Re: first impressions of Red Hat 8.0

["Ophidian" <ophidian_snake@hotmail.com>]

for what its worth, www.osnews.com has a review of this release up

its not a bad review from the desktop user standpoint, worth reading

Casey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Pritchard" <steve@silug.org>
To: <silug-discuss@silug.org>; <luci-discuss@luci.org>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 9:14 AM
Subject: first impressions of Red Hat 8.0


> It might be old news at this point, but Red Hat 8.0 is available here:
> 
>     rsync://ftp.silug.org/redhat/linux/8.0/
>     http://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/
>     ftp://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/
> 
> (Take your pick.)
> 
> I've had it running on our laptop (zhaan) for almost a week now.
> Overall, I'm impressed.  The system is much more responsive than it
> has been for quite some time.  It obviously still could use more RAM,
> but that doesn't seem to stop the system from being usable with KDE,
> Mozilla, and OpenOffice running.
> 
> Before I go on about the good things, let me give a short list of
> things that suck about Red Hat 8.0 as it is being released today.
> 
>     * rpm is totally, completely, and utterly broken.
> 
>       OK, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I've definitely had
>       problems with it.  Problems that were bad enough that I totally
>       lost the rpm database once.  Just keep that in mind if you try
>       it.  Don't add or remove a lot of packages until you see some
>       updates, just to be safe.  (That, or at least make a backup of
>       /var/lib/rpm before you make any such changes.)
> 
>     * Anything that plays MP3s is gone.  Red Hat seemed to think they
>       might need to worry about patent issues.
> 
>       Fortunately, freshrpms.net already has xmms with mp3 support.
>       I'm not sure about noatun or anything else.  Now if I just had
>       the apt repository updated...
> 
>     * Lots of stuff has been moved around.  In many cases, I see the
>       reasons, but this is likely to mean some reconfiguration of
>       upgraded systems.  (As an example, setting ESSID and such in
>       /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts no longer works.  They have to be set
>       in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth? or whatever.)
> 
>     * glibc is still an "unstable" 2.2.9x (in other words, pre-2.3)
>       version.  While I can't swear this is the cause of any of the
>       rpm problems or any other stability issues, it's certainly
>       possible.
> 
>     * The "Bluecurve" desktop is a bit...  Different.  Fortunately,
>       you don't seem to need to install it.
> 
> And now the good stuff...
> 
>     * The "Bluecurve" desktop and associated icons (and new icons and
>       such in the installer) all look quite nice.
> 
>     * As I mentioned before, the kernel VM definitely seems more
>       responsive.  This may be the new VM stuff, or the higher kernel
>       HZ, or some combination.  I'm really not sure, but I know I like
>       it.
> 
>     * Red Hat now includes OpenOffice and various other nifty things.
> 
>     * gcc has been updated to 3.2, which is almost certainly a good
>       thing (although it might be a while before you can compile a
>       stock kernel with it).
> 
>     * perl has been updated to 5.8.0, which I hope is a good thing.
>       (Time will tell.)
> 
>     * There are a *lot* more redhat-config-* packages than there were
>       in 7.3.  I've only played with a couple, but they seem to be
>       decent.
> 
> There's all sorts of other stuff, but I'll let you all read the
> release notes...
> 
>     http://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/en/os/i386/RELEASE-NOTES
> 
> Steve
> -- 
> steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
> (618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
> Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/
> 
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