Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN) [LWN.net]

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 13:29 UTC (Tue) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link]

"Perhaps merely an updated release of 8.0 rather than a full-blown release in direct competition to it's latest version could be a option.."

Surely v8.1 is a maintainance release of v8, otherwise it should be branded v9.

The rubs here are that (a) I don't blame RH for trying to boost their sales - everyone has to do that, if they want to have any chance of avoiding the bankruptcy courts; (b) some people refuse to install vx.0 of anything, for reasons which are well known.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 15:47 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

From personal experience, I can say that refusing to install RedHat 8.0 on the basis that it was an x.0 release would have been an extremely wise decision. I foolishly attempted it, somehow thining that the rule of thumb from the past (i.e. never install RedHat until x.2) no longer applied... but it does.

I certainly hope RedHat has fixed the bugs in RPM (yes, RPM) for 8.1. Having the bloody package manager hang while installing the security updates from RedHat's site was a bit much. (Anecdotally cruising message boards and Usenet, this experience was not unique to me.)

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 19, 2003 0:11 UTC (Sun) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I believe that all references to bugs without a link to the appropriate bug tracking system (in this case bugzilla.redhat.com) should be ignored. It's unfair to critisize free software for bugs without informing its authors and giving them a chance to reply in bugzilla and/or fix the bug.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 13:58 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

Red Hat releases have always come out at a rate of about one ever 6 months. April will be 7 months after the 8.0 release, so doesn't sound out of the ordinary.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 15:06 UTC (Tue) by ttraub (guest, #2950) [Link]

This is typical practice for Red Hat; a .0 release that breaks new ground (and often breaks other things), then a .1 release that fixes the big problems, and finally a good, stable .2 release that fixes almost everything else. RH 6.2 is fabled for its stability, and 7.2 was pretty good too.

If you want a stable Red Hat release, the conventional practice is to wait for the .1 or .2 version. 8.0 seems to be pretty good however; I haven't heard of any major problems with it. However, it comes with Mozilla 1.0 and some other outdated software. It's nice to get the latest stable stuff so 8.1 sounds like a good one.

I downloaded and burned to CD Redhat 8.0 and installed it on my laptop, and it seemed to go pretty well. At last my Compaq Presario's sound works in Linux. Hybernation and wireless connection still don't work, but anyway I mostly run XP on that machine for my ever-shrinking pool of Windows-only stuff.

I'm mainly installing RH8 to get updated KDE and Gnome stuff. Trying to update those systems piecemeal using RPM is a total pain, and virtually impossible. I've managed to partially upgrade KDE and it rendered my system unstable both in KDE and Gnome. I'm just going to wipe it clean and put 8.1 on it. I'll probably just buy it at the store; downloading, burning, and verifying 6 CDs is doable with a DSL connection but very time consuming.

-Terry

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 15:55 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

8.0 seems to be pretty good however; I haven't heard of any major problems with it.

I had some problems-- the package manager is buggy. It installed just fine, but the first thing I did was download the updates and try to rpm -F them, and rpm just would never get through that process.

I'm always a little nervous when having to kill an rpm process, since I'm not sure what state it leaves my system in. If it happens very occasionally, one just figures out which package was the problem, and forcess a reinstall. But I was getting these hangs repeatedly trying to install a stack of updates. Eventually, I got frusturated enough that I finally gave into my longtime urge to install Debian....

To me, this is a pretty major serious problem with RedHat 8.0.

I had other aesthetic problems; the thing is getting too user friendly, which is probably good for marketing and newcomers, but unfortunately (in my opinion) it comes at the expense of being "hacker friendly". The default window manager was not configurable at all, so far as I could tell, and indeed the words "window manager" aren't used anywhere (probably because they are confusing). I only figured out how to switch it (while staying within the "standard" RH8 X startup sequence as much as possible) by going through the source of various X startup scripts. (Of course, I could have just thrown the whole thing out and used my own .xinitrc, although even there it wasn't obvious how to tell Gnome2 which window manager to use.) I went back to Sawfish, but Sawfish 2 has fewer configuration options than the Sawfish that came with previous Gnomes! Very little on the GUI; if one is willing to learn how to do the lisp configuration (which is not documented very well), one can get more control over Sawfish 2, but there still seem to be options from Sawfish 1 missing in Sawfish 2. All in all, I have to say that for what I was looking for, Gnome 2 impressed me much less than Gnome 1. The only new feature I noticed and appreciated was variable alpha on the desktop icons (whee!), but there were enough missing things (including various custom applets I use on my panel) that all in all Gnome 2 seemed more of a downgrade than an upgrade.

All of that, though isn't release critical stuff, and aren't major problems, they're just my own personal opinions. I've gone Debian, which is more naturally configurable. (Of course RedHat is configurable, but you basically have to move away from rpm managing most of your system once you move away from the standard packages that RedHat includes in a release. With Debian, it's easier to choose different versions of things will still using apt and dpkg with your chosen Debian release.) For new users and most people, RedHat 8.0 is probably great-- except for that RPM bug, which is pretty bad.

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 16:26 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

I went back to Sawfish, but Sawfish 2 has fewer configuration options than the Sawfish that came with previous Gnomes!

Yeah, but it makes up for that with extra bugs. :-|

I think the future of sawfish as an alternate to metacity is in doubt, at least as an official Red Hat package. Metacity is now the default window manager for Gnome 2.2. Havoc sent all my bug reports for sawfish upstream and CLOSE WONTFIXed them in Red Hat bugzilla on monday. The end is near...

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 16:55 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Doh.

Is metacity configurable at all? I didn't dig that deep, since instead I dug for switching back to Sawfish, but I did not find any information about configuring metacity -- focus behavior, opaque vs. wireframe resize, key and click behavior, virtual desktops (preferably a super-screen sized geometry in *one* workspace, since that's how I've been working since I used fvwm 1.24 in 1995, and it's how I'd like to keep working), etc.

I understand that newbies don't need to be presented with a huge array of configuration information, but the documentation on how one configures the window manager should ideally only be very slightly hidden, so that those who look for it will find it quickly. (And I don't care if configuration involves editing text files; GUI configuration is nice, but many who aren't going to be scared by the concept of a "window manager" also won't be scared by editing the equivalent of a .fvwmrc.) I didn't really give metacity enough of a try to truly judge it, but my snap impression was that it was very rigid and defined how you had to work with your GUI.

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 20:52 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Is metacity configurable at all?

Yep, run gconf-editor and select apps -> metacity.

You can select some sort of focus-follows-pointer mode, and newer versions allow you to lower a window in the stacking order by middle-clicking the titlebar. These two changes allow me to at least use it without becoming seriously annoyed, but it's still not my favorite window manager. The problem is I don't have a favorite window manager. The best I can say is that some get in the way less than others.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 16:12 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

I'll try to say this in a way that won't annoy you, since this is not my intent, but... try Debian!

I'm a fairly long-term Red Hat user, having used 6.1 through 8.0 at home and 7.1 through 8.0 at work as my main operating system. I am well aquainted with the trials of trying to resolve RPM dependancies between packages, especially unofficial non-redhat packages. I've hammered my system a couple of times. Installing anything of significance usually involves several trips back and forth between rpmfind.net and a Red Hat FTP mirror site.

I installed Debian unstable so that I could trying out XFce 4.0 without destroying my system again. It took a while to figure things out, but it was worth it. Apt-get is crackware. Once you try it you will never give it up.

I still plan to install the latest version of Red Hat on my systems, but given the choice I'd rather boot Debian. Keeping up with what Red Hat is doing is a requirement of my current job, and probably will be in the future as well. I count it a privilege to be able to complain about Red Hat instead of Microsoft. ;-)

TedC

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 16:57 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

I count it a privilege to be able to complain about Red Hat instead of Microsoft. ;-)

Indeed!

It's much nicer on so many levels. Red Hat, even if you don't find the configuration of their latest desktop to your taste, has given a lot to the Linux community and as such deserves our support.

(Microsoft, of course, would like to kill the Linux community, and as such deserves, at best, our derision.)

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 17:18 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

An alternative to dumping Red Hat for Debian is to install apt for Red Hat from freshrpms.net.

You can then run apt-get update; apt-get upgrade just like your Debian friends, you can put MP3 support back into Red Hat 8.0 with a one-line command; you can install Ogle to view DVDs with a one-line command as well. As on Debian, apt figures out the dependencies for you. If you like GUI front ends, then just install Connectiva's synaptic frontend.

I'd like to see Red Hat go to apt, but I fear that they can't afford to, since it would kill off a big chunk of their Red Hat Network revenue.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 21:10 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

An alternative to dumping Red Hat for Debian is to install apt for Red Hat from freshrpms.net.

I may try that just for kicks.

The problem is that installing non-redhat RPMS is OK for one or three things, but if I travel too far down that road I'm no longer using Red Hat, but rather something that's been derived from Red Hat that I have to try and figure out how to maintain on my own. This is a catch-22 situation. On one hand there's Red Hat who says "we don't support that configuration", and on the other there's a group of people shouting "stop yer whining and run ./configure; make; make install!" At some point I might as well be running Slackware.

It's an evil choice: either add a bunch of non-redhat packages and try to make it all work, or just learn to put up with what they've given me. The problem is that they're giving me less and less to work with with each release. With the release of 8.1 Window Maker will be gone.

I'd like to see Red Hat go to apt, but I fear that they can't afford to, since it would kill off a big chunk of their Red Hat Network revenue.

I think so too. I'm an RHN subscriber myself, but I would gladly pay more for an officially supported apt interface rather than the clunky web-based/GUI thing that they're using now.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 15, 2003 3:38 UTC (Wed) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Yep. The reasons you give are always the reasons I tried to stay as much as possible with RedHat shipped RPMs. If there was something I wanted a newer version of, I'd try to get it from rawhide, although sometimes that way lies madness. (Once I had every single X related rawhide RPM installed, because I wanted something newer that required a newer X library. You can get a lot of mileage by downloading SRPMS from rawhide and rebuilding them on your system, but sometimes that doesn't work.)

I've found that Debian is good for this kind of thing. They have lots of versions and lots of options for everything. Staying within the package system (and thereby also being able to take advantage of distro patches and updates), you have a lot of choice over just what you want on your system.

-Rob

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 15, 2003 13:15 UTC (Wed) by ttraub (guest, #2950) [Link]

I keep hearing how great apt-get is, and at one point I downloaded debian but didn't find the time to install it. Now that my RH system is unstable (the GUI part, that is) maybe it's time to cut over to something that's easier to maintain.

I like RH's up2date feature but I wish they would extend it to all packages, not just certain fixes. For example, you can't just upgrade to KDE3.05 or Gnome 2.1; they don't provide that level of support.

I find it tedious the way RPM works anyway. I'd rather, as others here suggest, do a ./configure; make; test the binary, and then install into /usr/local/foo-2.2 when I'm satisfied it works. When it's time to upgrade, I can just change a link to point to /usr/local/foo-2.3 or whatever. If I want to delete a "package", I just say rm -rf /usr/local/foo-2.2. Simple.

Anyway, Linux as a desktop workstation is still a work in progress and I look forward to the slick, stable systems we will be seeing in a couple of years. Grandpa keeps talking about Windows. What's Windows, daddy?

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April (CRN)

Posted Jan 14, 2003 17:54 UTC (Tue) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link]

According to the article, Red Hat has a pending deal with IBM that required some fixes to 8.0 before the full deal could be completed and rolled out:

"From the [IBM Global Services] portfolio manager's point of view, the Blue Curve desktop wasn't up to spec and Red Hat had to hurry up and clean up the desktop and do lots of bug fixes."

One IBM executive confirmed that IBM Global Services is deploying Red Hat 8.0 and services for a limited number of corporate customers and is negotiating with other Linux desktop players.