RedHat 9

[BeachBum]

Mmmmmm .. I've not had too much luck trying to upgrade from RH7.3 to RH8. Most of the things I do in linux wouldn't work with RH8 and seemed to me to be a major pain in the butt to fix. KDE was broken largely with RH8 but ...

The good news? ;)

I've got RH9 with KDE working just the way I want and apart from a few minor hassles .. such as no mp3 under xmms, something easily fixed, all is as it should be and puts the Gates alternative to shame in terms or reliability.

So ok, there was another minor :eek: issue with DUN not working correctly from a non-root account but there is even a patch for that to help ease the headaches of "yet another upgrade."

My impressions? I think RHL has come a long way since I used RH6.2 only a few years back. I think it is a major challenge to MS and that RH security, from my perspective anyway, appears more comprehensive that anytihng MS has offered to date.

Of course there are patches for this, that and the other but it seems not quite so many as the MS alternative.

I'm a great fan for an OS that is designed by a community and is free! ;)

[varkk]

That's right, I said I was gonna post up a mini review of RH9. Oops been too busy playing games...

Anyway, it is good. some minor things like not having wine bundled with it.

*Runs off to start review*

[Agent666]

this reminds me of this quote......

'linux is free...... as long as your time is worthless'

[varkk]

The thing is I probably spend just as much time, if not more fixing annoying things in MS Windows as I do in Linux. Also, when fixing other peoples computers they break things under windows which they wouldn't have access to the equivalent of under linux.

[sparkles]

meh, religious wars of linux/ms aside (i really can't be bothered fighting there...)

once i clear up the various media contained on my spare partition, is it gonna be redhat 9 or gentoo?

at the moment i'm tending more to gentoo, but hey, how good is redhat 9?

[Doogie]

Originally posted by sparkles
meh, religious wars of linux/ms aside (i really can't be bothered fighting there...)

once i clear up the various media contained on my spare partition, is it gonna be redhat 9 or gentoo?

at the moment i'm tending more to gentoo, but hey, how good is redhat 9?

Having used all of the above.. I'd have to say Redhat 9. I love gentoo, but I'd give it another couple of generations first.

For example.. with the same system, RH9 took me two hours to get it to my liking (recompiling kernel). Gentoo took 12 hours, but that was mainly due to the compiling required.

I think the desktop in RH9 is getting as good as possible. I love Mozilla's font rendering now, it makes IE look a bit well... 'windowish' . And using mplayer and gmplayer along with xmms, I'm a happy camper. If only wine or crossover could let me use photoshop I'd be sold.

Gentoo is an experts os currently.. it's great for tinkering and getting raw out speed, but it requires a lot of patience and dedication. emerge is da bomb, it even beats out apt-get on Debian for pure flexibility.. and you end up at the end with a specific processor compiled version, rather than a generic x86 version.

Speed - gentoo.. tinkering - gentoo ... look - RH9 security - rh9 applications - rh9. I've got RH9 and gentoo on my laptop.. and I prefer to use RH9 for almost everything now I've got my mail on IMAP. :) Mozilla IMAP support rocks!!!

My 50c (cause I spent that much time writing this :) )

[Jazzed]

I have been using RH9 since it came out early on the nz mirror :) woops they made a mistake and released it before they shoulda.
Anyway I do like the ease of install and how it plays nice with Windows straight outta the box, other distros such as Debian and Slack take a bit more configuring to get it going properly.

Only thing is, it isnt what I am after.......I dont want a system that comes with alot of bloat that I will never use. I mean thats why I have windows! :) So after using it for a few weeks I am going to try Slackware for a while, and once I have learnt a bit more about linux I want to (if I dont change mind again) try LFS.

But for a system that works striaght outta the box I think RH are getting there.

[varkk]

Yeah, I'd say go with RH9, it is great 'out of the box'

Couple of gotcha's to watch for though, by default the boot loader configuration doesn't enable large hard disk support, so if your boot image is not near the start of the HDD (Say if your setting up a dual boot system) it may not work properly, also the 'Personal Desktop' install doesn't include things like the gcc compiler, which is needed to install alot of software you could download.

Other than that, it is great, the fonts in mozilla are simnply beautiful, will post a screenie when I get home. I feel that RH9 is ready for 'main stream' use I'd be tempted to get someone new to computers to start on it, except they would probably wonder why the spyware they download off the web doens't work...

[varkk]

A couple of screenies...

[varkk]

But wait there's more!

[fatsanchez]

my cd's are in the mail :D

have you managed to get dvd/divx playback going (i remember it took me ages back with slakware 7)

[varkk]

Send no money now!!

[varkk]

Originally posted by fatsanchez
my cd's are in the mail :D

have you managed to get dvd/divx playback going (i remember it took me ages back with slakware 7)

Unfortunatly thre is no MP3 or DVD playback included with it, but if you download aprogram called Xine I think it will play most formats you can throw at it. go to www.rpmfind.net for anything like that you need. I think redhat hasn't included MP3 support for political reasons, as they are trying to force people onto ogg.

Also the drivers included for Nvidia based cards aren't accelerated, but a quick trip to nvidia.com to download the latest Dets should fix that.

[Geek4Life]

I think I'll have to grab it from somewhere and have a wee play with it.

Oh, has anyone used Yoper?

[Doogie]

Use Mplayer, it's by far the best player. I've now got it playing all mpgs, divx, avi's and quicktime.

Homepage is here: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design6/news.html

I recommend you get the source and compile it, and enable the gui.

Then you can associate any video type file with gmplayer . I'll do some screenies in a bit.

[sparkles]

yeah, well that's where i want to play around with the distro a fair amount.... i've been installing various versions of redhat since about 6.2 or so.... and, well, they just seem to be more and more bloated. and what is the default boot loader then? iirc version 8 was grub, which did have support for installs beyond the 4gb region on the disc... in fact, i think that i once installed it on a secondary disc...

but anything with the new kde looks real purdy don't it varkk - translucent widgets :)

so it looks like a case for gentoo and installing the latest enlightenment (http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/shots.html)(remember that one?). the latest e17 screenies look even nicer than kde imho.

besides, i also have winxp... that's my os to work out of the box... so hey, may as well have a bit of a play.

[BeachBum]

Originally posted by Doogie
Use Mplayer, it's by far the best player. I've now got it playing all mpgs, divx, avi's and quicktime.



Agreed this is a *great* and versatile program.

The utility xmms will play mp3 though. All you need is a patch to get around the strange arguments RH are having about mp3 with xmms and RH. If you look at the faq under RH9 help and then kde utilities you'll find some useful info about xmms issues.

Too bad I'm not using RH right now or I'd post the url. :(

[varkk]

All you need is to download the mp3 libraries and install them, RH just hasn't done this for a numberof reasons, but anyway I am migrating over to ogg so it doesn't really matter...

[Genesis]

Im a bit of a Linux distro n00b, so I decided to try RH9.0 using VMWare. Its been running fine, and love the look of RH9.0 (Mmm.. Bluecurve) the only problem I seem to be having is seting up the network

Does anybody know how to do this using VMWare? o_O

[BeachBum]

Originally posted by Genesis
Im a bit of a Linux distro n00b, so I decided to try RH9.0 using VMWare. Its been running fine, and love the look of RH9.0 (Mmm.. Bluecurve) the only problem I seem to be having is seting up the network

Does anybody know how to do this using VMWare? o_O

Yes, I do but sadly I'm not at all confident that I can convey what I did to get it going with vmware. :(

You see my son is a vmware geek while I just run my multi operating systems via a boot manager and enough hdd space for such things.

Between us, a week or so ago, we set up vmware to do just what you ask but I don't think I'd try to rely on my memory as to what he/we did then. Sorry not to be of more help. :(

[fatsanchez]

rh9 is my only os as of this afternoon.

Its certainly very slick, and seems to be a step ahead of mandrake 8.1 (the last distro i used for a while.)

its nowhere near as stable as XP though, the os stays up ok, but the applications tend to crash a fair bit.

i also cant get the nvidia drivers to go, the installer runs fine, i alter the config file, and just get a blank screen (sometimes the monitor comes up with freq out of range and turns off). There are no errors in the XF86 log either :confused:

[varkk]

Hmm...I had no problems with it. I ran the installer (did you reboot to run level 3 before doing it?) I then restarted the machine, I then remembered to edit the config file, to not load the DRI(?) module and to change from the 'nv' driver to the 'nvidia' driver, then restarted the X server and it was all good.

Haven't had any applications crash on me yet. But I have only really used Mozilla, Xemacs, the DC client, Xmms and Tux Racer ;)

Will probably see about installing UT2k3 soon, as well as the Mplayer doogie suggested.

[fatsanchez]

after 30mins of messing around with messages like

"cannot install mplayer-gui, mplayer-skin required"

so i try and install the skin and get

"cannot install mplayer-skin, mplayer-gui required" :rolleyes:

eventually i did it in the console with the --force option and it worked fine (even created a new icon on the start menu)

i can play divx5, and probably xvid as well (havent tested xvid yet)

heres a screenie, not that it came out that well ;)

[Genesis]

Originally posted by BeachBum
Yes, I do but sadly I'm not at all confident that I can convey what I did to get it going with vmware. :(

You see my son is a vmware geek while I just run my multi operating systems via a boot manager and enough hdd space for such things.

Between us, a week or so ago, we set up vmware to do just what you ask but I don't think I'd try to rely on my memory as to what he/we did then. Sorry not to be of more help. :(

Doh! Can anybody else help? This is really starting to annoying me >_<

[varkk]

Originally posted by fatsanchez
after 30mins of messing around with messages like

"cannot install mplayer-gui, mplayer-skin required"

so i try and install the skin and get

"cannot install mplayer-skin, mplayer-gui required" :rolleyes:

eventually i did it in the console with the --force option and it worked fine (even created a new icon on the start menu)

i can play divx5, and probably xvid as well (havent tested xvid yet)

heres a screenie, not that it came out that well ;)

How did you install it, from source or with from pre-built RPMs? I will probably install it when I get home early next week.

[fatsanchez]

Originally posted by varkk
How did you install it, from source or with from pre-built RPMs? I will probably install it when I get home early next week.

i used the rpms, at that stage i didnt have any of the devel stuff installed to compile it.

rpms are easier anyway :D

[Afflon]

What can I say, I'm a linux n00b but I've been converted, I don't care that I've got heaps to sort out yet,... I wonder how long I can go without booting into W2K?

RH9 yes I'm sold. :cool:

[Spoon]

OK, new machine and while I've got 30gb free (what the hell.. I only had a 40gb drive 3 weeks ago, and now I have an 80. meh) I've decided that it's time to give Linux a go. Redhat 9 seems to be the way to go. Couple of Q's.

First, is it best for me to buy a second HDD, or does it not matter at all? (will prob be partitioned 20 NTFS, 40 FAT32, 20 Linux or something, if 2 drives I'll make it 20/60, 40)

Second, what's the best boot loader for each situation.

Third, can anyone send me a set of CDs for a few $$. I ain't keen on downloading over dialup ;)

[fatsanchez]

Originally posted by Spoon
OK, new machine and while I've got 30gb free (what the hell.. I only had a 40gb drive 3 weeks ago, and now I have an 80. meh) I've decided that it's time to give Linux a go. Redhat 9 seems to be the way to go. Couple of Q's.

First, is it best for me to buy a second HDD, or does it not matter at all? (will prob be partitioned 20 NTFS, 40 FAT32, 20 Linux or something, if 2 drives I'll make it 20/60, 40)

Second, what's the best boot loader for each situation.

Third, can anyone send me a set of CDs for a few $$. I ain't keen on downloading over dialup ;)

it dosent really matter if you use a 2nd hdd or not, it'd be nice if you could, because in a few weeks when you get sick to death of lunix and want to go back you wont be left with an extra partition.

bootloader dosent matter so much either, i use lilo, but thats just because i always have, and it works.

[Afflon]

Spoon,

I'd say knock off 10Gig for Linux - This is the first distro that I've really taken to, all previous have been play/experiment and were done with what ever was spare - typically 3-5 Gb. But RH9 is FAT.
Don't bother with a second HDD unless, it's the same speed as your new one.

After having used Lilo for my boot loader for every other install, my friend who's a Linux freak in the 'puter dep. of Auk Uni told me to use Grub. And he was right, it's better, it's much cleaner, easier and where Lilo has stuffed up major ("Demolished" the Boot sector) Grub hasn't caused me any probs.

Where abouts are you? there are plenty of ppl around who'd be happy to fire you copies of the CD's.

[Spoon]

Originally posted by Afflon
Where abouts are you? there are plenty of ppl around who'd be happy to fire you copies of the CD's.

I'm in South Otago, so Im thinking someone would have to post?? I'm willing to part with a few dollars for your troubles.

[BeachBum]

As you possibly know I'm really impressed with RH9 and with all the bug fixes this version addresses.

I'm less happy however with RH's newish policy of updates for it seems that unlesss you subscribe to the RH network, at no small expense, you are often prevented from accessing their update server.

Any RH user may access the update server on a so called trial basis but unless you have a broadband internet connection there is little time to grab what is needed to keep your shiny new system performing as expected.

You may of course choose to avoid the RH network altogether as far as updating is concerned. There are several third party update scripts available that will do exactly what the RH "up2date" facility offers but with more options and from servers that are not crushed by the number of users trying to access files.

How refreshing it is to see that RH and perhaps Linux systems in general not only address the need for adequate updates but post in depth documentation as to the need for a particular change and how such changes are expected to interact with your system. Perhaps the makers of another well know OS could take note? :)