“The version I’ve been using is Red Hat Linux 8.0, shipped by Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat in late September. This is the first Linux distribution I’ve tried that hasn’t made me feel as if I’m about to step on a rake and have its handle swing into my face. Parts of this are still infuriatingly convoluted, but if you’ve been thinking about trying out Linux on part of your hard drive — or about dumping Windows entirely — this is what I’d recommend.” Read more at WashingtonPost.
Finally, Linux With a Lot Less Fuss
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
…One millionth RedHat 8 news post =)
I think these big news sites/papers etc just are starting to discover linux in all it’s glory with the release of RH8, thus the hail of RH/Linux news on big sites that before never would even mention Linux.
Red Hat doesn’t have a good package manager. Sure, it may have a decent installer, but it’s how it operates is what really counts for non-linuxers. When Red Hat gets away from RPMs, then I might consider it.
Actually my distro is technically “Pink Tie 8”. I love it, but I wish they hadn’t hidden the internet dialer under “Network Devise Control” (really !intuitive for the newbie) and would make the modem monitor connect/disconnect button work. When I registered with Red Hat Network, it insisted that I have Red Hat 7.1 and Up2Date can’t deal with the fact that I installed Mozilla 1.1. Oh, well. Minor stuff. Overall it is great!
Anyone read about the Bank of Brasil switching over from NT to Linux?
The main annoyance with RPMs is the dependancy heck, but I’d rather have that than having the package manager NOT notify me when removing a package will break something.
I also have been using Redhat 8 for about a month now. At this point I”m doing all my work in OpenOffice and Evolution. They really did a good job with this release.
There is one thing that is driving me nuts about this release though, and that’s the lack of a Gnome menu editor. There is no way that i can see to modify the Gnome menu. This is a major inconvenience, considering the default Redhat Menu is pretty messy by default.
Overall though, they made huge progress with this release. I wouldn’t be surprised to see alot of people moving over by 8.1 or at the latest, 8.2. I would definietly recommend this over Lycoris or Lindows for desktop use, because you use a standard distro (means you can find alot of RPM’s designed for your system) and you avoid all the crappy licencing issues with Lindows.
… beginning with something like “Finally a Linux which is sort of usable …”.
It looks like there is a mastermind behind these reviews because I refuse to believe that all IT journalists are completely brain dead.
I don’t consider myself particularly intelligent or technical but I since I left Windows two years ago (quite by coincidence, not a political move) the rake stepping feeling has actually disappeared completely. If there is an operating system which will hit you hard in the nose when you least expect a blow it’s definitely Windows, and you never know when or why – you don’t even have to step on a rake
nope…. not yet anyway it is close but not there. RH8 everytime I installed it the gnome bar crashed and I could do absoulutely nothing so I restart and it crashes again…again again… so I re-install RH8, same thing over and over. I will wait a few releases before I try another linux, because the current distros are *close* but not there yet IMHO. I do know I won’t be buying another windows ever so maybe after about 5 years when XP is obsolete I will switch to the latest Linux even if it is *still* buggy as hell.
I thought it’s just me, ‘coz I know I bring out the worst of Gnome. I also seem to bring out the worst of RedHat….
Nice to see others have encountered the same problem. If I’m jinxed, I’m not alone
The new RH8 is just great except that they forgot all non-USians that are still using dial-up connections. While the configuration of my ISDN connection was easier than under Windows I found no way to dial the number of my provider to actually get online. The RH docs say nothing about dial-up
“There is one thing that is driving me nuts about this release though, and that’s the lack of a Gnome menu editor.”
That’s because menu editing has been broken in GNOME2, so when the GNOME developers did their GNOME2 release, they disabled menu editing.
Perhaps most of you know about this already, but it was a breath of fresh air when I discovered a Debian style apt package manager (something like that). It has a neat little GUI too, blows away the default in RH8.
They talk about it here in this article here at OSAlert:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1890&page=4
You can get it from:
http://apt.freshrpms.net/
“The new RH8 is just great except that they forgot all non-USians that are still using dial-up connections.”
Hmm ,not in Denmark and the other nordic countries, broadband rules !
Apparently, the menu issue is going to be corrected in v2.2, hence the reason why Ximian is holding off realeasing a version until they too consider it “feature complete-ish”.
Ximian will most likely release a version of their desktop when Evolution hits a stable 1.4, which will be using gtk2.
Hopefully they will also include a NNTP reader instead of needing to use a seperate program.
I agree. The worse part of Windows, is even if you follow all the guidelines and best practices, things still go wrong with no logical reasoning.
RPM isn’t the problem. Redhat is the problem and the stone that is in the road for RPM to become more like APT, which is used by Debian.
Right now I am running SCO Linux 4.0, which has APT-RPM, as a result, all my dependcy issues are a thing of the past.
I tried the betas but for some reason never tried the full release… I am working on a C++ project that I hope to be multi-platform so I will need a linux install to mess on again….hopefully one that is simple and lets me get to my work w/o messing with my mind(as a crashing main panel does) I think I may try Mandrake 9.0.
“When Red Hat gets away from RPMs, then I might consider it.”
Why should they? It seem to work for them Suse and Mandrake or the “big 3” as their known.
“Red Hat doesn’t have a good package manager”
Apt4rpm. Learn it, Live it, Love it. Works on all 3 distros. Or if Mandrakes your thing use Urpmi. Nothing wrong with the RPM format, you just need to use the right tool.
http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/
I’m using Redhat 8.0 since the beginning, my previous 7.2 version had some hickups (deadlocks sometimes). But the new version is very good and FAST. It never crashed for me yet.
The only bad thing is: the menu. The menu is badly designed double entrys, hard to find certain things. I hope they will make a small/clear menu in the next version
I never understood why people hate RPM. My one and only brush with Debian ended in less than an hour due to the package manager (more specifically, apt-get).
Then there is companies like Mandrakesoft that agravate the problem by making upgrades (mass installation of new RPMs) extremely risky.
But really, I have been using RPM for *years* now, and never had a single problem. Previously on Mandrake, I used URPMI, removing any need for apt-get. And now on Red Hat, I use apt-rpm. Portage may be interesting, but if Red Hat does move to it, I would move away. I can’t imagine compiling all my software (compiling just the kernel plus KDE is painful enough, thank you).
RPM is fine. Red Hat is better off fixing other stuff with Red Hat 8.0 that prevents me from using it full time. Like the lack of a menu editor, the lack of a centralize spot for fonts (each user now would have to get their own set of fonts in their ~/.fonts), and stuff like that.
Actually, there are more East Asians using broadband than Americans. More Koreans using broadband than American, especially. The broadband adoption percentage in the US is quite low for a developed country (comparing with other developed countries except G. Britain).
Many people have grown to hate RPM since it treats users bad. The package manager at least has a decency of asking whether anything is installed, but it doesn’t say anything when it’s done or what it actually did. Where did the application go? Was installation successful? Did it create any shortcuts? Was there any read-me file?
Plain awful. But getting better.
… is due to the fact that the country is So Vast. There are only a handful of countries that are bigger. If you ever visit the Midwest U.S., be sure to have your car’s gas tank filled up, because you might run out of gas if you get out on the right 2 lane back road, miles and miles away from the next town, and far away from any gas station!
Also, many of us resist subsidization/socialization of things which should be market-driven…. but that is a matter for a different forum
BTW, Red Hat8 has got to be the best looking OS ever. Exept for DR-DOS (yes I am a CLI addict).
The portage package management is quite favourable since it hauls in the dependancies it does on uninstallation / upgrades (if you specify auto-clean) clean out the old packages.
I hope the portage tool will get adapted by more distros.
I’ve been using RH8 (“Pink Tie Linux”) for 2 months now. I was planning on buying Xandros, but put it off just because of one thing… those fonts. Redhat has done the BEST fonts on any linux system, plus I like their integration (you can change it in 2 minutes though).
No menu editor? Serious problem dude… I use KDE. Rocks. Drop-dead beautiful and more usable than RH-Gnome at the moment.