I installed Red Hat Linux 9 (Shrike) to see what has changed between it and the previous major version of Red Hat (8.0). The article features some installation screenshots and of course some post-install screenshots showing Bluecurve in Gnome and KDE (more shots here), user experience and discussion of whether you should upgrade or not.
The first thing you will note is that Red Hat has decided to move away from the x.x numbering of their products. Now they’ve moved directly from Red Hat 8.0 to Red Hat Linux 9 ending the 7.1,7.2,7.3,8.0 releases of times past, sure there was a 8.1 beta called Phoebe but that was all it was, a beta.
The CDs available for download are now 6 in total, up one from the last major release; however, most of us will get by with just downloading the first 3 CDs only, in order to install and setup Red Hat Linux 9 (the last three are source CDs).
For those of you who are impatient, I’ll answer two questions immediately. There is no native mp3 support included; you’ll have to fix that yourself if you want to play mp3s and for DVD lovers, the wonderful Xine is not included, you’ll have to download and install it yourself. I explain how to add both in Part III of this article.
The install went really well, with no hiccups. It was as clean and as straightforward as the Red Hat Linux 8.0 install, except now you have the option to ‘upgrade’ any previous version of Red Hat Linux installed on your computer. If you go this route, then make sure to read the Release-Notes for information about how it may impact your Linux installation. I chose to do a fresh install and wiped out the previous operating system altogether. The hardware that I used was a brand new Dell Latitude D600. The install worked great on this new hardware which was a big plus as Red Hat Linux 8.0 choked on the first reboot after installing on the same machine (the now ‘old’ default Red Hat Linux 8.0 kernel probably didn’t know how to deal with the chipset/ide controllers and did a hardware lockup after GRUB).
I had to manually configure X to tell it that my monitor was a Laptop Display Panel (why can’t Red Hat Linux detect LCD’s ?). After installing it booted up for the first time and all looked well. I noticed that CUPS was loaded by default on bootup (I have no printer) and some reference to 3 HSA cryptography keys also. The firstboot runs a short out of box experience (its called firstboot) which asks for the user to input some details and test sound etc. Once done you are presented with a nicer looking login screen than the one included with Red Hat Linux 8.0.
So what’s different about it? Well, for starters (pun intended) the start menu is now far better arranged than the clumsy bloated mess in Red Hat Linux 8.0. It’s now clearly laid out and there is even a handy ‘recent documents’ shortcut called ‘open recent’ on the menu. Nothing new to Windows users but it’s nice to finally see it in Red Hat Linux. Once again, Gnome is the default DE and Bluecurve is the default theme so overall it looks remarkably similar to Red Hat Linux 8.0. The release notes refer to Bluetooth support included (bluez libraries and utility programs) in this release but as I haven’t got Bluetooth on this machine I cannot test that functionality. Also in the release notes were mention of once again, no (current) 3D hardware drivers for NVIDIA users. That sucks because if you want to use your Red Hat Linux install for gaming, then you’ll have to configure and compile the NVIDIA source drivers for EACH kernel release for Red Hat Linux 9.0 starting with the one thats included. Oh, and by the way its 2.4.20-6.
What else is new? You’ll notice pretty quickly that the mouse cursor has had some code changes; in fact its called ‘Xcursor’and it has some groovy new antialiased, alpha blended (translucency) features included to make it look ‘cool’ while waiting for some RPM to install. Those of you that had issues with Red Hat Linux 8.0 not installing on your Intel i845,i852, i855 and i865 integrated video will be happy to note that this has been reworked so hopefully even with a 1mb bios limitation on your video card, you’ll get Red Hat Linux 9 Linux to install and have a graphical mode too. I inserted a blank CD-R in order to fire up xcdroast to burn these screenshots on this machine, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Gnome now has built in (limited) CD burning support in Nautilus. And it worked too! However, once I later installed Xcdroast i seem to have lost that ability. Oh well, it was only a test install anyway.
Mozilla version 1.2.1 is the default web browser and that’s good for us Mozilla lovers. You will notice that there are no plug-ins loaded in Mozilla so for RealAudio playback, Shockwave or Java you’ll have to get the plug-ins yourself and install them. OpenOffice is also included (version 1.0.2) but the nice, freely available Microsoft Fonts are not installed, sadly, so that’s another thing that you’ll have to configure yourself if you so desire.
For those of you who use KDE you’ll be pleased to note that its now version 3.1-4 and that allows you to use the included Keramik theme. Ok, now that we are done installing Red Hat 9, lets see what its like to use.
First time users of Linux should consider going for the full installation (Everything) to have access to a wealth of pre-installed software – it takes longer to install but then you get access to all the tools and software on the first three CDs. Going with the default choice in the install menu doesn’t give you everything (such as KDE and its associated applications and Red Hat’s server applications/administrative tools) but does still provide enough to get working/playing/experimenting. I’ll try and summarize some of what is included in the full install below, but I won’t list every application because there’s no point. You can always add or remove applications at a later stage in the package manager. Bear in mind, however, that the maximum install does not provide everything you’d expect to find as standard on a Windows XP machine. In fact, you’ll notice that multimedia is lacking and other features abounding which may or may not suit you.
Web Browsers included:
Mozilla 1.21 is the default browser in Red Hat Linux 9, and it’s a very nice browser by all standards, featuring tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking support among its features. Unfortunately, the included browser does not have plug-ins such as Java Virtual Machine/ShockWave/RealPlayer installed and that means that the end user will have to configure those plug-ins, easy to do in Windows but a pain in the neck in Linux.
The Konqueror (3.1-12) web browser is also included (KDE)
and it’s a nice browser by all accounts. I use Mozilla myself so I cannot really comment, but it too suffers from the lack of included plug-ins.
The Gnome-based Galeon is also included, and as above with Konqueror it’s got lots of nice features and has its own audience, In fact, I like the way it does the google search bars, very neat integration with the browser. The included version of Galeon for those that care is 1.2.7.
The three browsers included above should be just fine for the average and even the advanced user, and as Mozilla is the default browser, most users will end up using it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the included version of Mozilla (1.21) is that stable or bug free (note the current version is 1.3) so my advice for people who intend to use Mozilla: please upgrade to the latest stable release and as a result you’ll find plug-ins are much easier to install.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging clients are all the rage, and Red Hat Linux 9 supplies enough to satisfy, so no complaints here.
Choose from GAIM, which is compatible with MSN messenger as I describe below, (and many other protocols which I don’t) or LICQ.
Office Applications
OpenOffice is of course included as it was in Red Hat Linux 8.0, except this time it’s a later version and you’ll notice that it has an autocomplete icon which pops up, similar in a way to the ‘clippy’ icon so loved/hated in Microsoft Office.
An all-round package which is superb, lacking in TrueType Fonts but that’s easily fixable. It still doesn’t have an Outlook-type mail client equivalent, which is a shame for Windows to Linux switchers, however Evolution is a very good email application.
I don’t use Linux as my business operating system (the company I work for uses Microsoft Windows 2000), however Red Hat 9 as it currently stands would do just about all I need to do in terms of mail handling, creating documents, checking Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and viewing or creating presentations although not perhaps as easily or elegantly as the Microsoft Office equivalents that I am used to.
My only gripe with OpenOffice is it has an annoying delay while loading up a module even on a very fast and current computer. Opening Microsoft Word in Windows XP on the same system is instantaneous compared to OpenOffice Writer. I guess some more work needs to be done in that department as this was the same in Red Hat 8.0, so hopefully in time this can improve. Once it’s loaded, it’s fine, but if you are in a hurry to read something in OpenOffice, then the delay can be tiresome.
I ran this entire article more than once through OpenOffice Writer (which is the Microsoft Word Equivalent) and it handled this really well. The spell checker was put to the test too, so if you spot some errors you know where to blame them. (Editor’s note: this article was absolutely rife with spelling and punctuation errors when I received it, seriously)
Multimedia Applications
This is the one area that I feel Red Hat 9 is lacking, in particular, playing or listening to MP3’s or viewing/playing DVD’s, video content via the web or locally, DIVx movies and more. I feel the lack of applications like xine and mplayer does not add anything to this install, and only complicates and frustrates users, especially users that are unfamiliar with compiling programs in the Linux environment. XMMS is included but its mp3 plug-in is not. This is unfortunate. All Windows-based systems can play mp3s in Windows Media Player out of the box; same goes for playing most standard AVIs. And as regards DVDs on a Windows machine, it’s so easy to install WinDVD or PowerDVD that its a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Red Hat Linux 9.
CD-Burning Software
By default, Red Hat 9 now has limited CD burning capability built-in (provided that you don’t install Xcdroast), its works fine and you’ll be pleasantly surprised (as I was) when inserting a Blank CD-R that it will open a new folder called ///burn where you can drag and drop files to be burnt to cd. Experienced users will however probably just install their favorite cd burning software and Xcdroast is included for those that want it.
Graphical Editing/Viewing Software
Nothing with the ease of use or functionality of Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop is included, but there are some applications. GIMP is included and I used it to capture many of the screenshots.
Digital Camera Software
You can plug in your USB-based camera and with a bit of fiddling get it to work in Red Hat 9, using the supplied Gtkam application. It worked for me using my Canon Powershot A20 but I found it cumbersome to setup and retrieve my photos. However, the capability is there (as long as your camera is supported) so that’s good news.
Networking
The networking GUIs of the operating system seem to have been upgraded and I’m unsure whether I’m convinced that it’s all for the better. The Wireless Internet configuration setup is much easier by default in Red Hat 9, but moving from one wireless access point to another (along with the change in WEP keys if appropriate and SSID’s) poses problems for the non-technical. In Red Hat 8.0 you could enable or disable eth1 (which is my wireless network card) easily but its seems to be more obscure to me in Red Hat 9.
There are no apparent icons for network strength or for that matter connectivity on the taskbar (as you would see on a windows taskbar), so I’m left with using an x-term logged in as ‘su’ to check my internet connection status via command line tools like ifup eth1, ping host and ifconfig, and as simple as that is to some, it’s not for everyone.
On a side note, (i do like to connect to my Windows boxes and remote admin them) I’m glad to note that rdesktop (http://www.rdesktop.org) has been updated and is now version 1.2.0, that is useful because the default rdesktop that was included with red hat 8.0 did not have a capability to use MSTSC (Microsoft Terminal Services client) non-standard ports, (anything other than the default 3389) so this version by is great for administrating your Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/.NET computers remotely especially if you have changed the default receiving port in the registry.
Printing Software
CUPS is now the default printing software and looks relatively simple and strikingly like the Windows Print Manager equivalent. I don’t have a working printer so I can’t really comment on it’s effectiveness.
Server Software
Linux die-hards will of course enjoy the wealth of included server applications. You can set up your Red Hat 9 box to be a web-server/ftp-server with relative ease. I tried the included Apache and it was very easy to set up, as it was with Red Hat 8.0. I use Linux mainly on my portable computer so server applications are one area that I tend to steer clear of due to the lack of need. Apologies, but you’ll have to wait for someone else to go into proper depth for this area of Red Hat 9. There appears to be much better Samba support, but… you’ll have to update Samba to include the latest fixes from the recent security releases here.
Updating the Included Software.
Red Hat 9 comes complete with its own up2date functionality and that’s cool. Very similar to Windows Update except you have to register with Red Hat using a working Email address. This email address will also be polled regularly to see if it’s live. If not (if you don’t reply when requested), your ability to update that machine via this tool will be halted, but that can be fixed so its not the end of the world. I like the way Red Hat does its up2date features mostly, in that it does keep track of all your machines, however if you have many machines then the basice service may not be the best route for you. You’ll need to upgrade to Red Hat’s more expensive Red Hat Network services in that case.
Bear in mind that the up2date utility only updates programs that it deems are necessary due to security reasons. You can’t use it to update your version of OpenOffice for example.
Ok, that’s part of what’s included. As I said before, there is too much included software to mention here but now that we have an idea of what’s there, let’s start configuring it for our own needs.
Now that you have come this far, you probably want to add those features you consider missing in Shrike, either that or you just want to expand on its possibilities. Below, I give you some examples of what I did to get my system up and running the way that I wanted to. You, of course, are free to choose the way you set up your own installation but hopefully this will give you some ideas.
Configuring the Desktop.
Before I get into details, you probably should know that my preferred window manager in Red Hat is the default Gnome Bluecurve theme. I’ve always liked Gnome, and Red Hat’s implementation of it is nice and smooth in my opinion. So apologies to KDE lovers, this article really isn’t about KDE versus Gnome, its supposed to give you an idea of what Shrike is actually like.
The first thing I do after installing any new operating system is to configure the desktop for my personal tastes, and with Red Hat 9 it was relatively easy to do.
I changed icons around, removed a lot of the default icons (such as OpenOffice and Evolution) in the Red Hat ‘taskbar’, so that i now have quick access to my frequently used icons, x-terminal, GAIM, xchat, gftp and battery monitor. Adding an icon to the taskbar is quite an easy process – click on the Red Hat icon (start menu) and (in this example we’ll add xchat) click ‘Internet’ followed by ‘more Internet applications’. Put your mouse cursor over xchat and drag it down to the taskbar where you want it and release. Thats it. Drag and Drop functionality works quite nicely in Red Hat 9.
What’s missing in Gnome Bluecurve? Oh yes, there’s still no icon for ‘show desktop’, I mean why can’t they include this in Gnome, since most Windows users are used to it being there and it’s a very useful icon, so why is it absent? You can actually duplicate the functionality of the missing button by pressing CTRL+ALT+D and voila! you can see your desktop. Press those keys again and all your applications are back where they were, I can’t understand why something as useful as this isn’t included by default in the taskbar. Well, it actually is included but its hidden away from view. You have to right click on the taskbar, choose ‘add to panel’ and then choose ‘show desktop button’. Please, Red Hat, can you ship the next OS with this button on the taskbar as default?
Configure GAIM to use Your MSN Messenger Account.
I use MSN Messenger on my Windows computers and my Red Hat Linux computers and it’s my primary Instant Messenger method to contact my friends and family. Having the ability to use this in both Windows and Red Hat Linux is great so I’ve included that information here for those of you that don’t already know.
To setup GAIM to work with your MSN Hotmail account, click on Red Hat start menu/Internet/instant messenger and GAIM will start. once it has started click on plug-ins, then click on the Load button. Choose the libmsn.so plug-in and click OK. Now click close and then accounts on the main gaim menu. choose ADD and select MSN as the protocol. Enter your Hotmail account details and thats it, instant messaging in Red Hat 9.
Configuring Wireless Networking.
Now that I have my desktop configured to my liking, I set about configuring my mini-pci wireless network card using the the built-in Internet Configuration Utility. To set it up, click on the Red Hat, choose ‘system tools’ in the menu and select ‘Internet Configuration Utility’.
I picked Wireless Connection, it identified my Dell True mobile Mini PCI wireless card as a Lucent Orinoco and Prism II-based Wireless, so that was cool, went with that, input my SSID and channel and typed in my WEP key in plain text.
This was a pleasant change: now this time I don’t have to input the WEP key in hexadecimal unless i want to. I now have a choice of hex or text, and this is good because in Red Hat 8.0 the WEP key field did not stipulate how you should enter the key and in what format, now its clearer and will help people avoid issues of WEP not working properly.
After i entered that info, it informed me that I’d probably have to restart the network service but I ignored that and tried networking anyway. I could ping my wireless access point but could not do DNS resolution so reading the info, I rebooted. After the reboot and logging in to Gnome, wireless networking was working fine so I was ready to go.
Adding MP3 functionality to XMMS.
The next thing I tried to do was to add MP3 playback functionality back to XMMS. In Red Hat 8.0 and now Red Hat 9 by default when you try to play an MP3 file in Xmms you get the following error:-
‘Due to patent licensing, and conflicts between such patent licenses and the licenses of application source code, MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3 (mp3) support has been removed from this application by Red Hat, Inc. We apologize for the inconvenience.‘
To add this functionality back simply go to Guru
Labs download page and scroll down to the XMMS MP3 plug-in for Red Hat 8.0 and download this.
Once done, open an xterm and do as follows:
su – root [press enter]
rpm -ivh xmms-mp3-1.2.7-13.p.i386.rpm [press enter]
If all goes well and the rpm process looks like this:
Preparing…########################################### [100%]
1:xmms-mp3 ########################################### [100%]
Then all should be ok. Startup XMMS and now you can play mp3s.
Installing Xine to get DVD/avi/mpg playback/viewing functionality.
Getting Xine to work was more troublesome and I had help from a Linux guru (thanks Martin) to assist me with this. We need a few components so I’ll list and link them all here. Click on each link in turn, download the rpm’s and we’ll install them after you have the files.
Alsa-lib
aalib
libfame
flac
xvidcore
xine-libs
xine
Note: New URL for the libraries above: ftp://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/redhat/9/
Once you have download all of these rpms, open an x-terminal and cd to where they are.
su – root [press enter]
rpm -ivh alsa-lib-0.9.2-fr1.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh aalib-1.4rc5-fr1.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh libfame-0.9.0-fr1.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh flac-1.1.0-fr1.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh xvidcore-0.9.0-fr3.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh xine-lib-1.0.0-fr0.beta8.2.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh xine-0.9.19-fr1.i386.rpm
Once done, click on the Red Hat start button, click ‘Run Program…’, type ‘xine’ and then click ‘Run’. If you want to have a nice Xine icon added to your gnome menu then get this and as su (superuser) do
rpm -ivh gxine-0.3.1-fr1.i386.rpm
Configuring Mozilla 1.2.1
This was my most frustrating area in Red Hat 9 as browsing the Internet is so important and such an everyday task. I attempted to install the Sun JVM plug-in (as root) and while it did install just fine, when i logged in locally, there was no mention in ‘plug-ins’ of my recently installed plug-in even though it was listed very clearly in Mozilla whilst logged in as root. I had the same experience with installing the Shockwave Flash plug-in and along with that, I found it (Mozilla 1.2.1) hanging on a fresh install when just viewing the preferences. Not good.
After a few nights of frustration trying to fix it (and I’m no Linux guru by any means) I gave up and installed Mozilla 1.31.
Once I had installed the latest version of Mozilla, all my plug-in woes immediately disappeared and things were running smoothly, so to be brief, if you are struggling with Mozilla 1.2.1 then don’t bother, just upgrade to the latest version and installing plug-ins for it will work just as easily as it did with the Red Hat 8 release.
This, of course, is the question on many people’s minds and the answer is not easy. All I can recommend is if you already have a solid working installation of Red Hat 8.0 on your computer then there probably isn’t any compelling reason to upgrade. All the features in that release are more or less present in this one. Red Hat 9 is more polished, especially in the start menu (and that’s a definite plus) and supporting applications, however, it still lacks significant punch to separate itself from previous releases the way that Red Hat 8.0 separated itself from, say, Red Hat 7.3. Where are the killer power management features? You know what I mean…
However, if you are buying new hardware even within the last few months (especially notebook-based hardware) and want to install a really nice, clean, fairly simple to use distribution of Linux then I would have no problem recommending Red Hat 9. In fact I can say it right now: upgrade to Red Hat 9, it’s worth it.
It has support for most of those Intel on-board video chipsets that Red Hat 8.0 struggled with (1mb bios limitations requiring you to fix XFree86 and more…) so thats a big bonus. Also, there is additional hardware and chipset support in this release so it’s fairly safe to say that this install will run on your computer if it’s a new Intel-based laptop (hint: Centrinos). I can’t vouch for the included wireless options on those newer laptops but I’m hopeful and fairly confident that drivers will arrive soon for any new wireless a/b/g cards that are not currently supported.
Nvidia gamers may be disappointed in this release of Red Hat, however, they were disappointed with the last, until the 3D accelerated drivers came out from nVidia, so i guess its a waiting game.
The decision to upgrade to Red Hat 9 is up to you. You could, like me, just try it out on a blank test system and see if it fits your needs, and I reckon that you will get a kick out of it. However, if you are coming directly from the Red Hat 8.0 camp, then you may be disappointed in the lack of obvious apparent differentiation between the two products.
You have to dig a bit to see the differences but overall it’s worth it. I did upgrade two boxes from Red Hat 8.0 to Red Hat 9 to see what it was like, and it did work ok on both machines but it also broke some of what I had installed on those systems, for example, Synaptic now no longer works, and Wine seems to have taken a nose dive also. However, on the boxes I upgraded, Xine and XMMS did not need to be reconfigured so that was cool, but, and this is a big but, Mozilla was upgraded (yes,I used Mozilla 1.0 – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it) to 1.2.1 and that erased all my previously installed plug-ins. Fluxbox users will be glad to note that if you have Fluxbox installed on a Red Hat 8.0 install, that upgrading that machine using the upgrade option will not affect Fluxbox and you’ll still have access to it in the session manager on the login screen.
Based on what I found with my testing on a blank system (one I could play with to my heart’s content) I have already moved my two Linux based machines (both Dual boot Windows XP/Red Hat) from 8.0 to 9 and I’m glad I did.
The choice, as they say, is yours.
By Niall C. Brady http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net
When are distro makers going to wake up? The “enthusiast” crowd is maxed out, you won’t get new Linux users catering to the tweakers.
You want Linux to be truly a viable option? Then I will tell you what needs doing *now* in all new distros;
* Dump SWAT and develop a decent networking environment tool for LANs that *will* use SMB. Yes it needs to be GUI. SAMBA is a tweaker’s dream, but totally unusable by the average PC user.
* make an autoUNmount that WORKS for CDROMs. How bloody stupid that I can’t unmount+eject by pressing the eject button – even windows 95 could do that!
* Dump RPMs. They are dependency hell! Installs of binaries should be like Mozilla and include everything you need in one file. Look at the overly complicated install of Xine in the article to see how stupid it is, and that was an easy one!
* And the biggie – how the hell can Redhat have 6 CDs and yet NOT have MP3 support, NOT have video support, NOT have NVIDIA support (clearly the most common chipsets in new PCs), NOT have Java, NOT have shockwave, NOT have common TTF fonts. What do they bloody have on them then?? 6CDs and they can’t provide what 90% of *users* would consider critical software.
Less critical: fix the fonts for pete’s sake! Even with truetype fonts installed they still look like crap compared to Windows.
The simple fact is Linux is not even close to mainstream at this stage, and those things that badly need work are not being done.
You can whine and moan about how *configurable* Linux is, but unless it’s at least as functional OOTB then windows will not stick with it. And for every windows user who tries it and says “too hard” there will be 5 more who say, “oh well, I wont bother with it then either”.
Note: I’ve used RH since V5 professionally, and it’s frustrating to see that they are still focusing on areas that don’t need desperately fixing, and ignoring the things that have been hopeless from day 1.
I see many complaints regarding this particular authors writing style, percieved lack of understanding of this particular product. How many of you could write a better review of the product and suchh in-depth review.
I haven’t read the review so no offense to the author here, however, this is the stupides argument I have ever heard. People are constantly throwing this ridiculous rubbish around every time somebody criticizes something. If I go to a movie and I gripe about the bad acting, directing, or cinemetography somebody is always sure to say “Could you do any better?”
Well you know what? I probably can’t do better, but nobody is paying money to see movies I make. It is ridiculous – RE-DIC-U-LOUS to use that argument for anything. The only reason it ever even slightly applies is when you are getting something for free (like in this case). Even then, the point is some people write reviews, we would hope that these people would write good reviews. Some people write music, hopefully the music they release is good. However, you do not have to be BETTER at someone else’s job than they are to be able to criticize.
>And the biggie – how the hell can Redhat have 6 CDs
It is 3 CDs. The rest 3 are just source rpms.
Marcus, I belong to the Red Hat Network and will be able to download iso’s on the 31st. To me, the big thing about 9 is the tremendous amount of hardware 9 supports that 8 didn’t. At any rate, I’m also anxious to see how they cleaned up the menus, which is such a confused mess in 8.
Is the Gnome menu editing fixed/rational in 9? Specifically, the ability to add and remove groups and applications without hand modifying the vfolders and .desktop files?
While the NV driver can successfully provide me with graphics on my GeForce 4 Go card, it fails to provide me with full resolution support. Setting my graphics to 1600×1200 yields, “Virtual height is too small”. This is on a 15″ TFT
So Redhat9 is a better 8.0, gotcha!
What refinements did it have to BlueCurve? I can’t seem to see any difference.
Also is it any faster to 8.0?
Also I propose that future OSNEWS reviews/article/whatever be a little more in depth.
For example compare Redhat with Mandrake, Lycoris, Xandros, Lindows on how certain tasks whether they be configuration or other things get done in each distro, and when this review gets done don’t cover the initial install.
Also I believe BlueEyed OS will be a better linux than linux.
>”Virtual height is too small”.
Not of a surprise that the nv driver craps out on GeForce4GO. The GO versions of GeForce were always pretty weird and the standard alternative drivers always had trouble detecting them and working right. The BeOS version of the driver also had similar weird problems with the 2GO, while all the other desktop support geforce worked fine.
I suggest you install the nvidia specific drivers for 2go. It is best to do it this way.
> Also I propose that future OSNEWS reviews/article/whatever be a little more in depth. For example compare Redhat with Mandrake, Lycoris, Xandros, Lindows on how certain tasks whether they be configuration or other things get done in each distro, and when this review gets done don’t cover the initial install.
No, what you really want is US to decide for YOU what distro to use. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. We do review and have reviewed ALL these distros you mentioned. All you have to do is go to our archives and read our mulitple reviews for them, and then decide for yourself.
Neither the Redhat 9 or Mandrake 9.1 review mention resolution switching (one of the big features of XFree 4.3). Could you tell us how well this works (and if either distribution has a gui tool for changing resolution)?
On Red Hat 9, I had to use the RH tool and then I would have to restart X and Gnome in order to change the resolution. I didn’t try to change any resolutions on Mandrake 9.1.
However, all I can say is that I *didn’t* see any RandR tools on neither Mandrake 9.1 or Red Hat 9.
My Statement:
> Also I propose that future OSNEWS reviews/article/whatever be a little more in depth. For example compare Redhat with Mandrake, Lycoris, Xandros, Lindows on how certain tasks whether they be configuration or other things get done in each distro, and when this review gets done don’t cover the initial install.
Eugenia’s reply:
No, what you really want is US to decide for YOU what distro to use. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. We do review and have reviewed ALL these distros you mentioned. All you have to do is go to our archives and read our mulitple reviews for them, and then decide for yourself.
So are you telling old “archived” reviews specifically discuss usability and configurability of current distributions method of usability (how things are done) and configurability.
The fonts used in Red Hat’s version of OpenOffice.org in the menus are impressive.
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/linux/redhat%209/install%20kde….
1. Can you configure your resolution via a gui?
Redhat 9 does have a nice gui tool that allows you to change your resolution. It does require that you restart X though. (This doesn’t mean that you can’t change your monitor on the fly. Back in RH8 I played StarCraft in wine and it changed the resolution on the fly. ) I found their gui for this config. to work very well.
2. Is RH 9 faster than 8?
YES. RH 9 uses a new glibc and overall it seems to be a fair ammount faster.
3. What refinements did it have to BlueCurve?
I don’t notice any. They did make the cursors look a lot better though.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1963
Does RedHat 9 support Ogg Vorbis ? Players, encoders, etc.
I’m kinda new to Linux and I don’t want to throw away all my Ogg-files.
I don’t really care about MP3. Ogg is the future
.
I’ve seen several people complain about using “rpm -Uvh *” instead of “rpm -ivh”.
Get a point, people! It doesn’t really matter, because in this case it’s clear, that the packages aren’t installed on the system yet. So why bother complaining ?
2. Is RH 9 faster than 8?
YES. RH 9 uses a new glibc and overall it seems to be a fair ammount faster.
Yeah but also it’s been improved in the nultitasking area in order to give you better multi threading then RedHat 8 or possibly better then any other Linux distro.
have RH made it possible to have numlock turned on after boot without all the hasle we’re facing today?
With regard to the mp3 playback issue.
I know that WindowsXP will play mp3’s out of the box, but who actually uses windows media player to do this?
When I install XP, the first things I do are, after updating all the drivers, I download WinAmp, Winzip, and some form of image editing package.
Then you have to shell out for office, which if you buy Office XP imposes nice limitations such as not being able to extract some file from emails that have been sent to you.
Also, on top of this there are recurring costs of an up to date virus scanner, as well as having to watch out for dodgy spyware.
I think RedHat9 is a great deal. People should be looking at the plus side of this distro, as from install, the only thing that I might be updating by the sounds of it is Mozilla. Sure RandR with a single click would be nice, but how long will it be before a panel applet is available to do this?
As for laptop support, I am using RedHat8 on a Dell Inspiron8100 and the only issue I have is with suspend, but that is due to the Nvidia drivers I use. On that subject as well, if you use XP, and download the latest NVidia drivers, are you not effectively doing what you would in RedHat? I too would love to see NVidia open source the drivers completely, but I don’t think that will happen soon.
So what I am trying to say is, be realistic, and don’t expect the world from the latest version of whichever distribution you use, as these are incremental improvements, not overnight miracles.
Phil
I remember coming across a post there a while ago on the XFree dev list which basically said that RandR wasn’t fully implemented in XFree4.3 as of let. The Rotation part is but the changing resoultion bit is supposedly still a bit experimental, however i could be wrong
R&R: you can use xrandr to change resolutions on the fly, not sure if there’ll be a GUI for it or not, it’s still very new. If not now, then definately in the next version.
BlueCurve: I think you might find the GTK/KDE stock artwork is bluecurve themed now, at least it was in some early betas, dunno if it’s in final.
NTFS: patent issues. They can’t include NTFS without running the risk of being sued. Ditto for DVD. MP3s are interesting, basically no guarantees have been made that GPLd decoders are OK. It’s sort of a turn a blind eye situation at the moment, it could change at any time.
Fonts: New TTF fonts are coming.
RPMS: yeah yeah, enough already.
A samba config tool? Yes please. Could we have a screenshot of that? A decent samba config tool is really needed!
Which gnome version is included in RedHat 9.0?
Is it 2.2 or 2.2.1? What about nautilus, is it 2.2.2?
yes, there is a new samba gui tool, called redhat-config-sambam which is also currently available for 8.0:
http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS/redhat-c…
There seems to be an experimental KDE applet for RandR in CVS, though not all applications will know about the new resolution. The result can be that windows are placed outside the screen etc. Maybe a better version will come with KDE 3.2?
Well, your fonts can look as nice as in Windows (better, in my opinion). The big problem is that freetype don’t come with the byte code interpreter enabled by default (in 8 it comes). If you switch it on, your fonts will look very good. I have tested it on phoebe and it worked. I will write a tutorial about this as soon as I can (I am without time to do that for now).
I highly recommend you grab nvidias drivers off their website. Secondly, in my experience when a desktop is sized wrong its because of improper vert and horiz sync rates in XF86Config. A buddy of mine just put Gentoo on his Dell and had the same issue. I told him to get the exact vert and horiz sync spec for his laptop lcd and put them in the config and that took care of his problem.
I just installed it and grabbed a screen shot and uploaded it to my webserver, running Red Hat Linux naturaly. 🙂
Be nice to me..
I have two files, same screenshot – jpg and png fileformats
http://www.acme-tech.org/screenshots/samba-redhat8.png
and
http://www.acme-tech.org/screenshots/samba-redhat8.jpg
Look in that directory if you’d like, I have screenshots for other Unixen there. OSNews may use my Samba screenshots if they’d like.
No, Mandrake 9.1 doesn’t have any kind of applet for instant resolution switching. Like in Red Hat, you have to use xrandr from the command line. I’m surprised people find this such a big deal, though, I don’t remember the last time I changed my desktop resolution =)
This distro should have got a better rating IMO
My reason is the things you complained about were mostly just plain silly, “no show desktop button” when you _knew_ it was 3 clicks away or just a 3 finger key combo? Is it possible that Redhat doesn’t want a cluttered taskbar like KDE so they let “users” add what they want?
Back in windows ’95 nobody used IE we all went to grab a 16MB download of netscape, winamp, firewall, and probably another 5-10 must have tinker toys. Why is this the end of the world? Are people THAT f***ing lazy these days!?
The nvidia drivers is a valid argument, it gives you functionality out of the box (like windows) but not 3D. (who buys redhat for gaming anyway?)
I think the Linux community has a more serious problem, It’s not software, It’s not functionality, It’s underdog syndrom. We bash everything and everyone who is successful. We purposly set out to cut down something successful and rebuild it into a peice of junk just so it can claim underdog status again making us feel like trail blazing geeks once again. If RedHat bought the rights to distrobute MP3/Nvida/DVD everyone would scream bloody murder that they do not supply 100% free software. I’m seriously starting to wonder if It’s just cause It’s an American company and not France (mandrake) or Germany (suse). These two guys have more problems with licensing than redhat ever had. Propriatary software, 3rd party drivers. Hell mandrake started off with all redhat code just included KDE, can you do that with either of those distro’s today? NO, can you do that with redhat? YES, and there is, look at pink tie linux or any of the 100 books that come with it on CD.
Anyway, instead of Netscape, Winamp, and firewalls first thing I do on linux is get apt-get, opera and java, its NOT the end of the world I assure you.
I don’t know if ths was mentiond already, but the Red Hat 9 iso’s are supposed to be available to the public a week after it becomes available to Red Hat Network members (3/31). So, they should be available on April 7th.
Agreed…..it still puzzles me to no end how fascinated people are by changing desktop resolutions on the fly. I set mine once in XF86Config, and it stays that way forever. I cant think any reason why I would need to or want to change at all let alone on the fly.
“RH 9 would be great if it weren’t for the fact that it does not include software which has license[1], patent[2] or DMCA[3] issues.”
Get a clue.
[1] MS TTF fonts, NVidia drivers, Flash & Java plugins. Hey, you forgot to mention acroread!
[2] MP3 player
[3] DVD player
“Is the Gnome menu editing fixed/rational in 9? Specifically, the ability to add and remove groups and applications without hand modifying the vfolders and .desktop files?”
Here’s a good link that explains how to do GUI menu editing in Red Hat:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48815&cid=4947174
To change some folders you’ll need to su to root and then start nautilus to make the changes. Hope this helps.
Yeah… um, that editors note was, I’m pretty sure, the author being facetious, not a ‘real’ editors note.
The link to the xmms-mp3 rpm is broken, the extra ” RPM” should be removed from the end, e.g.
http://www.gurulabs.com/files/xmms-mp3-1.2.7-13.p.i386.rpm
A quick question i did not find covered in this article, how well is RedHat 9 for a high class server, im asking because I found that RedHat versions from about 7.0 on to be eating up alot of memory. Any comments to this?
PLEASE email me with comments not post here.
Dave
Dave, I find your question peculiar. Obviously, you don’t understand the way Linux manages memory. First of all, Linux prefers that your swap be 2 x your physical memory. If you are unable to rearrange your disk to create another swap partition, you can always create a swap file. See ‘man swapon’ on how to do it. The other very important thing to remember is that in Linux, free memory is wasted memory! Let me say it again. Free memory is wasted memory! Do you understand? Linux puts free memory into a buffer pool for the purpose of accelerating I/O. When applications need memory for other purposes, Linux takes memory from the buffer pool and assigns it to the application that needs it. So, if you execute the “free” command at the command-line, the amount of free memory should be 0 or close to 0. Remember! Free memory is useless memory just like an idle CPU is wasted CPU. I hope that this helps.
Is DMA on by default (RH 9.0) for DVD’s and CD’s? It was off by default in 7.3 and 8.0….
<p>
According to
s news.com story, at http://news.com.com/2100-1016-994074.html , Red Hat 9 is not compatible
with the closed-source Nvidia driver. People are saying
here, in comments, that people should download and build
the drivers from NVidia, but has anyone actually tried it?
The issue, evidently, is incompatibility with the new
threading scheme.
Appreciated you getting the review out so quickly and for bothering to include notes on how to customise/configure it for certain apps.
Sorry to see so much nitpicking.
Lee
thanks Lee, nice to see someone appreciates the hard work
cheers
niall
I really don’t know is it ridiculous or pathetic for an operating system to try a desktop push in year 2003 without having MP3 support out-of-box. And me, Joe the Desktop Luser, don’t care the slightest about any licensing issues, all I see is that EVERY other OS/distro has MP3 support, RH does not.
And if I’d care about licensing woes, I’d be dumbfounded to see that Debian knowingly contradicts the license in question. That’s the real mystery here: does Debian (knowingly, they’ve sure read the RH8/MP3 stories) contradict the license or what the heck is up with RH if Debian & the rest aren’t doing anything wrong?
Please, Redhat is mainly trying to make an OS for business and they will be very visible if they do anything that might infringe patents. I think people should rather get together and release a very good Media player for Windows (to take out Windows Media Player) and have it producing .ogg files by default. The reason people still use mp3’s is because they are lots of them. I see a more worrying trend of people encoding their music as wma now. We should be pushing for the adoption of .ogg as the multimedia format of choice. And that would sidestep these issues really neatly. Look at SCO now, they are now trying to bring infringement issues because they are going down. The same could happen with mp3. And Redhat could be an attractive victim.
I was wondering the same thing- I’ve never heard of another object by that name, but I may just be clueless.
I’ve just started the fourth book in the Hyperion Cantos, the Rise of Endymion. Good stuff.
The only reason XMMS plays an MP3 is because it has the mp3 codec plug-in loaded. So Red Hat didn’t load it, big deal. Do yourself a favor and go to xmms.org and download the plug-in and add it by running the rpm. It takes no time at all.
I have to agree with other posters. ogg support needs to encouraged, especially in the embedded market. If I could buy a Pioneer car stereo with ogg support I would never make another mp3.
I see a lot of frustration in the user base about Red Hat defaults. Hey it’s still Linux you can change it anyway you like. I for one do not like Bluecurve, I load the ximain-south theme with a Gorilla “window treatment” 😉 it’s spiffy!
Have Fun!
It is not a good article IMHO.
A M$2k user, who blames RedHat for not having a powerful graphics applications as adobe photo shop, or paint shop pro.
Oh man, Linux is not your system.
I advice you to upgrade to windows XP, good deal for you
“If RedHat bought the rights to distrobute MP3/Nvida/ DVD everyone would scream bloody murder that they do not supply 100% free software. I’m seriously starting to wonder if It’s just cause It’s an American company and not France (mandrake) or Germany (suse). These two guys have more problems with licensing than redhat ever had. Propriatary software, 3rd party drivers. Hell mandrake started off with all redhat code just included KDE, can you do that with either of those distro’s today? NO, can you do that with redhat? YES, and there is, look at pink tie linux or any of the 100 books that come with it on CD.”
FYI Maybe SuSE isn’t but Mandrake download edition is 100% free (they even make a point time and again to stress that, and still some people don’t get it), and yes, you could take all their code and make a new distro. And they have always targeted the desktop (home or corporate), contrary to RH.
And they do, in their free download edition, include all necessary stuff to listen to mp3’s but there I agree that RH being more financially successful of late and a US company it may just realise it’s so much higher on radarscreens of IP/patent owners.
Of course, also Mandrake cannot include dvd playback since the DMCA doesn’t allow that.
> The reason people still use mp3’s is because they
> are lots of them.
Formats are always a chicken-and-egg problem, and *that* race is over. Aside from the desktop, Joe Average Geek has a PDA, a diskman, a car hifi, a DVD player in the living room and another hifi in his study.
Each of those gadgets play MP3. Some play WMA. And now you say “scrap MP3, we’ll go Ogg, because it’s FREE!”. Yea, sure.
*tsk* *tsk* *tsk*…
i must say that i have always been a redhat supporter ever since i got into linux , it is my favorite distro … but i will stick my personal favorite (7.3 Valhalla) mainly because i like the classic look of gnome 1.4(default) and because it comes with all the plug-in’s and mp3 support that was removed in the 8.0 version …. so until RH drops sumthin i am really impressed with , i won’t be doin any upgrading
Phoebe and shrike are birds.
Red Hat has moved user account setup from the main installer to its “First Boot” app which is supposed to run, you guessed it, on first boot. If it didn’t run, it was a bug. If it did and the reviewer didn’t set up an account, it’s operator error.
(quote from an e-mail i’ve sent to the author)
Regarding xine – i wish you mentioned that Gxine also adds a Mozilla plugin, so that you can play nifty media stuff in Mozilla. 🙂
Of course, if you install the Real, Quicktime and Windows Media DLLs, xine (or rather the Mozilla plugin) becomes able to play that stuff too in the browser. This way, there’s no difference anymore between Win/Mac browsers and Linux browsers. But installing those DLLs is in a “legally
murky” territory.
“I was wondering the same thing- I’ve never heard of another object by that name, but I may just be clueless.”
Yes, you’re just clueless. Learn to use an online dictionary or search engine, fer goshsakes.
I see Mknepher just barely beat me to the punch in pointing out that the shrike is a bird. See http://www.exzooberance.com/virtual%20zoo/they%20fly/shrike… for instance.
(quote from an e-mail i’ve sent to the author)
And of course there’s the issue of the CSS-protected DVDs – you can’t play them with xine unless you install libdvdcss. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to provide a URL to libdvdcss in an article, but again i’m pretty sure it’s legal to just mention the library.
Do I still need the “noathlon” switch to get it to boot?
> I dont see how it can be illegal….otherwise we wouldnt see it in
> EVERY other distro, as well as Windows and OSX
It’s not illegal as long as you pay license fees. RedHat does not yet have the revenue or capital or what-have-you to be able to pay the licensing fees, nor does it have a large-enough user base who is either (a.) clamouring for out-of-the-box MP3 support, or (b.) unable, due to lack of technical skill, to acquire and install the software necessary for playing MP3 files. There is kind-of a chicken-and-egg problem here — most who are not tech savvy will probably never switch to using [the current breed of] GNU/Linux distributions; as such, requisite ‘b’ (see above) and, in part, requisite ‘a’, will probably never gain enough critical mass.
What RedHat needs is, oh, a good 40+ billion dollars in capital (renewed each year, of course), plus an extra several thousand employees.
You already have FOUR desktop icons in your screen dumps. You don’t need an ms style “show desktop”. Just click one of the others! You know, the icons with 1, 2, 3 and 4 in them in the panel at the bottom of the screen.
Unless you’re talking about 3D apps, I run RH8 at 1600×1200 nvidia chipset just fine with the vesa driver. X actually “feels” snappier than win2k on this particular machine.
I wonder if they included reiserfs at installation?
I just wanted to say thank you for a very interesting article. I use RH 7.3 at the moment, and have used RH since 5.0. I’ve tried other dists but I’m one of those RH-geeks (it fills my needs in computing). However I didn’t upgrade to 8.0 since a friend told me that it looked and worked pretty bad, however we’ve (my friend and I) installed it at work using it for cvs-repsoitory, http, ftp, nfs and “Novell-mounter” (ncpfs) and that works just fine. But I do agree with you regarding the menu in 8.0, not very logical.
Yet again, thank you, now I know that I will upgrade to 9.0 as soon as it’s freely aviable (yet another weeks waiting) =).
//Jonas
> They don’t need realplayer.
Yes, (some) corporate desktops do need Real Player.
A lot of audio video gets saved in that format.
Too many websites (sadly) won’t work at all without
Flash these days.
And what about Adobe Acrobat? I suppose corporate
desktops don’t need that either.
I love it when Linux reviews begin to look like their Windows counterpart. For instance, when the reviewer writes “…just upgrade to the latest version….” I get such a warm cosy feeling from this.
Wasn’t Linux suppose to do it right? I guess not, since if you want to make money on the thing, and support is one of the only ways, the other being writing big Linux books with lots of pictures. Sorry for the rant.
few days back I upgraded my kde packages to 3.1.1 form 3.0 but, rpm db got all messed up. can some one tell me if rh9 has kde3.1 or 3.1.1,
and have they fixed their rpm package? my up2date is nolonger working after I installed kde 3.1.1.
thanks
No more .x releases in this line. Also, the article mentions a “Show Desktop” button. Right click on the panel, Add to Panel > Utility > Show Desktop Button.
–jeremy
Why it so quick. I think RH8.0 out on Dec 2002 now just Apr oh !. Anyway, I want to use it and somebody know, is it will avilable for FREE DOWNLOAD ? !!!
[1;32mLinux9@byr2/Openware/ISO/linux/RedHat/9.0/[m
downlo;ad it
I can’t locate sounds at all in the typical /home/username/.kde/usr/share/sounds nor /usr/share/sounds
Anyone know why, and how and where to install them?
Other than this I’m very happy with 9
I installed everything as you said (I had to install xine-lib-1.0.0-fr0.beta9.1.i386.rpm (this also required glut-3.7.8.i386.rpm) and xine-0.9.20-fr1.i386.rpm as the links in the review didn’t work anymore).
However I get an error with Xine about not having a emuxer pluin available to handle the file, and that normally means teh format was not recognized.
What can i do?
“My only gripe with OpenOffice is it has an annoying delay while loading up a module even on a very fast and current computer. Opening Microsoft Word in Windows XP on the same system is instantaneous compared to OpenOffice Writer. I guess some more work needs to be done in that department as this was the same in Red Hat 8.0, so hopefully in time this can improve.”
One reason for this is because on Linux, OO is kept as a separate entity. On Windows they put a ‘Microsoft Office’ shortcut in your ‘Startup’ folder – check in your Start Menu!
So basically part of the (loooooooong) Windows startup time is it loading programs like this that then make software like Office APPEAR to load faster when you’re using the system.
On my Windows system for example, without the Office shortcut running on startup, Word takes 3 seconds to load. OO Writer on Windows takes 4 seconds to load. Not such a big difference…
Cheers,
Mark.