Red Hat Linux

Well for a guy from the construction industry I definitely look unprofessional with my reviews on a pure IT based product.

Linux is definitely no childs toy.

Basically i've always been comfortable with computers.

So I used to screw up my comp so I could get a chance to get it back running. I leant whatever I know that way.

I had a few lessons on UNIX long back & after that I got a job in my field (construction) so I had to discontinue my courses in IT.

That gave me no reason to stop loving my computer. I came to hear about linux in the magazines & call it luck, I got a free CD with the same magazine (Remeber Chip-India ne1?).

Well thats all I needed. I sat down, installed linux & boy did I have a tough time?

I started with RH Linux 5 & went upto RH 8. That was the end of the line for me.

Now I barely have time to write these reviews.

What I felt was......Linux is definitely a charm. An OS thats so wonderfully built & yet so incomplete, demanding completion.

By far the best an IT savvy can have. Linux creates a challenging environment for a user in that the language is so terse & the environment so volatile.

Unlike other OS'es which are more of a marketing strategy than a challenge to the user.

Indeed Linux is like an oasis in the desert.

Staring with bad news,for hard core linux enthusiasts planning to run this distribution from

a laptop, you got the wrong distribution.This would hold true for anyone with a desktop too.

I have a laptop which is of Compaq Presario 700 make.

ACPI saga

To start my laptop is a pure ACPI laptop on AMD Athlon.This brings on the issue of power management as Rehdat hat uses 2.4.20 kernel version of linux and

linux being not acpi compliant Shrike has not made any attempt to apply the available patches for

ACPI in it's kernel. As of now from what I hear the only distribution that seems to provide it

is Suse.Why ACPI support well without this you might end up frying your processor and have the

fan running 100% all the time.

There are well maintained ACPI patches to over come these but applying those patches and

recompiling the kernel is next to impossible due to the confusing layout of source rpms.

So for the time being I had to content with tweaking ''hdparm'' to reduce the microwave heat

of my laptop. Plus side ? well my mother always wanted a microwave.

Fonts

I had to fight to clean of those ugly fonts that come by default for X server.

Redhat seems to have made no attempt to properly configure true type fonts. Which makes

all non kde and gnome applications look extremely ugly.It is left to the user to download the true type fonts and then take up the painful task

of configuring them in the numerous configuration files. Added to the agony is no support

for aliasing of fonts again getting this support would require a recompile of the kernel.

Java

Redhat includes a worthless copy of gcc-java which you will only be able to use

to print ''hello world'' in the console. I tried running eclipse (https://eclipse.org) with

the default java and it just would not run. So I have to do a 64 MB download of the IBM linux

java tookit. Trying to uninstall gcc-java painful too. You cannot use the ''Add remove packages''

option to do this so you have be content with the command line removal.

Gnome(stay away from this)

Redhat clearly loses because it uses this desktop by default. KDE 3.1.x is light years ahead of

gnome in terms of looks,ease of use and speed. Luckily shrike does provide the option

to make KDE the default.The only saver though is the login manager of ''GDM'' which is

themable. KDM does needs a lot of improvement in that area. There are a lot of things not

taken care of gnome which makes one irritated. But then again KDE is like the red pill you

choose it and then you will never ever return back to gnome.

Default Theme

To be honest the blue curve theme and the icon set is like something left half way through,

there are hardly proper icons if you want to use a task bar with 16X16 icons.

Luckily https://kde-look.org saved the day as they have an extensive collection. Redhat just seems to be obsessed with splattering their logo all over the operating system.Frankly speaking they have not done a good job in creating a good logo in the first place.

Installation

Undisputably the best installation I have ever seen for an operating system.Installation of Redhat 9.0 is a breeze much more intuitive than windows XP (which by the way formats your system first and then asks you for a license key and options),freebsd,darwin et al.

Anaconda sure is a killer.

Mp3

You are left stranded here. Redhat gives a very user friendly message detailing why they do not have Mp3 enabled.

So again as usual it is left to you to download the necessary plugin to get MP3 working on your machine.

To sum it all up. Redhat has some serious evolution to go through before it will be ready for desktop use. They also seem to have a bad attitude which seem to take away the true sense of GPL which resulted in them raising law suits at people who make copies of the distribution and sell it.They have managed to sue these companies by telling that their logo is licensed,leaving the true sense of GPL in the dust.

I would not make the mistake of recommending redhat to other users.

Go for Suse,Debian why ? Because Suse is from Germany and Debian is a non profit organization.

I've been using Linux since 2 years. I started with 7.1, then went on to 7.2, 7.3, 8.0 and now 9.0. Because of the vast open-source community, things just get better and better for Linux. The documentation is very helpful. The multimedia tools like MPlayer are par excellence. 9.0 needs around 4.5-5 GB for complete installation, including source-code and it's worth every Byte. With this, you get the freedom to mess up with your code and design it to meet your needs. Unlike Windows Media Player, the MPlayer and Xine don't report your actions to any server and you can be absolutely sure of your privacy. This new version provides a very powerful development environment to anyone looking to make something different.

I have used Red Hat 6.0, 7.2 and very recently migrated to 9.0. I use very few features offered by RH. Normally I don't even notice the different kernel or some libraries running on my system. Open source things get better with each version. So be happy with yourself for having a next version of every software. But there are few things which I just could not ignore. * Installation is a breeze! The graphical installation not only makes the procedure easier but also much more pleasant.

The other day I was just toying around in Windows trying to write a C program

that could generate ALL the possible 4 letter words.

The motivation came from the fact that 75% of the people use even no of letters

in their passwords as they are easy to remember. Most sites specify 4 as the

min no of letters, so 4 is a good starting point (comparing with all 4 letter

words is an extremely cumbersome procedure for hacking a password however

important it is!! But we as novices cannot think at this stage about more

advanced techniques!!!!)

Coming back to our C program, it is extremely simple. We just have to loop 4

times changing from a to z.

Here is the main part of the program.

int i,j,k,l;

for(i='a';i<='z';i++)

{

for(j='a';j<='z';j++)

{

for(k='a';k<='z';k++)

{

for(l='a';l<='z';l++)

{

printf(''%c%c%c%c\n'',i,j,k,l); //u could also put this into a file.

}

}

}

}

This loop runs 262626*26 times. 456976 times!!!! generating all the possible

4 letter words.

It starts with:

aaaa

aaab

aaac

.

.

..

aaba

.

.

..........

zzzz

I tried to output the words on the monitor using printf(). My machine is a P3

550Mhz with 192MB of RAM with TurboC 3.0( I assure u that it is really really

fast!!! Ask any guys if u doubt!).

Windows slogged through the procedure. I didn't have the patience to wait till

it finished. I calculated that it takes approximately 676 seconds to output all

the words (Run this program in TurboC and see. The second letter of the word

changes once every second. So, the first letter changes once every 26 seconds

26 times thus making 26*26 = 676 seconds). It takes 11 minutes to run!!

The same program in Linux(I use Red Hat Linux ver6.2), the same printf() statement,

and LO!

The words fly by and it is done in 15 seconds (Just try it in Linux and see!).

Now, how is Linux 44 times faster than Windows?

Linux is moreover a multitasking system and our program gets a small chunk of

CPU time whereas in Windows our program runs unperturbed by others and yet,

Linux just races away. It definitely is a tribute to its unique architecture

and design which makes this possible.

I am finding out the exact reason for this although I have a vague idea.

Meanwhile, a small excercise would help. Instead of generating output on the

screen using printf(), open a file and try to store the words in the file. Now

run both the programs in Windows and Linux. What did u find?

The result will be interesting and throw some light upon why this happens.

Rest of this after I learn exactly about what is happening.

Anyone tried RH * if not please don’t try. RH proved the Linux can be made competition to MS with RH8. IT matches MS when it comes to being slow and using memory. Better termed as RH (wait). I loaded RH 8 on my PIII 450 with 256 MB of RAM and still the O/S crawls on its knees.

The GUI has improved to level which even MS will take some time to come close to it..but what is the use of GUI if takes 10 minutes to load the O/S from the login screen to desktop. Above all these to add frustration it wont recognise my sound card which was easily recognised by all its ancestors

Loads of softwares have been integrated. New organizer like the “Evolution” is real competition to MS. Free office suit can really kill MS Office. New file manager thoug with weird name is one of the best...good wallpapers and screen savers might just help it.

Well RH have showed us how a real good software can be made real bad.

Redhat 7.3 has a cool interface. Will make M$ run for its money. It has become really easy to install. The installation process is GIU based and most of it needs Next click to work through. If you are having a new PC you will not face any problems working with it. The new GRUB loader is really cool to add dual boot with windows. Frankly I don’t need windows any more once I booted into Redhat 7.3. Most of office tools, Internet clients are in place. Control Panel of Windows environment is already in place with very comfortable look. Will definitely improve in next version.

I recently installed Red Hat version 8 on an old Gateway P2-333 tower, in case any of our developers (I work for a software company in the US) wanted to ''kick the tires''. Setup was a breeze and it was installed.

One minor problem is that the /home filesystem seemed to be mounted twice and I couldn't figure out why, so I filled out a Red Hat Bugzilla report. They got back to me and told me that the automounter was doing it and to turn it off. I did that and it worked. I wonder why the automounter was turned on by default then?? Hmmm.

I joined it to my NIS domain and there it is, happy on the network.

Overall a nice OS and the new ''Bluecurve'' Gnome theme is reminiscent of Windows XP... You can now right click on the desktop and resize the screen resolution just like in Windows.

They left out mp3 support as if you want it you have to add it yourself, easy to do but shouldn't have to as it should have been included.

Openoffice.org, Mozilla, many apps. Nice.

Overall a very nice substitute for Windows if you don't need Windows apps.

I am a UNIX sysadmin, (Linux is pretty much a PC UNIX) so I don't need to read any instruction booklet, so I naturally wouldn't write about the quality of written documentation since I don't need to read it.

Also, I download and install the free ISO image of the install media, so I don't possess the actual retail package, so I can't comment on that, but the ones I've seen in the store look nice.

Redhat 7.3 actually performs better on my system (64mb RAM,PIII 667) than 7.2. It runs GUIs better and is very stable.

The absence of certain packages such as linuxconf, enlightenment etc are sometimes felt. Also the logic behind switching from a 2.4.7-10 kernel to 2.4.18-3 isn't really clear. Maybe it is a better kernel,but a lot of support has been removed from the previous one.

Right from installation, we find that RedHat has gone to a large extent to give excellent graphics and provide a good desktop system. Unfortunately, the graphics, though good aren't as efficient as MS-Windows graphics.This maybe due to the unavailability of hardware specifications to the free software community. But it should be mentioned that it gives better performance than Windows 2000 on the same hardware.KDE 3 is a welcome addition to the graphics lover. This version of KDE is highly customizable and doesn't eat up as much resources as its counterpart in the 7.2 distribution.

RH 7.3 is more user friendly than its predecessors but you should still have some idea about file systems, disk partitions etc to get going. I believe that every computer user should know such basic things.

One of the things that makes me angry is that certain hardware which was supported before is no longer supported. Most on-board sound cards which were supported earlier are now unavailable. Maybe they can be compiled in later.

The new CD-writing utilities like KonCD promise to make cd recording in linux more user friendly.Burnproof buffer underrun prevention has been added to this interface to cdrecord.

Last but not the least, there is no threatening EULA or messy product keys to worry about. Long live GPL.

I run a software co. here in bombay and for the past 2 years we have been developing customized applications on a Linux based platform. Initially we started out on a Red Hat 5.2 OS and immediately began making an impact with our customers as Linux offers great stability and lowers the TCO for IT managers. Since those early days Red Hat has made a lot of strides in the regions of server manageability. I would definitely recommend it to people using windows based servers, as it come with all the basic and advanced tools for server management , hosting , security and whole load of backend and front apps. for budding developers.

As a desktop OS Red Hat has some way to go despite having competent GUI managers like gnome and KDE, so I say to all those desktop users give it some time :)

I have just loaded Red hat 7.0 version, and it is very good. You have to load it to experience its speed. I was just comparing it with the windows I have and the speed of Linux is just too good.

THE BEST PART, it reboots only one time while installing, and not even once when you are upgrading or adding packages. Compare it with Windows where you have to reboot even when loading a game, forget the number of times you reboot when you are installing the OS.

But, hold on, if you are the one looking for a user friendly one for your home or purely secreterial purpose, forget it. It is not that user friendly and little difficult to navigate. But, if you are a learner or a programmer, then I need not tell you how good it is.

For starters, it is difficult to load a Linux. One has to very careful with the partitions and file system slices.

Coming to the Red hat, it has every utility that Windows has. You have a Multimedia, Games, Notepad and a version of Wordpad. Infact, you can upgrade any packages. That would mean, you can load packages you want and avoid ones you dont really need. Well, you dont get this option with Office versions. You can load a Star Office, a product of Sun on this OS. Let me tell you, this is probably even better than MS Office. The Red hat provides you with 20 games, compare it with Office, which gives you only four. It has Screen Savers, Graphics and every thing you ask for. But, you need a little patience to run all these, as it might look slightly complicated for the starters.

You talk about security, Red hat provides you with a greater security than that of Windows. You cannot work without a Password and a User name, as it is mandatory unlike the Windows, where you can skip the security.

If you are working in a network environment, you will not get a better and secured OS than Linux. It is so dependable with very few bugs, and Red Hat incorporates all the Unix security systems.

All in all, I would suggest this to all of those Microsoft fans to load this and experience, this is a gem of OS