RALEIGH, NC—September 30, 2002—Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT) today released Red Hat Linux 8.0, a highly versatile operating system designed for personal and small business computing. Red Hat Linux 8.0 combines leading-edge Linux technologies with a new graphical look and feel that offers users a polished, easy-to-use operating environment.
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Sounds great ..

And a edited:BAD review at my favourite OS news site, OSNews.com: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1842

Red Hat linux package list:
http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/techn...l/packages.html

To download: https://rhn.redhat.com

What about Mandrake 9.0?

Is that the one where they crippled KDE explictly against their wish, which led to their main KDE developer quitting Red Hat? Doesn't sound very encouraging to me...

Bah.. skip Redhat AND Mandrake, use Gentoo instead

http://www.gentoo.org

I'm sorry but that review stinks.

I'm switching to Mandrake 9.0

You recommend Gentoo for home desktop?

Ever since I tried to install Debian a while back I've been dishearted about trying to install dirstros without a gui setup...

Sure, why not. If you're willing to read the documentation, the setup is really quite easy. Besides, you'll actually learn something about Linux and how it works, not just what some GUI tells you to do.



I found Gentoo to be *much* easier to install the way I liked than Debian. The documentation is way better too, so this certainly helped the process along.

I have heard good things about Gentoo.

I'll give it a try when I fix my computer.

I dualboot Win98SELite and Slackware 8.1. Is Mandrake still slow and bloated like it was at 6.1? I'd be willing to try it again if its not.

Checked most of them some time ago... I used Mandrake since version 6.5.... After very bad quality of 7.2+ versions switched to SUSE 8.0, it is the best linux distro ever created imho for all kinds of users from very advanced to newbies... Two weeks ago installed Slackware 8.1 (for some reason they included lot of crappy packages and system was far from being called stable or well tested), now with complete custom rebuild is the best distro you can find ... the next step will be to try LFS..... (if only I had a spare machine to create it gradually)....
For my friends I now recommend SUSE, Mandrake always forgets to test something and this something is usually what you need the most.. and it takes years to read how to configure their custom made scripts...
RedHat that I tested was 7.x (don't remeber which one exactly).. what can i say very lousy distro.. and probably still is... slow and with bugs as Mandrake...

That thing about commercial distros are what make me love Debian. Gentoo looks interesting, too...

How it compares to Slackware? Reading the Gentoo homepage make me feel they have the same objectives in mind than Slackware.

[Edit]: Seems that Slackware is exactly between Debian and Gentoo, after i reed www.Slackware.org again...

You mean Linux From Scratch?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

...i considered it once, maybe i will reconsideer it again, i will be happy adding the things i *actually* need...

Mandrake 9 is good for desktop users ATM. It can even play divx, Xvid, etc right out the box. No compilation necessary. Mandrake is not a good development platform. They always seem to package the wrong versions of GCC etc. And it is not the best server distro. Although it is not bad. If you have never done Linux before or want some good media support without tracking down dependencies and compiling lots of stuff mandrake'll do ya. I have a multitude of OS and distros that I use. SuSE, Slack, Debian, Redhat, Mandrake, and more I have used em all. But I recomended Mandrake mandrake for my mother and she loves it. Gnome2 is looking very Mac like these days though. =P

I think that Gentoo is kind of in between Debian and LFS.

You get the level of control and the ability to customize like in LFS, but you also get the nice package management and ease of maintenance of something like Debian.

And as a plus, you get great documentation, and build scripts which are right on the bleeding edge of software versions (Gentoo always seems to be the first distro to use the new big releases, like major updates to Gnome, KDE, GCC, etc), if you choose to go that route. No waiting for ages for updates like in Debian And it's quite easy to create your own build scripts as well.

Oh, not to mention that you get pretty much unrivaled speed, compiling everything specifically for your architecture. Unless you want to go the LFS route.

Well Gentoo, Mandrake, RedHat, etc. are all Linux. There would only be minor differences, they're the same OS. Try FreeBSD or one of the other BSDs if you feel more adventrous (or want to try something better and less mainstream).

From what I observed BSDs feel much mature as a UNIX. I feel like I am using a real UNIX OS (no offense, belittling linux is not my intention). It feels at least to me like a commercial UNIX. I never could get that feeling with linux.

With linux, no matter what dist I tried, there's this feeling that everything is actually incongruous and when you install a new kernel or a compiler, lots of things might get broken. You just have to stick to your distribution completely or face the consequences. Even within a distribution you realize there're broken things, incompatibility issues...

With FreeBSD ports/packages system I'm usually perfectly happy, I know everything is going to work as intended. Moreover linux distributions tend to install lots of unneccesary packages which I never would use (I use the developer tools often though), whereas BSDs are more minimalistic and less resource intensive. And in the end those little differences among all the possible ways of handling things (default shell choice, BSD flavored kernel algorithms themselves,...) add up to better UNIX experience. At least for me.

All in all, FreeBSD is about to release 5.0, with awesome features (kernel scheduled entities, TrustedBSD, etc.). I suggest you give it a try.

Alp

So, among the non-commercial distros we have:
Debian <--> Slackware <--> Gentoo <--> LinuxFromScrath... (this last one not exactly a 'distro')

...I'll give Gentoo a try...

...i did, along OpenBSD and NetBSD...

Nice to have more than *a* choice.

I would be happy to see a more mature Debian GNU/Hurd release, as well...

I'm going to reformat soon and trippleboot MS-DOS, Win2kPro, and FreeBSD. I tried FreeBSD a few years ago but I couldn't figure some things out and didn't feel like RTFM so I went back to Slackware.

I appreciate the linux effort in general. It's developing amazingly fast, is a nice operating system and now supports awesome filesystems like XFS. But it's a pity that it gets all the attention. It makes the rest of the unix world look like they don't exist. It sometimes reminds me of Microsoft in that sense

I think I like BSDs much better in every sense. Their development model suits me better (Linus's view on the best OS development model sounds crap to me ), their ways of solving problems makes more sense to me. I also like BSD userland much more than I like GNU userland. And in the end maybe BSD tends to be better because everything popular tends to get corrupted in the end. And BSD is not and will not be popular because they're more elitist in their general approach. So one might argue that if they got popular they would also be a victim of that popularity so I should be content That's all for the philosophical part. But still I'm kind of upset that linux creates a little bit of a monopoly in the unix world.

Alp

I for one look -very much- forward to Red Hat 8.0 and will be installing in 2 hours when download completes.

Most linux (and bsd) distributions have one thing in common: They are targeting nerds of some sorts -- i.e. nerds with security paranoia, nerds who like to optimise their system by compiling everything, etc.

In addition to being the most used distribution, Red Hat is targeting business use. Prior to version 8.0 Red Hat concentrated on servers. V8.0 is an experiment with a business friendly desktop. This makes it very interesting to me, since I work as a system administrator and have a deep desire to replace WinXP on our 100 workstations.

That won't happen before the GUI becomes more simple and more like Windows. Educating 100 people is rather expensive. It is also vital to have viable replacements for Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Internet Explorer.
BlueCurve, OOo, Evolution and Mozilla (all included in RH8) might just do that trick.

Well... I won't know before I try...

That's what's great about Gentoo. The package management system is robust, and doesn't have the same problem with a broken, half-assed dependency system like a lot of the other major distros. You can make some very radical changes to the system with relative ease, and almost always without disrupting other critical parts of the OS.



Another great thing about Gentoo is that it's package management system is partially based on the idea of the ports system. It goes a bit beyond that though. You can completely customize the way package dependencies work and specify at quite a low level, the type of things you want various packages to compile support in for. You should check out the Portage system on the gentoo.org website, it's really a great idea and it works very well.

With gentoo, you can get as minimalistic as you want also, without fear of breaking things beyond repair, unlike the problems that this usually causes in other OS's..

Last time I checked, the base install was only about 14 megs or so. You build your way up from there to whatever kind of system you want to use.

Of course, this isn't to downplay BSD any, but Gentoo actually is quite a bit different from all the other Linux OS's, and I don't think it should really be lumped together in the "all the same" type statement. It's probably more similar to BSD than any other Linux distribution out there

Oh btw, OpenBSD is great, I use it on a few of my servers

That woman who made the review on OSNews stinks...
What's up with her??
OK, so it has a problem with a resolution of onemillionXhalfmillion....
Why the hell would anyone use such a crazy res with a 24 inch monitor? 1600X1200 is "pretty" enough i'd say.
Anyway, yeah so that was her main problem.
And about no media players with Red Hat 8, i think that's a GOOD idea!
Is it such a big problem to connect to the net and download what you like best??
Is is SO HARD?? What's up with her?...
And tons of more stuff... I don't know, she is one bitter stupid person.

Anyway, i believe that like always, although Red Hat is getting smashed with tons of stupid reviews, it's actually a very good linux distro.

About half an hour ago i just thought about something..
WHAT IS THIS SHIT?! Has everyone gone insane?!
....
Look, she's using a Geforce 2 MX440 card, which is a very fine card (i had an MSI one), and in a long part of the review she's complaining about not being able to use a screen resolution of 1920X1200 with a refresh rate of 90hz...
And ok, her, i can understand.. Her husband, ok... but also the Nvidia guy didn't think of this?! WTF?!
NO GEFORCE 2 MX 440 CARD supports 90hz at a resolution of 1920X1200!!!!
The problem is not with Red Hat or X or anything. It's with those people's BRAINS!
What the hell is this?! What idiots!
fffff......
Sure so write a review about Red Hat and write how much it sucks with this resolution without knowing that it actually doesn't, without knowing your graphics card's capabilities...
OK the stupidity is just too much. What an idiot.

I thought it was a fair review. RH is promoting their OS as a 'business' desktop, but it doesnt sound ready for primetime in that area. And with no 3d drivers for nvidia, no media players, no mp3 support, huge start menu redundancy (a pet peeve of mine in most linux distros)and UI issues, its not really ready for any consumer desktop use either. ... But then again I'm unsure of whether any distro is even close to the level it needs to be for consumer desktop use.

And if I bought a 24" SGI monitor (got to be at least $1000 cdn), I'd be slightly ticked if I couldn't run it at any resolution I wanted to.

After all the problems she mentioned, I was surprised she gave it 7.9/10.

Any recommended distributions for 70% server, 20% development, 10% desktop use?

It depends on whether it is a private or business server.

If it is a private server, use what you know and like.

If it is a business server for a small company with too many customers and too few system administrators, go Red Hat.

If it is a business server for a small company with plenty of customers who demands stability, go FreeBSD og Debian.

If it is a business server with paraniod clients, go openbsd.

If you want unix on your microwaveoven, try netbsd.

If you want to set up linux in order to learn it and get a job, go Red Hat as it is the distribution used by most people and intended for business use.

Well, anyone with half the brain capacity of a 10 year old child knows that GeForce cards simply cannot run that high refresh rates at high resolutions... If you buy a shit expensive monitor to run high resolutions with high refresh rates, you ought to buy a professional graphics card... Something like Matrox or ATi, not GeForce...

Well, ever since ATI let other manufactorers make their own Radeon boards, signal quality widely varies, just like with nVidia. Even Radeon 9x00's two integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs can't help the fact that most cards show a severe lack of sharpness at 1600x1200 and even below, and the second output (DVI-I with analog adapter) is much worse.

I don't think it ever will... MS spent millions on research in designing their GUIs, brought in experts on human interaction with computers, performed tons of blind tests, etc. Linux can't ever do that with their development model, the GUIs will always have a slightly "amateur" feel because they WERE mostly designed by amateurs (in the area of GUI design).

Last time I checked one can still purchase an ATi built video card. One can also get a 3 year warranty with it. Unlike the powered by ATi boards.

I'm interested in checking out Redhat 8. My biggest grip with Linux distros in general is that sometimes programs don't install easily. Or you go download src, expecting the source to be able to compile (I installed the dev packages), and then it doesn't. So you go grab all the missing libraries, and then one of those won't compile. You follow the damn directions to the T, and you still can't compile a simple application. Very, very annoying. RPM and debs are supposed to be better, but I've even had problems with RPM's.

I believe that the distro's are working towards a more unified standard, so these problems will be minimized (libraries being located in different places and what not). Maybe after 8.0 matures a little bit I'll repartition one of my hard drives and give it a whirl. The biggest thing is that it has to be up and running, and running well, with all of my office applications (I figure KOffice, Mozilla, some IRC client, GAIM, and a media player, and a wav ripper than uses cdparanoia are all I really need. I just need them to always work, and not have to worry about the legality of it all) with no more than a single saturday's work (so like 11am to 7pm). I don't really have the time or energy to solve little stupid problems. Maybe in the near future FreeBSD 5.0 or some Linux distrobution will do this, but I still like to have it easily configurable to my tastes.

Well, I haven't tried Radeon 9000, but I sure as hell know that nothing with an nVidia GPU can match the quality of Hercules 3D Prophet FDX 8500LE and ATi Radeon 9700 Pro... The first one I own myself and the second one I "used" when building a system for a friend of mine... "Total ownage" compared to GeForce...

In Europe, they only sell "Powered by ATI"-models now, no more "Build by ATI".



Huh Signal quality of that card is rated "average" in c't 14/02. Several GF4 Ti4x00 cards have comparable or better signal quality (Tests performed at 1600x1200, 85 Hz). Could it be that you're slightly prejudiced in favor of ATI?

umm, not many people, children or otherwise, memorize refresh rate tables for graphics cards.

And why would they? Maximum refresh rate tables are what "xy Watts RMS" are on speakers.

I don't agree that the GUI should look "more like Windows". You might want to check out this article : Generating the next generation GUI. Quite concise and I think it summarizes pretty well why Windows environment is arrogant, and not pleasurable.

I remember now how much I liked my AMIGA back in the days I wish GNOME brings back the pleasurable GUI, and I don't think it can achive that by trying to look more windows like.

Alp

BTW I think RedHat BlueCurve looks awesome.

Windows is dying along with it's friends: MSOffice, Exchange and IIS.

There is no way any corporation can match an ever growing mob of angry nerds, who offer their programs for free. Combine this with government sponsored projects, software foundations like Apache and Xiph and vengeful corporations like Sun sponsoring OpenOffice.org, the death of Windows and friends is imminent.

It can happen in two different ways:

A: People start using free software at home and tell their employer that they know how to use and prefer this technology.

B: Some major corporations make a simple calculation: Cost of Microst software minus cost of training our employees. If the free software can do the required job and the training is cheaper than the MS licenses, there is only one decision to be made.

I believe a GUI that looks like something people already know will win this race...

i've been trying null etc and i like it, i switched from mandrake 8.2 because of well read the posts above, but anyway i choose to use redhat over xp when i can (altho in xp as i write this lol) although i have been using linux alot now days i have used it since redhat 5.2 and have enjoyed the seeing the progress made. but now i am wanting to move away from redhat for similar reasons as windows (and more of a challenge)which some of u may think the reasons are trivial but still i choose to try. i was thinking about gentoo but only when i get the bandwidth also it may be a bad or good idea but i wanna try freebsd as well. as i've heard good things could anyone post a comment on how hard it was a switch and how much did they learn don't want a huge 'this little thing went wrong' etc but a short sentance or 2 would do
i'd better check my hardware is compatable as well

As much as some would like this to be so, there is no proof to support this contention. Linux is winning some converts in the server arena, but on the desktop MS is just as dominant, if not more, as always.

For now, the predictions of a linux 'world-takeover', is just science-fiction.

This may eventually be true when people start knowing, and learning on their own, how to use software in general. Especially something that is slightly different than what they are used to.

Mmm... But "regular" people prefer systems that don't take much hassle to do things. You know, they just want to use the computer, not to "waste" time learning how to use it, and IMO that is the weak point of Linux as opposed to Windows.

...people doesn't want to 'learn to use software'... They want to use the software, if the software performs below their spectatives, they'll ditch it and search for another one that will be simplear, yet more powerful. They want something that they inmediately associate with something that they *already know*. It's all about 'being intuitive'. If any of the FreeOSs out there achieve that, the task is done, the market, conquered.

...and if you *wrongly* tried to install one program in the *wrong* OS, what is wrong is the OS, because you installed it in the hope it will run in you computer. The OS wasn't intuitive enough to figure it out...

...beware, i'm not advocating emulation.

Until very recently CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer, called linux some obscure operating system. He just changed his words to "Linux is a serious competitor". That is proof enough for me.

However - Windows is not Microsoft's hottest product. That is MSOffice. They have this monopolylike Office-Windows depency. With the new Office license model and the avalibility of OpenOffice.org, MSOffice has a very hard time. I will personally be replacing 100 Office97 installations with OOo within 2 months. Yes it feels good.

OpenOffice.org (OOo) is very good indeed! I tried it and liked it a lot.
It is far more clean and more comfortable in my opinion than MS Office.
Although i rarely use office apps, when i'll need to, i'll use OOo, for sure.
What a great open source project.

I prefer abiword...

...take a look: AbiWord.org

I use OpenOffice.org because sometimes I have to edit a file at school so the .doc format needs to work correctly. So far OpenOffice.org has opened all my Word 97 and Word 2000 files correctly.

I think Gobe Productive is going to be the office suite of GNOME sometime in the future.

Alp

Well here's another vote for Gentoo. I've been running Linux for around four years and Gentoo is the first distro that I've felt really comfortable with. Many people recommend Mandrake and RedHat as the perfect noob releases but I don't agree. They may be easier to install (although the Gentoo install doc is basically a walk through) but once they're up and running I gaurentee you'll reach rpm (RedHat package manager) dependency hell sooner or later. It's a sad thing that rpm has come to be the standard as in it's current guise it's a real mess. I lost count of the hours wasted trying to get an exact rpm for an exact library which then relies on another exact rpm.. etc.. Gentoo's package system avoids all this and has been a revelation. Imagine you want to install KDE (a desktop environment similar to Windows) all you need do is type 'emerge kde'. From there Gentoo will go off and dowload all the files it needs, it resolves any dependencies and then compiles all this against your CPU. Slow yes (KDE will take a few hours) but extremely elegent and simple.

Anyone here thinking of looking at Linux for the first time would do well to look at Gentoo. As Dibrom said, it's also a good way to 'learn' Linux as nothing is hidden from the user. BTW, any problems or issues can often be quickly resolved or answered here:

Gentoo Forums

I thought it was AbiWord, Gnumeric, The Gimp, an Spanish project to make presentation, and... (don't remember, sorry)

Linux fanboyism sucks.. Linux doesn't seem to be the "next best thing" most people were making it out to be, Windows is still as dominant as it was, not to mention it improved quite a bit. I enjoy the fast Windows GUI with any other linux GUI I tried, it just wasn't good enough. I use my operating system to get my job done, and Windows 2000 is very good for that. If Linux gets the job done for you, fine. Unfortunately some people use an operating system to feel that they are some part of elite people while the rest of the world is ignorant and can't see the greatness of their OS.

The greatness of "their" OS is that it is by far better than Windows at ANYTHING related to security. If you want to run a server, will you use an MS server?! Yeah, just try it..
Another greatness of "their" OS is that it has far better 3D graphics capabilities than Windows. If you are a professional and know how to tweak things to work the way you want them to, you can reach outstanding results. But you're not a professional 3D graphics developer, and know nothing about it. As most of us.
Star Wars episode 2 for example, what systems were used to create it? LINUX. Not even the unix based Silicon Graphics IRIX systems.
Another greatness of linux is that it is far more stable and a better organized OS than Windows. (Damn the Windows registry..)
Linux has more advantages, and it has disadvantages. IT IS NOT as easy as Windows. IT CAN be frustrating to use. But Linux has a bright future as i see it.
In the future it will be much easier to use for the common people. Some distributions that is.
Linux is GOOD. Windows is GOOD. Only Linux is good at more things than Windows.
"Unfortunately some people use an operating system to feel that they are some part of elite people while the rest of the world is ignorant and can't see the greatness of their OS."

Yeah, SOME people. But for the vast majority that's not the reason at all.