Well, here on OSNews, there has been plenty of discussion about Red Hat 8, what it is, what it isn’t, the Bluecurve look and many other features and issues. I ordered Red Hat 8 Personal Edition and decided to see how close Red Hat 8 may be to a distribution that Joe and Jane User could install and use.
I found some rough spots but, having had a very successful install and seeing what Red Hat has done in this new version, I can state that, if they wanted to, Red Hat could, with a few tweaks, blow away every Joe User Linux distribution. For me, that is saying something as I have been a champion of distributions such as Lycoris and have also seen the improvements in Lindows 2.0. I’m writing this as sort of an offshoot of Eugenia’s overall review of Red Hat 8. Here, I’m attempting to view it from Joe & Jane User’s point of view. I’ll try to avoid repetition of Eugenia’s review, except where it is unavoidable and important.
Installation
Those of us who read and post here at OSNews have become somewhat tired of reviews where the reviewer focuses almost exclusively on installation rather than usability. I will try to make the installation description as short as I can. However, from Joe and Jane’s point of view, there are areas in installation that could confuse them, so I have to speak to those, at least to some degree. My computer for this “experiment” is, yes, a Wal-Mart/Microtel PC with an Athalon 1800+ XP processor, 1 GB of DDR RAM, a 17″ Phillips monitor and my old HP LaserJet L5 printer. This computer comes with a VIA motherboard. Joe & Jane would probably not have made changes as I have, but I did find that this would not have made any real difference. My changes: an Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI sound card and a 64 MB Raedon 7500 graphics card.
I should also say I’m on a home LAN with cable modem, router and DHCP. That is not exactly Joe & Jane User, but many new and average users have been going to the various forms of broadband available now. Also, Red Hat 8 has an Internet Connection Wizard, much as you would see on Windows and Macs.
Red Hat 8 Personal Edition comes with three Install CD’s, one Applications CD, two Source CD’s and an excellent Documentation CD. Trying to do things as Joe and Jane might do them, I looked over the one included manual pretty carefully. I had to try and remember what it was like to know almost nothing and read a manual like this. For any of us, it is an excellent manual – clear and concise regarding various ways of partitioning, describing the installation process and troubleshooting. I think Joe & Jane’s eyes might glaze over but, in reality, it is very clear, it just doesn’t speak Joe and Jane’s language. If Red Hat decided to make a distro especially for new/average users, they could easily take the information in this manual and make it more palpable for Joe and Jane. Objectively speaking though, it is an excellent manual.
So, I booted up from Install Disk One and, for me, the entire install was flawless. Red Hat’s Anaconda installer was outstanding and detected all of my hardware, even to the point of detecting both my AudioPCI sound card and the VIA built in sound. To my Joe & Jane delight, it gave me the option of a Personal Desktop install, Workstation install and Server install. Obviously, for my purpose, I chose the Personal Desktop. For Joe & Jane, here are the possible problem areas I found:
1) After the type of install one chooses, the user is presented with choices for what level of security is desired. This is an excellent feature and, if you are reading the manual and looking at the “Details” feature of each level, it is very clear and understandable. In Joe & Jane’s case though, I believe they could easily become confused. The reason for this is that, in the descriptions, an average user could easily become confused due to the fact that they may think some of the options are intended for simple usage. For example, one is presented with whether or not one wants ftp, http, etc. to be blocked or let through the firewall. I know that what is being asked is referring to server use, not regular user usage. But, I don’t think Joe & Jane would catch this or understand it and may end up compromising their firewall, thinking they must leave everything open if they want to receive email and surf the net. Again, this is something Red Hat could easily fix.
2) It is the end of the installation where real confusion comes into play. Joe & Jane have already set up the root password and user account. But now, at the end, a user login and password are to be created in order to use the Red Hat Network. Then, having done that, they want you to create a name for their Red Hat Network Profile. Then, you choose a “Channel”. Well, you only are given one choice, so it’s easy to do, but I was having trouble understanding what this was. I did realize the Channel indicates to the Redhat Network what version you’re using (Personal Edition, in my case). Knowing that, it then knows how to update your system. At this point, you click to update the system. Because the distribution was just released, there were no updates yet. Well, the upshot of all this is that, for Joe & Jane, the end of the installation could easily throw them into total confusion. Again, a company like Red Hat can easily make what’s going on during this part of the installation much easier to understand for an average user.
As a side note to this, Eugenia and several posters discussed the Red Hat Network and whether you pay for it or if it’s free and whether or not it’s just for server people, etc. As a couple of posters said, I too have had no problems logging into the Network with my user name and password. There are no updates yet, but I get right in. I’m still confused about this whole aspect of the distro (I should mention again, this is a boxed version I paid for). For Joe & Jane, I don’t know how this affects them because I’m still unclear if they have to pay for this or if there are different tiers of pay and non pay. Could the “Channel” I spoke of also indicate that, this being the Personal Edition I purchased, I don’t have to pay? I am not sure right now. Even after visiting the Channel page at Red Hat’s website, I’m still not sure.
Using Red Hat 8/Personal Edition/Personal Desktop
Having gotten through the installation, there are only a few relatively minor issues that face Joe & Jane. This is amazing really, considering the focus of Red Hat up until now. I should begin by saying that the default install of Personal Desktop of Personal Edition is Gnome only – there is no KDE whatsoever. Later, if you want to, you can easily install (even Joe & Jane can!) KDE and tons of KApps. But, this default install is simply beautiful for Joe & Jane. During the install, sort of like the way Windows highlights its features during its install, the main components you’ll be presented with are highlighted. And, those are; Gnome 2, Mozilla, Evolution, Nautilus and OpenOffice.org. When you are finally booted up and login, the Bluecurve desktop is a sight for sore eyes. It is a wonder of simplicity and is especially so for Joe & Jane. The only icons on the desktop are your Nautilus home folder, the trash can and a “Start Here” icon that takes you to a window where you can set up some of your basic settings. The Panel is as clean as a whistle. There is the Red Hat start icon and individual icons next to it for Web Browsing (Mozilla), Email (Evolution) and icons for the basic components of OpenOffice.org. At the far right is an icon for the Red Hat Network (in other words, an update icon). And that’s it. The icons on the desktop are pretty big, but I won’t go into that here as Eugenia and so many have posted and discussed fonts and other UI issues. Big icons for Joe & Jane are okay.
Starting with the Red Hat (Gnome) menu, the first of the relatively minor issues becomes apparent. It is what Eugenia spoke of in her review – the number of menus for settings and configuration are puzzling and, for Joe and Jane, could really cause problems. Even for the fairly experienced user, it doesn’t make much sense. To have leapfrogged to such a wonderful user experience, it is odd to see Red Hat have something like this. Getting back to Joe and Jane, it is especially a bad thing for them. Other than that, the Red Hat menu is well organized with applications in their proper categories. Very nice and would be obvious to Joe & Jane.
The Major Applications
Mozilla: It is one of the icons in the panel and it starts up very nicely and is no problem for an average user. For Joe & Jane, especially because Evolution is the default email application, Galeon might be a good choice as the default browser, but Mozilla is fine.
Evolution: If Joe & Jane happen to work in offices where they use Outlook, Evolution is a snap. If not, however, it does take some getting used to. Fortunately, Evolution does have a set up when you open it for the first time and it is very simple for getting your default email address set up. It takes some experimentation to get the feel of Evolution if you’ve never used it or Outlook before, but it is also not totally unintuitive. It may not be the ideal email/contact application for Joe & Jane but, on the other hand, it can also be their “one stop” application for all of this, once they get used to it.
OpenOffice.org: When started, it takes a few seconds to open (on a slower computer it would probably take a good chunk of time), but once open it runs well and any of its components can be used at the level an average user is current in. It may be Joe & Jane would only start off with the word processor and work their way into the other components. No problem there – this is the case even with an application like AppleWorks. Nobody knows how to do everything at first. The odd thing about OpenOffice.org is that, when you start it up for the first time, you get a registration window and a link to register on the internet (clicking the link opens Mozilla to the page). But, when you get there, you look around for somewhere to register and finally see that there is no registration, but you can sign up to be a developer. This would be a puzzlement to Joe & Jane, but one they would probably shrug their shoulders at and move on.
Nautilus: There has been good progress regarding Nautilus. I could not detect any of the bugginess so rampant in earlier versions. Your home folder on the desktop is, of course, actually Nautilus and, in using it both for that purpose and as the all encompassing file manager, I found it to be very stable and easy to use (so far ;-). I think Joe & Jane would get used to this pretty quickly.
There are other typical applications included in this Personal Desktop install such as The Gimp, ImageMagick, lots of games, audio programs, scanning and digital camera programs and tons (too many for Joe & Jane) of configuration utilities. Again, all of this is without any KDE. My goal being to try and see how Joe and Jane User would be able to deal with this distribution, I simply left it at that, rather than getting into different environments. I did test package installation. This is an outstanding feature for all, including Joe & Jane. You choose Packages in the Red Hat menu and get a box that asks if you want to download from the internet or from CD’s. I chose CD’s – getting into internet downloading would turn this already long article into a book :-). Looking over what is available on the CD’s is very easy to understand and very organized. To test things out, I decided to install two programs Joe & Jane might be interested in: Abiword and Galeon. I selected them and clicked the appropriate buttons and they installed from the CD beautifully. This, however, led to the last issue that would impact Joe & Jane. Newly installed applications do not get placed in the appropriate categories in the Red Hat menu, as is the case with Lindows and Lycoris. Instead, they are accessed by way of the “Extras” menu. Joe & Jane may not have any idea where to look for them, once they see they aren’t in, for example, the Internet and Office categories. They may think they didn’t actually get installed, unless they systematically go through the Red Hat menu and come across them in the Extras menu. But, if they do find them there, they will know where to look for future installed applications. This is another little issue that Red Hat could fix pretty easily.
Conclusion
To me, trying to see if Red Hat 8/Personal Edition/Personal Desktop Install would work for Joe & Jane User has been a jaw dropper. It is clean, very nice looking to the average user, has a look and feel of simplicity (except for all the settings menus) and runs fast. As a mid-level Linux user, I am very impressed with this distribution. I am aware of some of the more esoteric UI issues, etc., but am still bowled over. As for Joe & Jane User, they would run into a few problems, there is no doubt about that. Yet, what amazes me is how little Red Hat would have to do to get past these average user issues. If they made changes in the areas I noted, they would blow every Joe User Linux distro out of the water. And I admit, in a way, I don’t especially like to say that as I have grown fond of Lycoris in particular and have to acknowledge the strides that Lindows has made. But, considering Red Hat’s traditional focus and how close they have come to a distro for the average user in one fell swoop, it is, to me, nothing short of stunning.
About the author:
Jay is a Licensed Social Worker who enjoys writing databases for non-profit organizations. He is also a true OS junkie hobbyist.
“My changes: an Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI sound card and a 64 MB Raedon 7500 sound card.” Raedon 7500 sound card, since when does ati make sound cards?
This is now fixed, it was just a typo. You could have just email us.
I just downloaded the 5 ISOs .. I’ll be back with my own review later on
You would only need the 3 CDs to have a working installation btw.
Geesh, none of the mirrors I tried would let me connect
I went out today and bought the personal addition, and it did not have an applications cd. 3 install, 2 source and 1 documentation.
I like the new look, and everything is working! << that is amazing to me because I have had horrible luck with linux programs.
It is alot better than RC1 was.
What can I say. Everything simply works. One thing I would like to know is however if there is somewhere an option where I can set the deafult size for the icons. The current Red Hat icons are too big. Everything is too big. I don’t want to use any higher resolution then 800×600 so if anyone knows if there is an option to change the default size of the icons that would be nice
In terms of functionality, everything works.
One of the best things about BeOS was BeBits – a one stop shop for all apps, nicely categorised and ranked. Best of all, almost all worked without dependancy hell, and with crystal clear instructions for those 2% of apps which needed dependancies (libSDL for example). On BeOS, apps could be installed virtually anywhere, and the location for shared libraries was well known. A users delight.
So, how does RedHat 8.0 fare in this field? My past Suse/Redhat experiences were nightmarish when it came to installing additional RPM’s from the net.
You only need the first 3 discs! Please refrain from killing your social life by getting all 5 discs on dial-up!
Jay, you mention the Radeon 7500 — did you get mesa/dri OpenGL hardware acceleration out of the box?
Anyone know where I can buy the RH 8 Personal Edition in Toronto? I still can’t find anywhere that sell it.
(I don’t like buying online)…
Can anyone help out?
Hey, um, I may be missing something large and dumb here but how is it that every other commerical distro detects and makes fstab entries for fat32 drives and RH doesn’t? This is very annoying and there doesn’t seem to be any nice tools to set those up either. (hate editing sensitive files like this!) And XMMS, tsk tsk tsk…..don’t they know better than that? Anyways, pretty desktop, good approach to the fight against redmond etc…any constructive tips besides (RTFM) are appreciated
Yes, a Radeon 7500 sound card – that was quite a typo <g>.
Yes, there is no Applications CD…I’m not sure where that came from. Yesterday, Red Hat PE 8, SuSE 8.1 and ONone all came in at the same time….I think I got confused.
3D acceleration – yes, it does seem to be working, although they warn you about possible instability.
Big Icons – yes, they are huge, aren’t they? I can only imagine how big they are at 800 x 600!
A side note – when doing monitor configuration, I thought of Eugenia and her loaned 24″. I noticed that, with my Phillips 17″, even 1600 x 1200 was grayed out! <g>
Thanks for the corrections1
>I thought of Eugenia and her loaned 24″.
Thanks God they are taking it back, so I can put my own 19″ back on the desk…
That 24″ monitor is really nice, but way too big for this desk.
I actually noticed that I only keep using about 2/3 of the 1920×1200 surface!! I tried to use more, but I had to physically move my head and it was feeling unatural using this big monitor. 😮
I am thinking of getting a 21″ SONY though, for Christmas…
Does the ‘personal’ edition come with things such as apache or is it just geared entirely to be a desktop machine?
BTW, nice series of revies on Red Hat and Mandrake… of course now I can’t decide on which one to buy – and yes I am too lazy to download the .iso’s =).
Apache comes with the Personal edition…no need to worry, it also comes with many server software (SSH, FTP, BIND, LDAP, Sendmail and Postfix…etc).
This is just the problem. Linux = Bloat. I do a minimal install, wanting a nice desktop OS to use email, web and to do word processing on, and I get Apache, a million and one text editors (vi, vim, emacs, pico….) and ten thousand other applications that Joe user will never need. Until linux goes on a serious diet, it’s going to be hell for the average user to find his way around in such a cluttered os.
Good review, Jay. I’m curious though… you mentioned that redhat-config-packages allowed you to choose from either CD or FTP resources. The version in the free ISO does not provide me with the FTP option. I wonder if this is only available with the boxed set?
Sure would be nice to point it to my choice of FTP locations.
-fp
Well, I’m up and running with Redhat 8.0 too and my first impression (after about 20-30 minutes of use) is that Mandrake 9 has this sucker beat hands down.
I would say that if we lived in a parallel universe, RH8 (and MDK9) could probably handle Joe User, but in a Windows-centric world and on a Windows-centric web, there’s no way in hell, not unless you have a local Linux guru who lives nearby.
I mean, at least Mandrake 9 had Flash working out of the box .. RH8 w/Mozilla doesn’t even have that! Not only that, but none of Linux’s apps for viewing video files (wma, real media, quicktime, etc) are configured here. At least one place told me I needed quicktime and sent me to the quicktime site, but Linux was not a choice amoung operating systems. The best I could do is to download Quicktime Installer.exe … I could see Joe User sitting there trying to figure out why it won’t run on his Red Hat machine.
Fonts are not quite as bad as they used to be, but still need work.
As for hardware support, I tried to simulate adding in a new piece of hardware by hooking up my USB scanner (HP Scanjet 3400c) with the system on. In Win2k, it detects the scanner, asks for the CD, and you’re off. What happened in Linux when I plugged it in? NOTHING!!!
There’s also apparently nothing that plays DVDs here. At least Win2k/XP has the common courtesy to tell me that it doesn’t have a codec to play the DVD with, but Redhat just sits there with a thumb up its ass … doesn’t even show me a CD icon, apparently has no idea what the movie disc is.
It took the word processor in openoffice.org nearly 20 seconds to load up (Athlon 1.2ghz w/384MB RAM) and all attempts to open even a simple MS Word document failed miserably.
Overall, they made it look flashier, but it just seems like the same old, same old. I really don’t see how any long-time Windows users can find refuge here, unless their just hellbent on using something not made by MS. I’m 98% sure I could get all of these problems (and the ones not mentioned here) ironed out, but why would I want to? Everything already works with what I have. I decided to at least bend to the request of Linux fanatics and try out ‘alternatives’, but if you want to target me with something, you’re most certainly going to have to do better than this.
Perhaps with another 2-3 years of work, this thing might be ready for prime time. But as of now, it’s still just a pipe dream.
Oh, and to Kyle:
” This is just the problem. Linux = Bloat. I do a minimal install, wanting a nice desktop OS to use email, web and to do word processing on, and I get Apache, a million and one text editors (vi, vim, emacs, pico….) and ten thousand other applications that Joe user will never need. ”
You really should try out the default ‘Personal’ install of RH8, as it seems to be about what you’re looking for. There’s no apache here and the only ‘Linux-ish’ thing I see here is Emacs
The only icons on the desktop are your Nautilus home folder, the trash can and a “Start Here” icon that takes you to a window where you can set up some of your basic settings.
It remembers me of a stopry about usability Eugenia posted here this week. Fortunately desktops are becoming less cluttered.
Miles Robinson ranted: You only need the first 3 discs! Please refrain from killing your social life by getting all 5 discs on dial-up!
Broadband should be a basic human right 🙂
Mozilla: It is one of the icons in the panel and it starts up very nicely and is no problem for an average user. For Joe & Jane, especially because Evolution is the default email application, Galeon might be a good choice as the default browser, but Mozilla is fine.
At least for me, Galeon, depending on the moon (yes, depending on the moon), is unstable (crashes for nothing) and stuff.
Many GNU/Linux distros offer minimal installs that take up less than (or about) 100 MB of space, even with X (e.g. Mandrake, Debian). The BSDs are often even smaller. RedHat isn’t the only distro out there, y’know.
I’m happy to say that it easily connected to my wife’s printer under Windows, and I’ve never had any luck with that before with Linux or FreeBSD. I’m posting this from 8.0, which I downloaded last night. My only complaint is that I don’t like the default background
. Also, there is no ntfs kernel module. I’m pretty sure they used to. Oh, and I can’t mount my FreeBSD partition for some reason. I probably do have other complaints, but I think Redhat is deservedly the leader in Linux distros after seeing this.
You know, its funny you should mention the background, because its the only default background I have EVER liked in a linux distro.
I downloaded without any glitch the 5 ISO overnight from this server :
ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/en/iso/i386/
I’m a Windows power-user. Over the past 7 years I constantly tried to like Linux, without success (tried SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, etc). Something just didn’t clicked.
Still today I persist with this new version. As usual, I’m full of hope. I cross my finger this time is the good one 🙂
The only things I think Redhat did wrong are the following:
1. Ghostscript is not default PDF viewer, QT apps should be installed even without KDE, just the libraries and all that
2. Add Remove packages only adds and remove packages installed with distribution not the RPMS i get online.
3. Control center has far fewer options than I expected. YASYT was a few hundred times more comprehensive and better integrated. Their control center is pretty but jsut too limited.
4. confusing menu,
5. wahtever the gnome panel is called is too big, it should be a step down.
6. installation at first isn’t user friendly and is in text mode. SuSE has the whole isntallation look beautiful form the second I inserted the DVD it was graphical ALL the way, the whole installationw as much better.
7. Text bootscreen. SuSE and mandrake both ahve graphical bootscreens. A utility to change the bootscreens IE: mandrake’s is also needed
8. UP2Date should tell you what it updated and flash or something like in XP when there is a new update. Moszilla IMO should use ORBit as the default theme.
9. More emblems, tehre are plenty they could of added at gnome.art.org, as wella s many other ool GNOME art.
10. I hope Redhat takes are feedback and amkes the enxt version even better.
everything else is really good.
Many of teh things Lycoris has should also be present. my music, my documents, etc. They should also ahve samba pre-configured to view Windows computers and Linux computers on a netowrk immiedieately afer install. This would be great, I still don’t know how to print in Linux without using Lycoris. This is a major issue.
I was trying to install RH 8 on my friends system, but ended up leaving a bad impression. I did everything i could to make it work, but it kept booting saying ‘not enough free memory’ (i think the boot partition wasnt big enough? not enough swap? dunno) he has 512meg DDR, but he had 1/2 the system as win2k. Anyway, I brought along a debian disk, and we ended upgoing w/that, after installed RH8 3 times-quite embarassing…
Can anybody give me a list f mirrors, where i can download RH8? On RH web site, there list of mirrors contain only 7.3 version. And the official RH ftp always seems busy…
wahtever the gnome panel is called is too big, it should be a step down.
That is fixable. You can change the size of the panel. Just right click it and select properies and you will see the option.
You have some good points but those points don’t make Suse/Mandrake better then Red Hat. Red Hat is still way ahead in terms of user friendliness.
Alex, it gave me the choice of graphical or text install – I chose graphical and it was totally graphical. Hmmm.
Darius, I agree that Windows and Mac are ahead of Linux for the type of things you spoke of. I guess it’s a matter of the excitement of getting hooked into something, a movement, and seeing it progress, evolve into something better and better. We have had Linux geeks post here that have said it’s not for desktop use, should not be for desktop use, but for servers and developers only. But, I think they’re wrong. I have seen Linux evolve – it has its own momentum now, it’s like a river endlessly seeking its base level. No matter what anyone says, there are all these people in little companies, developers and programmers relentlessly finding better ways, better looking ways, better working ways of making Linux a desktop OS. I don’t think it can be stopped.And the – poof – almost out of nowhere, here comes Red Hat! So, I know using Linux can be frustrating and inadequate at times, but being in the state of mind to be a part of this…well, I guess it’s the old saying, the journey is the destination. It’s really fun!
So much for “Everything just works”
Where can get the gcc3.2 Versions of that stuff?
I’ve been using RedHat 8 for the last few days, and I must say it’s definetely the best distro I’ve ever used!
The only problem with it was that it would install perfectly, but when I’d try to boot it, it would give me a lot of hard drive errors and refuse to boot. This was because I recently built a new PC, an I had used the old IDE cable from my HP. Apparently it’s not quite good enough for this motherboard.
It’s weird, though. Windows XP, BeOS, QNX, and FreeBSD (Sort of, it would give me hard drive errors and stop, but sometimes it would just keep on booting) all worked fine, and Linux didn’t. All well, now that it’s running I love it. I’ve even put it on my laptop 
The only problem I really see is recompiling the kernel with ACPI. When I used RedHat 7.3 on the laptop, I had to recompile the kernel with ACPI to get sound. So I installed RedHat’s kernel sourece, downloaded kernel 2.4.19 and the preemptive kernel and ACPI patches, patched the kernel, make mrproper, copied RedHat’s i686 kernel config to .config in the 2.4.19 directory, make xconfig, checked NTFS module (dual booting with XP), preemptive kernel, and all ACPI stuff, make dep, make bzImage, make modules. All is well until it gets to modules, where it decides to stop with some obscure error in a SCSI module. Anyone else experienced anything like this? Is there any way to temporarily downgrade to gcc 2.9 (gcc3 might be causing this error) and try again?
I did an upgrade from Redhat 7.3 to 8.0. As soon as I started it up, I found that I had lost my connection to the web. I lived with it when RedHat 7.3 couldn’t find my sound card. RedHat 8.0 can’t do the sound card AND lost my web connection. Certainly not for Jane and Joe user, since I am Joe User. I was hoping Redhat had gotten it’s act together but I guess not.
I downloaded one iso, that wasn’t enough, there wasn’t a continue later option in the install proces so I had to wait until the second one was downloaded…
The install went allright, the default choice is about 1500MB of stuff. On my new aldi laptop it seems to recognize everything, it did suggest that I should create a bootfloppy, I didn’t but it still booted allright..
The partition program is a nice improvement from fdisk 🙂
Now wondering if it has a sleep mode for the laptop, closing the screen doesn’t make it sleepy.
Considering previous/other releases things are getting better.
good review but I stil want to try gentoo I’m going to get a walmart pc to put it on
I installled it and it works great. I have a Geforce4 4200 and I downloaded the nvidia drivers and have the new Unreal Tournament 2003 running great on it, if you want to use the nvidia 3d drivers you need to make sure you install the developer packages on install.
The icons on the desktop were huge but I just right clicked and hit stretch and made them the size I wanted. Everything is working great and it found all my hardware.
Personally I like the Bluecurve desktop, I’m not real adept at all things linux and this is really easy to use.
For all those who don’t want to wait for official Red Hat 8.0 drivers but are scared to build their own module:
0.) If you didn’t already, fire up the package manager (System Settings -> Packages) and install the package groups “Development Tools” and “Kernel Development”.
1.) Go to http://www.nvidia.com, click on “download drivers”, then click on “linux display drivers”, select the topmost driver (currently 3123).
2.) Download the GLX RPM (the first one), then scroll down to the bottom and download the kernel source RPM. Put both in your home folder.
3.) Launch a terminal (System Tools -> Terminal).
4.) Type “su”, then hit enter and enter your root password, you should be root now.
5.) Type the following command: “rpmbuild –rebuild NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-3123.src.rpm”. Of course the version number of your src.rpm might differ. You can use tab completion so simply hit TAB once you wrote a part of the filename down. Capitalization does matter.
6.) If this worked, you can close the terminal now. Open a file manager window (or your homefolder) and navigate to “/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386”. You should find your new NVIDIA_kernel RPM here. Doubleclick and install it. If you did this, go back to your home folder and install (doubleclick) the NVIDIA_GLX RPM.
7.) Go to “System Settings -> Display”, open the “Advanced” tab and click the “Configure…” button for your video card. At the “Driver:” input box, write down “nvidia” as this is most probably not in the list (only “nv”). “nv” is the 2D driver, “nvidia” is the original 3D driver (the one you just installed). You will not be able to activate the “Enable Hardware 3D Acceleration” checkbox, don’t worry. Click OK two times and it should tell you to log out and restart.
8.) Do exactly this (log out) and log in again, you should see the NVidia logo shortly. If X doesn’t work anymore, GDM will ask you to launch the configuration program. Answer yes and it should show you the configuration program from step 7. Change “nvidia” to “nv” at the very same location, now X should work again (at least). But if you did everything right, this shouldn’t happen.
9.) Launch Tux Racer (Extras -> Games -> Tux Racer) or Chromium (Extras -> Games -> Chromium).
10.) Have fun!
Please tell me if I made a mistake somewhere or if something wasn’t explained well. The above steps should make your NVidia powered Red Hat 8 desktop 3D accelerated without any real trouble. And as you probably noticed, it is written to be understandable by everyone, not just those who would be able to figure out how to do it anyway.
BTW, if there are no legal issues, someone could simply take this kernel RPM and publish it, it will work for every Red Hat 8 user and make steps 0, 3, 4 and 5 unneccessary.
“The icons on the desktop were huge but I just right clicked and hit stretch and made them the size I wanted.”
To make all icons smaller, launch a file manager window, go to “Edit -> Preferences”, then “Vies” and set the “Default zoom level” in “Icon View Defaults” to 75%. Voila.
I prefer 100% in 1600×1200 though.
I’m wondering what type of users Joe and Jane are – to me, they seem fairly adept, as your assuming they know how to setup thier email accounts.
This is in no way any knock at RedHat, however, as under windows, your average Joe and Jane user are totally clueless on how to setup an email account also.
I recently had to deal with a client who didn’t know whether to setup a colleagues email on her computer or on her colleagues – somehow she thought that her colleague would ‘magically’ get the mail ? – This is a normally intelligent office worker.
When I setup emails for users, they often confuse their ISP with the email account I setup – IOW, they think that thier email is thier internet connection and how do they connect to it ? – When I tell them they just connect to the internet as normal and the email is a totally seperate process, they are thrown into confusion.
As far as an internet connection goes, the majority of people I have helped connect don’t even know where to plug in the cables, and don’t even attempt to ask them what DNS, IP or DHCP are. They stare blankly at me as I try to explain in a simple manner what it is I am doing to setup thier computers on the internet then promptly forget everything I’ve told them – until they break it and it stops working.
So it seems to me that Joe and Jane in your article are well above average users, simply because they can setup thier own email applications.
The reality, in fact, is that there is currently no single operating system that 90% of computer users could configure without help. This is why the majority of computers sold are configured right out of the box and no installation is neccessary – and why the market share of windows is so massive.
Good job done RH! The only thing that confuses me is that these linux desktops really try to imitate their biggest enemy,
Buy a Mac and get a real innovated desktop / computer!
Correct me if I’m wrong
As a watcher from the sidelines (I’ve been tackled by too many distros), I’ve scanned the articles and the attendant replies and noticed something interesting.
It seems that as the “premier” OS for Joe and Jane User gets closer to the mark, it also is becoming more and more like its rival, Windows. Not in looks, mind you – that’s been a trend in Linux desktops since I cracked open RH 4.2. But rather in the level of static about things that aren’t working quite right. Reminds me of a Win/OS forum…
It’s only 1.2rc1, not available in the menus when running the Gnome desktop certainly because it doesn’t start at all under Gnome on RedHat. 🙁
I tried Red Hat 8.0 yesterday and I was pretty disappointed
First, I found that Red Hat still doesn’t use the ALSA drivers, but instead the kernel drivers for soundcards. The sounds were bad quality and often played at the wrong speed, because of this, even the test sound had ticks at the end.
Then I found out I couldn’t find anything to watch TV using my TV/Radio card. There was nothing in the menu. Executing xawtv using alt+f2, the sound didn’t work.
Then when I wanted to try to play a game I found out there weren’t any Nvidia drivers yet, while Nvidia has often got drivers for distributions that aren’t even released yet.
Windows users won’t mind such problems, because Windows has got them too (Windows doesn’t include any app to watch tv for example and many hardware didn’t have any drivers when XP was released). But having done several Linux installations, I didn’t expect this.
Other than those problems, the distro was pretty fast and looked pretty good.
I think Windows users will like this distro, but that Linux users will be disappointed.
I am an Ex mac guy having used windows/dos for a while. Redhat 8.0 is the first time I feel I have beauty, usability (both usually only for macs), configurability and control over my computer.
Way to go Redhat.
Cheers,
Spark, Thanks for the instructions.
You didn’t mention what to do with the rpms that you originally downloaded into your home directory. Does the OS require you keep them any place special, or can they be deleted?
Also, why use the rpmbuild command? Most users usually see instructions to type rpm -ihv <rpm_package>.
If I buy a copy…How many computers can I put it on?
Can I copy the CD’s?
Potentially infinite
and yes.
Unless you’re looking for “official support” and all that jazz.
Red Hat 8.0 is awesome, but there is one little thing that saddens me. There is no support for ntfs, which I believe they began doing at version 7.3, and when I try to compile modules for it, it just doesn’t work. Wondering if this is just the new gcc 3.2 or what. But it is a .0 release, so there is the explaination there, I am really curious on how awesome 8.1 will be if they can fix this and a few other minor bugs.
However, from Joe and Jane’s point of view, there are areas in installation that could confuse them, so I have to speak to those, at least to some degree. My computer for this “experiment” is, yes, a Wal-Mart/Microtel PC with an Athalon 1800+ XP processor
and, just like Joe & Jane, you’ve come up with a brand new way to spell Athlon.
Regarding previous responses to corrections: it’s faster to post than to email, and there’s no real reason to leave it out of view of everyone else.
Personally, I feel that it’s better to observe someone else attempting to do something if you want to know how the ‘average user’ interacts with the software, rather than trying to dumb your own thought process down and miss the blatantly obvious things (like the fact that most users cannot setup their own email and internet access under any operating system).
hi jay,
nice review,
I myself have switched from RH7.3 to Mandrake 9.0.
but I guess RH 8.0 is also up there as far as a good desktop
distro is concerned.
My only question/suggestion is , Don’t be so gender correct.
Its really annoying to read joe/jane all the time.
Using either would be fine by most of us here 🙂
There are several key features in Mandrake that I cannot do without. The reason is because I run an office using mandrake linux and so certain issues are sensitive. I will explain further.
The key features are:
1)Mandrake Linux 8.2 supports automount for the cd-rom and floppy. I dont have to go thru extra steps to access either.
2)Mouse wheels are supported by the installation program.
3)It boots up onto the kde desktop (or your choice of gui) without having to login.
there are other things that are pretty neat with mandrake 8.2 and that is the xkill icon, and the overall organisation. I liked the way they handle the installation of staroffice, also. Soon I will be purchasing redhat 8.0 and I will be trying it out for myself.
Also 3D acceleration on ATI Radeon 7500 is pretty old…when are they going to exclude the “unstability warning” when enabling 3d?
<cite>Wal-Mart/Microtel PC with an Athalon 1800+ XP processor
<P>
and, just like Joe & Jane, you’ve come up with a brand new way to spell Athlon.</cite><P>
“Athalon” is the most common misspelling of Athlon. It is not funny though, I hate that spelling.
In Windows Me, to use an NVidia card you basically have to:
1. Install the card.
2. Start the PC
3. Insert the CD-ROM with drivers when told
4. Reboot.
5. Done.
Joe-n-Jane could probably handle that, no sweat.
In Linux? I quote:
“0.) If you didn’t already, fire up the package manager (System Settings -> Packages) and install the package groups “Development Tools” and “Kernel Development”.
1.) Go to http://www.nvidia.com, click on “download drivers”, then click on “linux display drivers”, select the topmost driver (currently 3123).
2.) Download the GLX RPM (the first one), then scroll down to the bottom and download the kernel source RPM. Put both in your home folder.
3.) Launch a terminal (System Tools -> Terminal).
4.) Type “su”, then hit enter and enter your root password, you should be root now.
5.) Type the following command: “rpmbuild –rebuild NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-3123.src.rpm”. Of course the version number of your src.rpm might differ. You can use tab completion so simply hit TAB once you wrote a part of the filename down. Capitalization does matter.
6.) If this worked, you can close the terminal now. Open a file manager window (or your homefolder) and navigate to “/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386”. You should find your new NVIDIA_kernel RPM here. Doubleclick and install it. If you did this, go back to your home folder and install (doubleclick) the NVIDIA_GLX RPM.
7.) Go to “System Settings -> Display”, open the “Advanced” tab and click the “Configure…” button for your video card. At the “Driver:” input box, write down “nvidia” as this is most probably not in the list (only “nv”). “nv” is the 2D driver, “nvidia” is the original 3D driver (the one you just installed). You will not be able to activate the “Enable Hardware 3D Acceleration” checkbox, don’t worry. Click OK two times and it should tell you to log out and restart.
8.) Do exactly this (log out) and log in again, you should see the NVidia logo shortly. If X doesn’t work anymore, GDM will ask you to launch the configuration program. Answer yes and it should show you the configuration program from step 7. Change “nvidia” to “nv” at the very same location, now X should work again (at least). But if you did everything right, this shouldn’t happen.
9.) Launch Tux Racer (Extras -> Games -> Tux Racer) or Chromium (Extras -> Games -> Chromium).
10.) Have fun!
”
Joe-n-Jane say: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
When I first installed it, my first thoughts were this is the best install I have ever used in my life. I did a custom install and was able to install what i want and have a good understanding of what should be on my system. Doing this with Mandrake I get down to not knowing what things need to be installed but it was very easy for RedHat. Once I booted up, well the firstboot service, never worked for me but that didn’t bother me. Oh I also loved out it installs pretty much nothing. Next the up2date icon thing never seemed to work right, but oh well, I can start it from the menu. The menu seemed a little hard to get used to but it was ok. Then I started having issues.
First thing I did was change the looks of my RedHat to look like Mac at the top and a small sliding bar at the bottom, my usual setup to look more like OS X. Well the bottom I couldn’t setup as being able to maximize over it, actually I didn’t see a whole lot of options in the new Gnome. Next I couldn’t figure out how to make windows remember there position. Next is there is no gmenu type of program to add things to the start menu, my xmms never even would start up, I uninstalled it, and installed one from xmms web site, and yes I installed the mp3 encoder file too, but nothing. Next if you install an RPM where the hell is there a tool to uninstall it? No GnoRPM or whatever it was called which I didn’t like that program in the first place, but still. That has actually been my biggest complain so far is I love the Add and Remove Package tool, but I wish there was a way to add other packages to it even a way to add them to the menu. What would be great is called Start Here, Linux HD or something and have it setup so that if you right click the program and go to uninstall, it uninstalls the package. That way they can start hiding the linux file system. I used to complain about Linux should change their directory structure, then I noticed on my Mac that OS X just hides theirs. Yea things are still bloated still… some what that is included in the base. I really don’t see from what I installed why they should be more then 200 to 300 meg, I don’t do anything big, and the biggest program I saw I installed was Mozilla since I didn’t install OpenOffice, but the install was almost 1 gig.
Next I have no clue how to use IP Tables to setup my IP Masq, in RedHat 7.3 I just used the firewall configuration program, then edited one file and change a zero to one and that was it. Which it took me forever to know that I was using IP Chains, so now I’m lost.
So I’ll end with what I told my Linux friend last night that won’t use anything but Debian…. The new RedHat is great it’s way more advance feel to it then any other I have used, it would be great for a laptop or a desktop… But I really don’t see any use for it as a main computer system, or server with out getting overly pissed. Right now I’m looking for something else to put on, I think I may go to FreeBSD, which the only thing I disliked about that was uninstalling things, if there was a dependence you can’t uninstall it… even if you want to uninstall all parts including teh dependence. So I don’t know… I might just have to live with Mandrake. Which I liked Mandrake, but I always felt it was kind of ‘flacky’, I always felt it was beta ware, where I always felt with RedHat including 7.3 that it was a professional business application.
I had a problem with my resolution too but I fixed it. RedHat only wanted to use 75 hertz at 1154 which I wanted to run 70 hertz because my 75 hertz just doesn’t fit on my screen right… just a little bit of black all the way around no matter if I change my monitor settings. Which is what it did in Redhat 7.3 too but in that one I just copied over the modeline from xconfig file to the xconfig-4 file under dmms part of monitor. But I they didn’t have mode lines, I did read the last article on Redhat here so I used the web site talked about to make a modeline, ok did that but nothing. So I got pissed and formatted installed Mandrake, copied the xconfig files to floppy, and formatted back to Redhat. Which then I copied the mode line over but nothing didn’t work… Then looking at Mandrakes xconfig file I noticed that there was no dmms part under the monitor section… So I deleted that and added the modeline, saved it and rebooted… Everything seem to work then.
I personally like RedHat 7.3 better, but felt it had way to much software, and I had no clue what software I needed on a custom install. I liked the Options better, everything… I felt like I was using a Linux system earlier version I felt like I was using a RedHat system because most of the time it was doing things the RedHat way. Now I feel like I”m back to having to do things the RedHat way. I don’t think Mandrake should have been called 9.0 it still feels like a small upgrade of 8.2, but Redhat seems like a big change.
Spelled Athlon wrong…proofreading your own stuff, you keep glossing over the same mistakes – I should have had my cats proofread <g>.
Joe & Jane User – i really wasn’t trying to be pc, I was thinking of a couple or a family, but it does sound pc, I have to admit.
I too think the vast majority of computer uses are computer illierate in the sense of actually knowing how to set up email, connect to the internet, are dead in the water if something goes wrong. This does bring up a question about computing we’ve all talked about before – is making computing so transparent to average users dumbing things down too much? I don’t think it has to be that. With Linux and OS X I think the advanced user can continue do advanced work. I guess with Windows too if you have the right tools. Linux is still nice in that regard because of OSS, I think there will always be many distros that advanced users will like to use better than what will become mainstream distros.
But, this inability of not knowing how to do anything among average users is a problem, a big problem. In some ways, it makes me wonder why internet appliances have failed so miserably (well, most of them were crappy, that’s one reason <g>). But seriously, I do wonder about that because, in so many ways, it is the answer to these people’s inability and lack of interest in learning how a computer actually works. I think a product intended for mass consumption should require that the customer not need to know anything, but computers are not there yet – too many things can go wrong. I mean too many things that would put the average user dead in the water until they receive help.
There is no support for ntfs
If I can remember, Matthew, Red Hat was wary of patent infringements, “better safe than sorry”.
Has it ever dawned on an PC Linux distro creator that perhaps they should, do something like go to a shopping mall and gather 50 people and offer them $50 for no more than 3 hours of their time.
Everybody starts with a “clean” machine from a variety of PC manufacturers. The task is to install the distriubtion from scratch and …
1) Group A has to connect to the internet (surf the web) and send an e-mail.
2) Group B has to install a scanner, scan a picture, crop it, copy it to a disk and give it to some one in group A or group C for printing or attaching to an e-mail.
3) Group C needs to create a document and print it.
4) Group D must burn a CD.
5) Group E must connect a digital camera or a PDA and download.
Each group has 2 staffers behind them taking mad notes about what’s going wrong and how to make all of this possible WITHOUT EVER NEEDING TO OPEN THE FERSHENGLUGSHER TERMINAL!
(In fact, if one of the sampled 50 includes a *nix head they are not allowed to open the terminal at all.)
It might be eye opening for them, about what a REAL desktop usable consumer/business OS needs out of the box.
Getting pictures from my camera (Canon G1) did work…
I just connected it and clicked on the camera app in the menu…
(it only shows the directory entries twice)
I am a Windows user. I’ve tried some a linux distro twice (RH6 and Mandrake7) and each time I gave up because I spend way too much time to make the hardware and software work.
So this time I tried RH8.
Installed flawlesly except that it did not detect my second network card – an ISA NE2000 compartable. I added it quite easy after the instalation from the Network configuration panel, it showed me that the device is active. Tried to ping the nearby computer and guess what – host unreachable. Doh, searched google a bit, then removed the device and tried to add the “alias eth1 ne” and the “option …” lines to etc/conf.modules, but did not find the file. Searched in google again – well conf.modules is modules.conf in RH. This did not work. Searched google once again – read about the dmesg command and it showed that there’s an interrupt conflict with eth1. Rebooted, ran windows, the hardware manager showed that the card shares an interrupt with COM1 (which does not stop it from running just fine under Windows). So went in the BIOS setup and disabled COM1(don’t need it anyway). Ran Windows – evrth. works. Ran Linux again. Now the onboard sound does not work, after removing COM1 the BIOS PNP moved it’s IRQ, but RH Linux tries to use it from the old IRQ. Activated COM1, disabled COM2 to free an IRQ and changed the netcard IRQ jumpers to use it (BTW which is the Linux utility that tells you which IRQ to which device is assigned?). Hurray – both the sound and the second netcard work.
Next I try to install SAMBA. Can’t find a gui, so I load from the internet a GUI frontend for SAMBA – gtksamba , but it sux – it’s not much better than editing smb.conf myself (why can’t it be as simple as in windows). So I read the HOWTO, edit smb.conf and my computer is now visible on the network. But it’s not accesible. I can’t find or access any other computer on the network. After spending lots of time tweaking smb.conf I realize that maybe the firewall is not leting SAMBA through. So I look for a tool to edit the firewall configuration and find lokkit, which is realy nice and simple. I tell it I want to give access to the computers on eth1 and voila – I can acces the windows shares on the network, they can see me. Windows prompts for a passowrd so I set it with smbpasswd, well this password does not work. I am too much fed up installing SAMBA so I leave it as it is.
Next I try to install the NVidia Linux drivers. Read the docs, must exit X while installing. Good I need a textmode text editor (in case something goes wrong). But can’t find any. I’ve heard of vi and emacs. Try them both. Never imagined that a text editor can be confusing. I need a simple edit.com, not an editor that can control my toaster or requires cryptic commands and shortcuts to run. So I search the net and find nano. Why doesn’t RH bundle something like this? Now I edit inittab to disable logging directly into X (is there a preference panel to do this?). So I do an “rpmbuild –rebuild” of the kernel module exactly as explained in the docs and I get a bunch of errors while compiling. I search google again and it looks like it can’t find the kernel sources or something. Looks like I have to install the kernel Development packages. I proceed with the instalation instructions and finaly – Tux Racer is running.
So my conclusion is – Linux is still a mess.
excelent comment!!!!!!!!!!
Hi there,
i’m Joe and thanx to write from my point of view, but i think i better say something myself. I tried Mandrake 8.2 and Redhat 7.3 last week and this week Mandrake 9 and Redhat 8. I find the install of Redhat 8 the most difficult or confusing (remember i aim Joe). As mentioned in the article about the firewall and how i was thinking to allow http, fpt and other, cause i want …. That could be better! Also the partitioning was more confusing to me as in mandrake or redhat 7.3.
Joe also wants to open his pictures, movies, music and well some workdocuments that he’s got on his windowspartitions (my d:data). I know it’s possible without mountingcommands since mandrake show them. That would be nice next time. And off course i want to listen my music. Is that little stupid audioplayer really the same (xmms) as in mandrake??? Come on guys, xmms looks so cool (like winamp) in mandrake, millions Joe’s are used to winamp and love it!
But guess what! Joe’s greatfull to Linux. Tired off overpriced proprietary software, tired to get nailed by …, and i really appreciate all efforts freedom (as in free speach) loving people do and off course the price (as in free beer) is nice too. I’ll buy my next linuxbox, it’s worth it, not perfect, but fair! Have to finish quick, visitors waiting! See ya guys and thanx!
the audio player SAYS XMMS on it…. how hard can it be to see the letters? most people that I know would prefer the look RH gave it over the original; it is just that a LOOK it changes none of the functionality…. cept over the night while i slept I had Linux running and guess what i see when i awake? an error about gnome-panel! and a reboot doesn’t change anything… hmmmm what could be wrong?
Linux is still buggy as hell, but it does look nice in this distro.
Header says it all
Jay, if you actually installed Red Hat 8.0 on the AthlonXP with the VIA chipset, you might want to read this:
https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/psyche-list/2002-October/000871…
I think our MicroTel machines use this VIA chipset…
JohnG: Glad you liked it.
Regarding your questions:
1) Yes, you are safe to delete the RPM’s if you don’t want to keep them. You might want to keep the kernel RPM so you don’t have to rebuild it if you should ever reinstall or install on another machine or give it to a friend, whatever. And you can’t remove it as a user anyway.
2) You don’t need the “rpm -ivh” command anymore in Red Hat 8, simply doubleclick the RPM. The rpmbuild command is only needed because it’s a source RPM that has to be compiled against the specific Red Hat 8 kernel. This is a problem of Linux (the kernel), if it would at least SOMEWHAT binary compatibile for it’s driver modules, NVidia could simply offer a RPM download for “Kernel 2.4” or something. It could then list all distributions using this kernel and they would all download the same package. But Linux kernel modules break whenever you compile the kernel with different options, even if it’s the exactly same version! So NVidia offers at least 20 different packages only for Red Hat! It’s a mess. :/
AntonioAlejandro:
“1)Mandrake Linux 8.2 supports automount for the cd-rom and floppy. I dont have to go thru extra steps to access either.”
Just inserted a CD in Red Hat 8, it placed a CD ROM icon on the desktop (correctly named) and opened a Nautilus window containing the contents of the CD.
To remove it again I had to rightclick the desktop and select “Disks -> CD-ROM”, it then ejected the CD. Not very intuitive for a Windows user but I guess that’s easy to learn.
“2)Mouse wheels are supported by the installation program.”
Still doesn’t work. I noticed this too during installation… But “key feature for your office”?
There isn’t really a place in the installation where using the mousewheel is really usefull anyway (only to scroll the help maybe).
Or do you mean that it didn’t setup the mousewheel correctly? This worked great for me after following the hint of the help to choose MS IntelliMouse.
“3)It boots up onto the kde desktop (or your choice of gui) without having to login.”
It doesn’t do that by default but you can configure it in “System Settings -> Login Screen”. I don’t enable this though, just because the greeter looks so great.
“xkill icon”
I know it’s not the same, but at least for GNOME 2 applications (inside of GNOME 2), you can simply click the close button. If it doesn’t respond in a short while it offers you to kill the application. I don’t know how well this works with other applications or inside KDE though. But it seems to be a cleaner solution than the xkill icon.
Kady Mae: That’s what they do and several other usability people. And so far I didn’t have to use the terminal for anything (I do this by choice), only for the short command while installing the not-yet-released NVidia drivers, that’s why I wrote this guide. Of course not everything might work perfectly yet but it’s obvious that the effords go exactly into this direction.
Quote:
You only need the first 3 discs! Please refrain from killing your social life by getting all 5 discs on dial-up!
Uhm…why not buy the cds (NOT the original set) from a low-price cd seller (like edmunds enterprise)? It’s a pain to download the 3 cds on dialup , though I DO know a few people who have the patience to wait till all the downloads are finished.
p.s:
a. Hats off to the people who are patient wnough to wait for downloading 1.3 GB+ data on dialup
b. I am not a spokesman for the discount cd retialers
Yikes – thanks Eugenia!!
Just spent 40 bucks on RH 8.0 personal based in part on this glowing review. The installer is certainly prettier than Mandrake, but that’s not really important. The terminal is well hidden in the menus – the first Linux/FreeBSD distro I’ve seen that did not have an icon for the terminal in the task-bar at the bottom of the screen. Gasp. Sacrilege!
Installation appeared smooth, my ATAPI/IDE Pacific Digital 24x CD burner was detected and configured as a SCSI device (through scsi emulation). However cdrecord crashes every time I try to burn a CD – the error message says something about scsi input/output error. One time it also locked up the CD burner and I was forced to do a “shutdown -r now” to get the CD out.
I should mention that I have run Mandrake 8.2, 9.0 beta3, 9.0rc3, and 9.0 final on this machine, and cdrecord worked flawlessly in all those distros (though I had a bunch of other problems with LM 9.0 Final), so this is NOT a hardware problem with my system.
I’m disappointed. So much for the “RH 8 is a bulletproof distro for Joe User” theory. It’ll be a long time before RH sees any more of my money. For that matter, Mandrake isn’t going to get any money from me for LM 9.0 final as I found it the buggiest version of Mandrake Linux I have used. Weird, on the two PC’s I tried it on, even LM 9.0 beta 3 was much more stable than LM 9.0 final!
Guess I’ll go back to LM 8.2 while I wait for LM 9.1 or 9.2 to (hopefully) fix the bugs in 9.0. And I’ll heave another deep sigh for the passing of BeOS, which just worked, every time I installed it on compatible hardware.
-Jules Verne
This question is for Eugenia and/or Jay (or anyone for that matter). I would like to know what difference there is between the PE and the Pro Edition of RH 8.0. I run a server and I don’t know really (I usually download 3 iso’s from the net…), if the pe limits me in anyways.
Thanks
PS. if anyone can reply to me at [email protected]
Basically what I use my RH is for serving. on that department I have never found a more stabler os than rh. I am upgrading my RH 7.3 to 8.0 simply because I made the mistake (go ahead laugh), of deleting /usr/bin when doing a qmail instalation… So I decided to upgrade my server machine. But I am afraid I just spend $40.00 in RH PE, and not being able to setup apache and the rest of the stuff I need to install:
webmin
apache 2.0
php
qmail
etc.
Can I use this normally or do I need the pro version at all? Also my server pc is a Dual P3 1Ghz with 768mb ram… Will PE also run that?
Thanks agian in advanced and any replies send them to [email protected]
Jules, lol, I like your term “bulletproof”. It isn’t bulletproof, that’s true. What amazed me though was how Red Hat was able to turn on a dime and put out a distro like this. In general, Linux (for consumers) has to get some of these multimedia apps more refined, I know. Apple has an advantage there because everything is tailored to the hardware they use (well, some would debate if that’s an advantage, of course :-). But, as I said in the article, it isn’t quite there yet. But, it sounds like multimedia is another area where progress must be made. There are problems with this on other platforms too. Everytime Roxio Toast comes out with a new update for the Mac, there are always problems they have to put out more updates to fix.
I don’t know precisely what else is in the Pro version of Red Hat. I would think, lots and lots of more server tools, for one thing.
I installed SuSE 8.1 PE last night and got my settings fixed up, but had no time to test out the package selection/installation yet.
Computer is like a car: you need to learn how to drive it before you can use it. Computers are not freezers or televisions. A typical Joe user even can operate a videocassete recorder.
A typical Joe user buy a preinstalled computer and can install a program if autorun works when he puts the cdrom on drive. If Windows is damaged by a virus and it need to be reinstalled he calls an “expert” friend or pay to another person to do it.
Any O.S. that Joe and clild users run with all rights is a joke. In 80’s the computers for Joe users had O.S. in ROM with a basic interpreter. My old MSX can run a program by inserting a cartridge, like videogames (the computers made for childrens and Joe users) …
Everytime I run an upgrade on RH, my video gets jacked. It is a nvidia geforce 2 mx AGP 32mb card. I finally had to end up commenting out the GLX and OpenGL lines in xf86config (good thing I use it for a server and not to play games) Mysql had some issues also. Other than that, ugprade went smooth. RH 8 is very nice !
Red Hat doesnt do miracles. It is easy, accurate and it does work. The average user or gets used it just like it got used to Win9x/ME/XP or continues using Windows. It’s rather nice to think in a world powered up by Linux, but Linux isnt for the average user, thats the point… And LINUX WONT EVER BEAT MICROSOFT ON THE DESKTOPS because of simple things like: 99% of hardware vendors dont support their equipment in Linux, the average user though having drivers, lets say, driver for Logitech Quickcam Pro 3000, he wont ever install it, because he needs to compile it and so on, and the company of cource wont make a module for every kernel version and branches available… So… dont expect miracles… If you like KDE because it is too much Windows alike, well, that’s your own problem, just dont gun down a distro like Red Hat because of it… Just for the record, Red Hat and SuSE real invest on linux and have a fair product, most of the other distro’s dont come with anything new or any development, just packagers… parasites… Also dont forget a bit of the GNOME history, who betted most on GNOME devel ? Red Hat !! right ?? Since they have much more GNOME hackers than KDE hackers, wouldnt it be so predictable that the GNOME rip was far better then the KDE one ? It’s Red Hat’s experience with GNOME wich made them strip GNOME2 much better than KDE… Peace man… Just be a bit more realistic and for miracles, call in God and ask for them… else, pray in the nearest church.
Not only did you give a review from the point of view of the “ordinary man”; not only did you delineate the problems that this “person” might have; you gave detailed instructions on how he/she could overcome some of these problems, in “ordinary language”
RH should collect your review and include it on the cd.
How “ordinary” is “ordinary”? For example: some time ago I was trying to install a linux OS and called the technical number of my ISP to ask what was meant by “host name”. He did not know. This is not a criticism of the technical rep. the ISP did not support linux. However, it is a large ISP, and the rep. must have demonstrated sufficient knowledge to get hired.So he could in no way be considered a “joe user”.
If you, spark, can do this why cannot the distribution do it, and in more detail?
Thanks for educating me.
mea culpa
This should be “congratulations Jay”
I have had this issue ever since I started messing with Gnome2. How DO you edit the menus? It think it was one of the comments in some of these articles and I have never heard an answer to it.