the desktop market...we've got a LONG way to go. Just do not lump the success of our reach into that market with the strides we are making in other areas (like the server market).

      • You make a good point... I forgot the greater goal for a "task" (namely, a "desktop competitor)" that I think is important to achieving that greater goal. The more people who (can) use open source software the more the community (i.e., the world) can regain control of the software that runs our lives. Unfortunately, the server market only has exposure to IT professionals... the general public doesn't know if the web page (or file server or mail server) they are accessing in sitting on Unix or Windows. Th

  • Dios, porque será que no podemos ser felices con nuestras consolas, ahora es todo grafico ... definitivamente nada como un BSD, será feo pero uno sabe lo que esta haciendo.

  • A few first impresssions. (Score:4, Informative)

    by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2003 @01:54AM (#5642779)
    I used BitTorrent to get RH9, which worked smoothly when I let it run overnight on a cable modem.

    - Mozilla is up to v1.2.1 and supports AA fonts. Unforunately, Galeon is on 1.2.7 and does not.
    - Nautlius has no problems browsing SMB networks, just make sure your firewall settings are at or below "Medium" if you use RH's firewall tool.
    - Menu editing appears to be totally b0rked. I am so far unable to add items to the applications menu, neither by right clicking on the menu and then clicking "Add new item to this menu" nor by dragging launchers into the "Applications:///" view in Nautlius. Major disappointment here, I was really hoping this would be fixed in 9. With any luck, RH will make it a priority to fix it.
    - Java works fine (whew).
    - "Extras" menus are now submenus in each menu that contains "extra" programs. Much nicer layout IMHO.
    - "Security Level" firewall configurator no longer has option to add extra ports, which makes it quite worthless to those of us that require this feature. At least it remembers settings this time (the RH8 version did not).

    Overall it seems to be a fine product, runs as fast as RH8, just with a bit more polish.

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