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Red Hat Software Businesses

RedHat 6.2 - RSN 269

Posted by HeUnique from the yes,-real-soon-now dept.
It seems that Redhat 6.2 will be out Real Soon Now - the mirrors (at least at metalab) are starting to get it. The main Redhat FTP doesn't have it yet - but it should be there in the next few hours... I think that the beta idea was a really good one (and I know lots of problems have been fixed since the beta was out - look at the rawhide directory in their FTP server). I hope other Linux distributions will follow RedHat with a public beta test before releasing a new version. (Thanks Udi for the info).
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RedHat 6.2 - RSN More

RedHat 6.2 - RSN

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  • It expires in 6 months minus 6 days. RedHat's releases are usually a bit under 6 months apart. So it should be REEEEAAAAAL close, too close to say at this point.

    But I would *hope* they'd push it back a week or two to include more crypto stuff. It will be very convenient to have it installed by default.
  • Try either one of the two pages for unofficial updates to slink.

    http://www.internatif.org/ bortzmeyer/debian/apt-sources [internatif.org]

    http://www.debian.org/~vincent [debian.org]

  • that sounds like a really lame excuse for not includeing a current version of E!!, I have been using E for a long time and 16.x compiles and runs in my opinion better than 15.x. This seems purely political. I cant completely appreciate that you can include beta QT but not current E.
  • If sawmill is the new default desktop then there is no reason other than politics not to include E 16. Mandrake, Storm2k, Slackware and a few others dont seem to be having any trouble with it. Raster left and they are being childish about it. When every other major disto is using the current version of E the only conclusion i could make is that it is political, and a pain in my ass because i like to use E16 and RH.
  • funny there isnt the demand for FreeBSD that there is for RH.
  • I noticed you guys put in the crypto stuff, which is *fantastic*! Any chance you got ssh 1.27.7 (or OpenSSH) in there as well? Sure, it extremely easy to download, but it would be handy for newbies who are just starting out and want to be safe.
  • Great, I was 420MB into my RedHat 6.2 download...and then metalab.unc.edu decided to kick everyone off and do this ...

    d-w------- 7 root bin 512 Mar 26 02:13 redhat-6.2/

    Arg! Whats going on here, why is there a big coverup? Its rude to nuke sessions that have already been started like mine was. It looked to me like a full mirror was already done, there were no missing files at 8:00am when I started AFAIK.

    Well, thank God ncftp supports RESUME ;)
  • > SVGALIB
    > Deprecated because it causes a lot of problems on some systems (try
    >switching terminals from X to SVGALIB and vice versa on a Matrox G200
    >card, for example).

    That's no real reason to deprecate it through. Just don't have the installer install it as a default library. Don't remove it from the main cdrom though. It doesn't take up that much space, and it's still widely used.
  • >it still kills me to see apache and samba running on a machine that
    >will never use them(not all sysadmins do a good job). Shouldn't these
    >services be restricted to those that know how to administer them and
    >also need them.
    That's what the custom install option RedHat offers is for you dim-witted Microsoft Astroturfer.....
  • >... does anyone realize how fucking AWESOMELY SLOW linux is to boot? I
    >suppose this is just not an issue for anyone since they just leave
    >their computer running *all the time* (unless you're running a server
    >Geez even Windows 95/98 boots faster.

    Not really. Unlike Windows which does nothing but put up an ad for Microshit when it boots up, linux actually informs you what's going on with your system as it boots up. It's great for troubleshooting the system after making changes, unlike Microshit products which leaves you wondering what you did wrong if you screw something up. Next time pay attention to the text on the screen as linux boots up next time, you silly Astrotufer.....
  • >by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26, @06:43AM EST (#67)
    >Along all shows like CeBIT and others, you can get a beta from the
    >current SuSE distro for free. What's the point in the story?

    The point is that the vast,vast majority of people *NEVER* attend shows like CeBIT and others for a huge number of reasons.
  • >Deprecated doesn't mean removed; it's just a recommendation not to use
    >it anymore and a warning that it might disappear or be replaced in a
    >future version.

    Ok. Was wondering if RedHat would consider releasing the text-based shell/interface for configuring lilo used in the 6.1 install as a stand-alone package. It would make configuring lilo for multi-boot systems a bit easier once you've installed things.

  • Re:whoah (Score:1)

    by pabs ( 1629 )
    Skipping to the assertion (why doesn't /. have a spell checker ;-) that VM totally obviates the need to be concerned about memory allocation, you *know* that there is always a price to be paid for excessive memory allocation.

    Hrm, I should have clarified things a bit. You can disable both the icon box and the pager if you don't want 'em, which leaves only the code. In other words, a few kilobytes at best.

    Either way, I do think that Sawmill is a more appropriate WM for the GNOME project; the goals of the two are more compatible.

    Oh yeah, and I should also mention that my previous post came on really hard. I didn't mean to come across as a complete asshole, I was just trying to point out which features were duplicated, why they were duplicated, and why I (personally) like the E implementations better. Fortunately noone read my post, so I guess it's alright. :)

    --
    odds of being killed by lighning and
  • Releasing a public Beta before the actual Release isn't actually what one would call an "Innovation" FreeBSD has been doing that for quite a while already with the 3.x-RC's and up to 4.0-RC3 before 4.0 went RELEASE.
  • > I hope other Linux distributions will follow RedHat with a public beta test before releasing a new version.

    Err... don't other distros actually produce betas then? Mandrake have done betas... and Mandrake-cooker. Slackware-current? And you can pull the development tree of Debian also.

  • This wasn't my point. My point was that other distros produce betas. I wasn't pushing Mandrake above any other distro.

    You should stop and try to see the point in what was being said.

    I just think it's unfair to say that "other distros should produce betas", when they already do.

  • I just switched between reading this message in netscape under X and SVGALIB quake2 a few times. I have a G200 and it seems to work fine. What is supposed to go wrong?
  • Actually, I've been told that the GDB version from RedHat have a special patch for gdb that makes threads work on x86. I remember that I once dissected the gdb source rpm and tried to apply the threads patch. Unfortunately, I couldn't apply the patch. Other people, on the Debian mailing list said that threads should work if I changed from using the normal libc6 to the debug version of libc6. Well it didn't work either and consumed another 8M of precious RAM.
  • How well does GDB work in RedHat 6.2? The problems with the gdb included in Debian Potato is:
    1. It doesn't work with threads.
    2. Starting an application with many debugged shared libraries is awfully slow.
    3. Stepping into function-calls in shared libraries with C++ doesn't always work.
    4. gdb can't remember breakpoints in shared libraries between runs.

    All in all I find gdb pretty unusable. I know that several people disagree with me but I tried several advice to get it working better. gdbinit tweaking, changing to a libc6-debug version and gdb patches. But nothing has worked to fully satisfactory so far.
  • ISDN support:
    How well does it work now?
    With SuSE+YaST, setting up isdn, so that any normal user can start/stop/dial it is a piece of cake. With RedHat 6.1, it was just a kludgy script clearly added as an afterthought.
    Good ISDN support is almost a reason for me to go back to SuSE. Except that I hate their idea of a single giant config file, with their SuSEConfig scripts sourcing that.
    That is just a bad design; a config system should not get confused if you edit the files in /etc by hand, and on the other hand, a config system should not be designed that you cannot use the hand-edit method anymore. It should also tell you which files it is going to edit and why, and which daemons it is going to start/stop and why. Linuxconf comes close to that idea, but is so buggy for me to be almost completely useless; COAS, the Caldera system, is nice but can do only very few things. YaST from SuSE does it quite well; until you configure something by hand: then it is goodbye YaST forever for that function. Debian and Slackware don't have such systems...maybe just as well, because nobody seems to have got it right anyway.

    So the only distro with a decent config system for ISDN is SuSE, of which I hate the design, but love the functionality.

    ------------------------------------------------ --------
    UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
  • Well, I am personally glad to see that Red Hat did not ship E0.16, as it did remove GNOME support by default, and this is not inmediately obvious.


    This means that users that install 0.16 with GNOME by default wont get a working GNOME setup. And there is no easy way to fix (At least, I could not figure it out).


    Best wishes,

    Miguel.

  • Me too. This is probably *THE SINGLE MOST* irritating feature of several current distributions. Its a real embarrassment, especially after one has gone on and on to friends about the stability of Linux. It will be great to finally toss out that kruft congested old code base in favor of Mozilla/Netscape 5.0. :-) Mandrake 7.0 seems pretty stable and RedHat 6.1 updated to NS 4.72 seems more stable that earlier releases.

  • Way back when, as Gnome plans began to take shape, I heard that Gnome would be window manager independent. My first thought was "Uh Oh, this is going to be a BIG mistake". An interface intended for clueless newbies (no offense, anyone ;-) must above all be seemless and have an integrated feel. Anything less is hell on the learning curve. After a couple of years I am very glad to hear that Gnome is getting an honest to god *standard* window manager. Hopefully everything will soon be configurable in one place rather that having GTK+ themes running parallel to E themes. I have nothing against E, but it is evolving into a desktop environment of its own. This is not really in line with what Gnome's standard window manager needs to be. (BTW, I'm happy that E is going the way it is and I am happy that one can still use any WM they want with Gonme.) The relative lack of integration (E never did recognize the panel when setting window sizes, for example) is the main reason that I never present Gnome to my newbie friends. I'm excited about the switch to something else.

  • I must say I have never really found a use for that icon box. Taskbars and the like suit my taste perfectly. In the interest of full disclosure, I did use Windows95 as my primary home OS for about a year around 1996 ;-).

    I do like the flexibility of E and the fact that it can be quite efficicient when you want it to be, but that pager is the biggest CPU hog ever. Its pretty, but I don't see enough functionality to justify the resources it demands, even on a reasonably fast machine.

    Skipping to the assertion (why doesn't /. have a spell checker ;-) that VM totally obviates the need to be concerned about memory allocation, you *know* that there is always a price to be paid for excessive memory allocation. In the best case it never gets allocated (lazy allocation). In the more common case, it gets allocated but paged out which gives a temporary performance hit. In the next worse case, it periodically gets used and must be repeatedly paged in and out. VM is very useful but not a panacea. I agree with Bero.

    BTW, Bero, I thought you were at Mandrake. Now your at RedHat. Well, wherever you are, best of luck and enjoy what you are doing. :-)

    -Steve
  • My guess is that it is related to the fact that the netscape code base is a house of cards built upon Netscape 1.0 and never really rewritten. This is why the Mozilla project finally gave up on the whole thing and started mostly from scratch.

    But tell me, is Java Plugin 1.2.2 rc4 usable with Mozilla/Linux? I have been waiting for this for some time and thought that it would be a long time before it was even close to ready. Did I just miss reading about it?

    -Steve
  • What does this really offer over RedHat 6.1? Updated libraries and applications. Whoop-de-do! I can get them for free off the web. At least Mandrake has MandrakeUpdate to fetch updates. Debian has that really cool apt-get thing. Slackware has the tarball patches.
    RedHat and other Linux vendors have to relaize to sell "upgrades" to the hardcore Linux people they have to offer more libraries I've probably already updated. Only closed-source companies like Microsoft can use charging ~$90 to update the bugs in their libraries (Windows 98SE).
    Perhaps if the included a easy update XFree86 4.0, a RedHatUpdate program and a Linux DVD player I'd consider getting it.
  • An update tool that I have been using for a long time is autorpm [kaybee.org]. It works very well and you do not have to pay for RedHat's up2date service.

    Alternatively, if you have a fast internet connection, just download all of the updates and do a "rpm -f *.rpm".

  • Debian provides stable and unstable.

    stable -> extremely stable. As stable as VA servers

    unstable -> bleeding edge packages

  • Uh...They do make updates to the stable release every once in a while. Not sure how far reaching the updates get, though. The last one mostly dealt with security stuff, plus some y2k stuff. I don't know if they update things like gnome. 'course you could just grab the latest gnome debs off the unstable tree if you were that desperate for them.
  • As a 5.2 user with everything upgraded to the point where it's almost (almost!) a 6.2 anyway, I'm wondering what you did about Glibc?

    I've pretty much hit the upgrade ceiling with a number of apps (WiNE, Sawmill, GNOME, Mozilla, etc) because I'm still running Glibc 2.0, and they require 2.1. That's the main reason I'm considering going for the RHat 6.2 upgrade.

    I tried upgrading my Glibc myself, but only managed to just about hose my system (only managed to salvage it by removing my HD, and mounting it in a friend's system who copied his Glibc 2.0 libs back over).

    SO... how did you overcome that hurdle? Or did you? I dunno... maybe you don't upgrade as much as me. I guess what I'm really looking for is a Glibc-upgrade-HOWTO. Anyone out there that can help me? Or do I just bite the bullet and upgrade to 6.2?

    Anyway... I think I've been rambling here enough, so I'll shut up now :-)

    --
    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
    - Sean
  • Hmm... maybe I should try building from source.

    I tried using RPM to do it. It got about half-way through the upgrade, and it aborted, spitting me back out on the command line, and of course, nothing worked. Not a single executable gave me anything but a string of error messages. So I ended up taking it down "the hard way" and mounting my HD on a friend's computer, as mentioned.

    And ever since then, I've had cold feet. But I guess the extra flexibility of building from source would help.

    But anyway... you mentioned that I should build in a separate directory. Then what? Once I'm sure it built correctly. Should I copy over the existing one? Should I point my system at the new ones? And how exactly do I do that?

    Like I said above, I guess I'm actually looking for a HOWTO.

    --
    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
    - Sean
  • Well, how about listing open mirrors under this post as we use to.

    Please list open mirrors only.

    It seems that most mainstream mirrors (Metalab, many Sunsites and so on) are not publicly accessible.


    Best regards,
    Steen Suder
  • yeah yeah... they beta test distros. But they didn't come up with the idea. I know that debian has betas, but slackware has been doing beta testing since like 1993. Not trying to start a flamewar, just informing the masses before I get a phone call from a local RedHat junkie saying... "Redhat invented OS beta testing..." Figured this comment would help everyone out...

    By the way, Microsoft beta tested windows 93.. I mean 95... for like three years! and it still sucked! Imagine how many bugs were in the first windows 2000 beta!!!

    PimpSmurf
  • I hadn't realized that Bero had moved over to working with RedHat (previously, he had merged BeroLinux with Linux-Mandrake, to produce a Pentium compiled Mandrake). I haven't kept up with RedHat, have they also been moving towards providing Pentium compiled releases?

    The PentiumGCC period was a dark time for Mandrake :-), but fortunately, gcc/g++ 2.95.2 is about a trillion times less buggy than any release since 2.72.2 (for which the bugs were at least mostly known), and I'm happily using it. Bero has done a lot to make sure packages (including recent kernels), are stable under gcc 2.95.2, and frankly, seeing him working for RedHat is a good sign for them.
  • I would guess the reason metalab kicked you is that everyone and their brother started piling on the primary mirrors before they even managed to complete mirroring from the master at Red Hat. If people actually had some patience and waited for the official announcement, to give time for the mirrors to propagate, they wouldn't need to do this. Instead, you'll likely see mirrors setting up private distribution channels so they can actually provide the service they are trying to provide -- for free, I might add.

    People, when will you learn: The reason big names like Red Hat delay a little before announcing a release is so that the mirrors have time to grab it! If you don't like incomplete and slow mirrors, then wait until Red Hat says "Go ahead" before piling onto the servers.

  • just change your /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to potato instead... then do 'apt-get update' followed by 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. i'm running on alpha too; it worked fine.

    elijah
  • There are Debian packages for gnome, E, wmaker, etc
    See instructions on www.gnome.org

  • Re:Mirror with ISO image (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aren't both Zoot and Piglet names of the residents of the castle Anthrax in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"?
  • As I posted - it is STARTING to get mirrored - NOT finished yet..
  • Well, let me correct my post (if I can):

    I meant to put a public beta to companies like: SuSE, Caldera, TurboLinux, Corel (no Corel - only to registered is NOT enough)..

    Guess I'll have to select my words next time..
  • Actully - if you look at the ls-LR in the metalab ISO dir in the Redhat dir - you'll find that Redhat 6.2 code name is ... zoot! I'm serious!

    -rw------- 1 root root 674054144 Mar 13 14:19 zoot-alpha.iso
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 608845824 Mar 9 19:20 zoot-doc.iso
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 671881216 Mar 9 13:39 zoot-i386.iso
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 627785728 Mar 9 13:42 zoot-sparc.iso
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 594044928 Mar 9 13:41 zoot-srpms.iso

  • Alpha? The *BETA* had already been released. You're going backwards. Oh! What? Um... Never mind.

    :)
  • Tell me more about this up2date; I must have missed it somewhere along the line.
  • up2date is a nifty RedHat program that looks for updated RPM files available on ftp.redhat.com (or priority.redhat.com if you have paid for that service). It compares what you have installed with whats available, and then gives you a list of RPMs to pick from. Works much like http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ actually. Although not quite as easy use, there are certainly numerous other advantages (pgp signing of RPMs, don't have to reboot, etc etc).

    I actually just got it to work with ftp.redhat.com for the first time *yesterday* because its always busy. But when I finally got in, it worked pretty well. Got the new Netscape 4.72 release and some other security updates as well.

    up2date is new with version 6.1 of RedHat I believe.
  • You misread that.

    Sawmill is the default in the development versions of GNOME, not the current stable release series.

    The version of GNOME that comes with RH6.2 is from the stable release series - this still depends on E.

    Hence, E .15.x makes more sense because .16.x will just cause conflicts with GNOME features and increase memory usage.

    As Bero said, once GNOME gets the current devel tree into a stable release, Sawmill will be the default GNOME WM and E will be updated.

  • Re:whoah (Score:2)

    by pabs ( 1629 )
    0.16 introduces some features that are simply doubling functionality that's already provided by gnome

    You really should expand on this; here's a list of what he is talking about:
    • Iconbox - the place where X apps not mapped onscreen hide. GNOME provides a half-assed panel applet that is gigantic (screen real estate-wise), slow, ugly as sin and hard to use (IMHO); Enlightenment 0.16 provides a fast, simple, and customizeable Iconbox (or more htan one, if you prefer) that can be docked anywhere on screen, made completely transparent, horizonal or vertical, tiny (w/ or w/o scrollbars), etc,etc.
    • Pager - a larger representation of a virtual desk. GNOME provides a plain pager applet that eats a lot of ram and doesn't display window contents; the Enlightenment version can do realtime updates, has drag-n-drop (ie dragging windows around inside the pager AND dragging windows from the pager to the iconbox and to the current screen), has a zoom feature, and isn't bound to a panel.
    • Session management - GNOME provides session management, or restarting and repositioning applications each time X starts, via gnome-session and the associated session management in the GNOME control-center. Unfortunately, gnome-session is almost completely broken; entries get dropped or duplicated, things that shouldn't load keep doing so (specifically the help browser), and it doesn't provide any sort of error management for auto-launched apps (except when the app in question is a GNOME one, but noone runs all gnome apps). Then there's Enlightenment "session management": right-click on a window and select remember, select what you'd like E to remember, and press okay. No muss, no hassle. E doesn't get confused when apps die, it doesn't bitch about more than one application running, it doesn't launch arbitrary applications when they're not on the list, it doesn't make you fight with runlevels, and it cooperates nicely with your .xsession and .xinitrc settings (before anyone argues with me, yes it does; I use .xsession at work and .xinitrc at home w/ remmebered apps).
    • Applets - mini applications. GNOME provides applets in the panel, but supposedly allows apps to be docked in the panel, making them panel applets too. (I recommend any Xlib programmers skip the next part, 'cuz it'll probably make you gag). Unfortunately, panel provides this docking functionality via XReparentWindow(), which is not supposed to be used by apps, only by window managers. Other than that, Enlightenment doesn't restrict applets in any way. If you want them, Enlightenment also provides very nice enlightenment-specific applets called epplets, which sync up with your current theme to look pretty. These do not interfere with GNOME, and they're completely optional (very much like WindowMaker dockapps -- i noticed they includeda recent version of WM).
    As for Enlightenment 0.16 having a higher memory footprint, apparently you're a bit behind on the times as far as memory management goes. Linux (and virtually every other UNIX and UNIX clone) has virtual memory (unused memory pages are swapped out of memory to disk), and LOD (load on demand, where data isn't fetched until it's needed -- the reason unstripped binaries have the same memory footprinta s non-stripped binaries). Please don't talk about things you are obviously not qualified to talk about in a public forum.

    Plus, E16 includes a lot of really useful features that E15 doesn't have: bug-fixes, speed-improvements, KDE support, window grouping, window layering, better menu support, GUI configu tools, and a ton of other things I'm sure i'm forgetting.

    --
    odds of being killed by lighning and
  • actually it didn't remove GNOME support by default. it's just using all the buttons on the root window. you can easily change this by reading the INSTALL doc, or looking in the FAQ. I actually included a keybindings.gmc.cfg that turns the mousebutton behaviour back to the 0.15 style specifically for this reason.
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
  • Strange... I installed the beta three weeks ago, and have yet to have any problems with it. Ah well, I'll just do the 'real' 6.2 install just to be safe.
  • Perhaps my post was misinterpreted. I was trying to raise some legitimate questions about RH6.2. I can't justify spending ~$40 to go from 6.1 to 6.2. Perhaps some added functionality should be added before charging all that dough-ray-me to a ser who already bought 6.1. RedHat: if you include a licensed DVD player-- even a closed source one -- you will own my next laptop installation! For a "Commercial Product" I expect more than repackaged GNU software. The speedy updates are nice.... but remember they're not included in the "Free" version. (I'm incoherent cause its ~3am...)
  • At the request of the Red Hat mirror folks, we've set the directory for RedHat-6.2 as non-readable.

    We mirror automagically so's we picked up their permissions and of course we left them the way RH had them until they asked us to do otherwise.
    When RH tells us to open'em back up, we will.

  • I've been using Red Hat's Enlightenment 15.5 on my Linux notebook, an IBM ThinkPad 770Z with 1280x1024 screen and 256MB RAM. You can see I don't really care about memory use that much :-) - except that something called ld-linux.so is chewing up half my memory for some reason - is this the Enlightenment memory leak Raster talks about? And if it isn't, any idea what it might be?

    Is there a non-horrifying procedure to upgrade my notebook to the latest Enlightenment? Could some kind soul give me an idea of what it is? When I last tried installing Enlightenment, it took about a week for my system to become vaguely usable :-(.

    Raster claims there's a terrifying memory leak in this package - is this why my ld-linux.so appears in top as consuming 100mb RAM after the system has been running for a while.

    Many thanks for any ideas

    D

    ----
  • Actually, I have the 14GB drive too, but I still have my Windows partition around, so I can't use the full capacity under Linux.

    I may have to nuke the Windows partition - I don't use it, and apparently I can just have Lilo specify the drive parameters and the whole drive will come up under Linux.

    You have me beat on the 320MB RAM, though.

    Fantastic computer in my opinion. I was impressed that Red Hat 6.1 supported the LCD panel without a whimper. Works fantastic.

    D

    ----
  • My Netscape has been surprisingly well-behaved recently. It runs about as well as it does on my SGI workstation. It used to be Linux netscape was a lot crashier than on the SGI..

    Or it might just be because I'm testing my web site using this system as both a client and a server, and I don't use very many complex HTML tricks (don't want to confuse poor Netscape, after all :-( ).

    Thanks for the responses, all. I'll just remember to shut down Netscape more often.

    D

    ----
  • ..." I do like the flexibility of E and the fact that it can be quite efficicient when you want it to be, but that pager is the biggest CPU hog ever. Its pretty, but I don't see enough functionality to justify the resources it demands, even
    on a reasonably fast machine.
    "

    turn snapshottign off - you'll find them as fast as any other pager :) as has been noted almost everyhting is E is turn-off-able - if the feature is a bit too much for your box.. it can be turned off - for my mahcines it was barely noticeable that it was turned on.. :) just a remiinder that E is configurable.. if a feature "offends" you - visually, cpu-wise etc.. u can turn it off :)

    BTW - dunac was noting the memeory footprint of the code i think in his VM comment - so even if the code is bigger - unused code pages are never paged in form disk.. thus they may appera to take ram in PS and TOP - but infact they don't = if that page of code is not executed :)
  • What version of the kernel is included?

    I only ask because this afternoon was going to be the "download backpatch, compile and try to get USB mouse + keyboard working" session.
  • Whoop-de-do! I can get them for free off the web.

    And you can't get RedHsat 6.2 Free off the web?

  • I found the HOWTO [linuxdoc.org] to be the most useful.... You can install onto an UltraATA drive, it's just a pain in the ass :) Mandrake 7 didn't work for me, but RH 6.1 did.
  • How's about the other perspective: anyone who takes a look at one distribution and deduces "linux sux" from its foibles OUGHT to go back to windoze??

    Of course, the idea that Linux is the kernel and GNU/linux is the set of utilities + kernel that constitutes an OS, and that distributions are Linux distributions, does mean that there's some conformity. All you need is reasonable testing both of all the packages (by the authors and other users) and of the sum total distribution (particularly the distinguishing features like linuxconf / yast / debconf / whatever), and then it'll all work bar the bugs they let through.

    Has anyone noticed that "it should work" has got further than "we tested on X and Y and will support it on X"?

  • Where's the rush? Couldn't they wait just a little more for a usable XFree 4.0 and perhaps even a 2.4 kernel and a 2.2 glibc? Or will that all be in 6.3 or whatever the next release is?

    Oh well, I guess there's always something just around the corner.

    --
    I have the dream that some day all networking programs will fully support IPv6; that I won't have to masquerade my IP address any more; that the DNS will work intelligently; that my browser will be Mozilla, and will be stable; that it will fully support CSS2, MathML and Unicode, and that I'll have all the appropriate fonts for that; that my kernel will be the Hurd; that I can program my TV recording in Scheme...

  • up2date is a little Red Hat program which will contact ftp servers that have their info on it (ftp://ftp.redhat.com/up2date) and upgrade your packages. It'll scan your hard disk for packages you have, then compare them to the latest versions. If there are upgrades available, Netscape loads and lets you download and install the package. It is quite a nice program though. Only complaint...they should have more apps that can be upgraded by up2date.
  • Will the RSA patent expire in time for SSH to make it into 7.0?
  • <voice impersonation="Columbo">
    There's just one other thing that's been bothering me.</voice>
    Will there be an option in 7.0 to set the default RPM options to build for Pentium/PPro/PII[I]?
  • Actually, the Free BeOS ver 5 download is on Tuesday, March 28. I know that me and half the Geek World will be downloading the bastard OS. With my luck, we'll slashdot all the server and all the mirrors within a half an hour. Right about when I have 59 megs of the 60 meg download. ARGG!

    if you guys like, you can see the future nesting site of the BeOS5 here [be.com].

    There's nothing there yet.

    Rami James
    Pixel Pusher
    Altec Lansing R&D, IL

    --

  • jdk is not free, and not even freely redistributable; in short we can't include it because of its restrictive license.

    We're working on some alternatives though.
  • That's exactly what we're doing in 6.2.
  • We're including it in powertools.
  • XFree86 4.0 didn't make it because it isn't ready for prime time.
    I've posted some reasons (and an RPM download location) on a different thread here; check
    this [slashdot.org].
  • XFree86 4.0 is not ready for prime time.
    If you want RPMs nevertheless, get them
    here [redhat.com].
  • Wrong, by the way - Raw Hide has been around longer than the Mandrake distribution.

    Yes, we are taking ideas from Mandrake - after all, they're taking ideas from us, as well. There's nothing wrong with that...

    And why would you call us arrogant? If we were, would our people be caught posting on slashdot?
  • piglet is the beta. You don't want to get that.
  • Definitely - Kernel 2.3.99 is already in the tree that will become rawhide as soon as someone updates the ftp servers.
  • Actually we're releasing both betas (6.2-beta) and the development tree (rawhide), so unless I'm missing something, there's no need to follow anyone on this.
  • Both of these bugs are specific to the beta and can be fixed by updating to the release (or at least some packages from the release).
    The KDE problem is caused by an incomplete patch in the kdebase RPM, so you'll want to update that one.
  • I think everyone here at Slashdot should give a very big round of applause to bero-rh from RedHat who taken so much of his time to answer all our questions and address our opinions on RedHat 6.2.

    As of 12:39pm, Aust. EST, I've counted 26 posts from him. It's probably a record for any Linux company representative (Anyone have statistics on this?) on PR duty. Just curious bero, what position do you have at RedHat?

    I recently had the pleasure of meeting Robert Young, the CEO of RedHat at the Australian Linux Expo, and he said that a majority of Slashdoters held the conception that they were the M$ of the Linux world and out to profit from the OSS community. From this misconception, some might believe that RedHat had lost touch with the OpenSource Community, but as bero-rh has clearly shown us during the last two days this is far from the truth.

    Being a Debian user, I hope that someone from Debian will also make such a commitment to Slashdot posts. I hope you're listening out there Vicent, Deb, and Ian! But as a past RH user, I'd like to congradulate and thank bero-rh for his work at Slashdot. You've set a fine example to Linux distributers everywhere.

    On behalf of Slashdot, thank you very much bero-rh

  • Maybe someone can answer why some packages are really outdated. Examples? readline 2.2.1. We're at 4.1, and I remember someone from RedHat saying at a list that 4.0 wasn't included because it isn't binary compatible with 2.2.1. But it was before a beta for 6.0. slang 1.2.2. We're at 1.4.0, another major release. No need to mention tcl/tk 8.0.5. We're at 8.3.0. OK, they'll be all in 7.0. Now think about including IceWM [sourceforge.net], Pavuk [idata.sk], Qps [nada.kth.se], Kim [zf.jcu.cz], among others useful applications. The svgalib graphics library is now depracated and DOSEMU moved to Powertools. I wonder why. And their versioning scheme isn't accurate. As an example, lynx-2.8.3-2 means what? The final 2.8.3 wasn't released. We're still at 2.8.3dev22. IMHO unfortunately RedHat actually is focusing on newbies and including too much useless (I said popular?) applications. I may consider switching to Slackware in my next installation. But it's still a great Linux distribution.
  • umm, where is the announcement for this?
  • Actually, someone from Redhat was on IRC and told me that they will release 6.2 RSN..

    And one of our members on Linux IL (Israel) User groups found it on metalab..

    And - I'm a slashdot Author :)

  • RedHat folks: Security Issues? (Score:3)

    by JohnZed ( 20191 ) on Sunday March 26, 2000 @10:14AM (#1170904)
    I noticed that Bero was posting a fair amount here, so I wondered if he, or anybody else, could answer a couple of quick questions.
    When will Red Hat include a general-purpose security tool or hardening script? In particular, I'm thinking of Bastille Linux, which was designed specifically for RH6.0 and 6.1. And when I saw "include" I don't mean "stick it on the CD in between XEyes and an ancient version of GNUChess, I mean, actually making users aware of it and even incorporating it into a post-install stage. Around here, Linux has gotten a really bad reputation for security, becuase RH6 had a fair number of holes and admins didn't bother to plug them.
    One of the biggest differences between a Linux distribution and a commercial Unix distribution is that most of the Unices ship with very, very, very little software (how the hell do they still take up so many CDs without a frickin' copy of bash?!?). However, this does put an extra responsibility on Linux companies to provide a centralized set of tools to remove, shut down, or otherwise patch included utilities that might be hazardous to the system.
    Also, when is Red Hat going to make it easier and more foolproof to install necessary fixes? I think the priority FTP access is a nice start, and a good way to add value for your serious customers. But (and I haven't used Red Hat since 6.0, please correct me where I'm wrong) do you have a tool to automatically download secure updates when they become available? And are registered customers automatically notified by email of potential security holes or show-stopping bugs, along with steps to correct them? A lot of Linux systems don't have full-time administrators who can afford to read security sites every day, but that's the kind of service that we all want to pay a Linux distributor to do for us.
    Thanks a lot, and I wish you guys well with 6.2!
    --JRZ

  • Re:RedHat folks: Security Issues? (Score:3)

    by JohnZed ( 20191 ) on Sunday March 26, 2000 @10:48AM (#1170905)
    If people have experience with one version of Linux, and it's a bad experience, are they likely to go run out and buy a different distribution to see if it works better? Doubtful. It's much more likely that they'll conclude that "Linux sux" and go back to their familiar NT, Unix, or NetWare environments. That's one reason why it's important to see strong collaboration and "mutual idea stealing" between the distributions so that ALL the major player get better: they all have an impact on Linux's public image.
    --JRZ

  • Advertisements already out (Score:3)

    by Menthos ( 25332 ) <menthos@NOsPam.gnu.org> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @02:45AM (#1170906) Homepage
    Seems like the ads for 6.2 professional are already out on Freshmeat and Slashdot... I got one, and it took me here [elinux.com]. Seems like elinux.com is expecting an official release of 6.2 tomorrow so they can start shipping, or else I don't understand the ad, since 6.2 isn't officially released yet...

  • Deprecated doesn't mean removed; it's just a recommendation not to use it anymore and a warning that it might disappear or be replaced in a future version.
  • Did you actually see 6.1 or 6.2?
    We have up2date, which does pretty much the same as MandrakeUpdate.
    And you can always download the full 6.2 (as well as individual packages from it) from our ftp server or one of the mirrors.
    The Updates we're selling are primarily for people who either need support (every Red Hat Linux package includes support) and for people who can't download (In some countries, downloading 640 MB is way more expensive than buying a Red Hat Linux package. In some countries, net access is not very common.)

    As I've pointed out before, XFree86 4.0 is not even near ready for being in a main release (SuSE 6.4 [to be released soon] still uses 3.3.6, as well); a RedHatUpdate program is included (and has been updated to fix most of the problems the version included in 6.1 had), and we can't ship a DVD player while DeCSS is illegal.

  • Re:alpha processor? (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @02:31AM (#1170909) Homepage
    It won't be delayed as long as it was in 6.1.
    The big problem with alphas is that their binaries are huge - most of the time it's a problem getting everything to fit on a CD.

  • Qt 2.1 (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @03:31AM (#1170910) Homepage
    It was the latest beta at the time the CDs went into production.
    And the big difference is that Qt 2.1.0 is a beta, but very stable, and XFree86 4 is called a release but it won't be anywhere near ready for quite a while.

    Including Qt 2.0 wouldn't make much sense because close to nothing uses it [and the few apps that do can deal with 2.1]. Qt 2.1 can be used to run the KDE 2 betas, including interesting stuff like KOffice, so including the beta here definitely makes sense.

  • Re:whoah (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @03:34AM (#1170911) Homepage
    It's primarily a gnome integration thing.
    0.16 introduces some features that are simply doubling functionality that's already provided by gnome; in our default configuration, it doesn't add much aside from stuff that would be turned off and a larger memory footprint.

    With sawmill probably becoming the default window manager for gnome, we'll probably update enlightenment for the next version.
  • There have been other reasons than payment (some technical stuff, too early releases, and some more stuff). Introducing new features often also introduces new bugs; if it had been my decision, the releases would definitely have had more testing.

    Red Hat does NOT consider itself as the only Linux distribution.
    I know as well as anyone else that Linux is 99% made from community work, but Mandrake taking ideas from RH is not a joke at all (and there's nothing wrong with that; anything that works both ways is good); check most spec files to see what's going on.

  • i don't think so (Score:3)

    by oog_rocks ( 165975 ) on Sunday March 26, 2000 @04:51AM (#1170913) Homepage
    the people who are going to benefit from e16 are people who aren't running gnome. the way redhat ships pretty much relies on gnome or kde running, and someone who is concerned enough to customize what wm they are running and decides against running both gnome and kde is probably capable of getting an e16 rpm. one nice thing about this is that the e15 rpm can have good gnome/kde friendly settings and the e16 rpm can be setup for more of an enlightenment only install.

    try to be more open minded about decisions that are made by linux distros, they really are less political than they seem at first glance

  • Some good mirrors (Score:4)

    by davidu ( 18 ) on Sunday March 26, 2000 @07:57AM (#1170914) Homepage Journal


    1) zoot-i386.iso [sourceforge.net]

    2) RedHat 6.2 [sourceforge.net]

    And check out my site, for my web-based Gnutella client, Phreedom.Net [phreedom.net].


    -Davidu

  • I found a mirror with full dist and ISOs (Score:4)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Sunday March 26, 2000 @02:18AM (#1170915) Homepage

    zoot-doc.iso 594576 Kb Fri Mar 10 00:20:00 2000
    zoot-i386.iso 656134 Kb Thu Mar 9 18:39:00 2000
    zoot-sparc.iso 613072 Kb Thu Mar 9 18:42:00 2000
    zoot-srpms.iso 580122 Kb Thu Mar 9 18:41:00 2000


    And then I realized that minutes after I announce it it will be slashdotted and my download speed will drop.

    Shall I be selfish?

    sgc://qbjaybnq.fbheprsbetr.arg/cho/zveebef/erqun g/erqung/erqung-6.2/vfb/

    ----
  • 6.2 already comes with much more secure default settings - nearly all deamons default to off now, and standard workstation installs don't install the servers.
    For security updates, there's up2date, which basically automates downloading of updates.

    Security packages have always been a problem because of the US export restrictions (Doesn't bastille linux require SSH?); we've started fixing that with 6.2.
  • There will be an announcement when 6.2 is actually released, not when mirrors are starting to download it and setting wrong permissions on the directories. ;)

  • Re:6.2 beta higher kernel? (Score:4)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @05:26AM (#1170918) Homepage
    2.2.15 as in 6.2 beta == 2.2.15pre-something + patches.

    2.2.14 as in 6.2 final == 2.2.14 + some but not all patches from 2.2.15pre + patches - 2.2.15 was not released in time.
  • "I think that the beta idea was a really good one (and I know lots of problems have been fixed since the beta was out - look at the rawhide directory in their FTP server). I hope other Linux distributions will follow RedHat with a public beta test before releasing a new version."

    I'm not trying to rain in the RedHat parade here or start a distro flamewar (trust me, I've seen enough already), but Debian - the non-profit Linux distribution has had public betas for each of their distributions for years now. It is under a development tree called "frozen" as opposed to the "stable" tree and the "unstable" tree (alpha testing).

    However, Debian's testing periods, aka. freezes last for quarters on ends (the current freeze "Potato" has lasted for three months already, and I still haven't seen it about to end anytime soon) just to iron out nearly every bug as compared to other distrubutions. Just check out the update trees and see how short Debian's one is! Being a Debian user myself (and past RedHat user as well), I find it very frustrating that Debian takes forever to include new versions of packages, despite the advantages of the mature and proven.

    But when one thinks about it, if anyone downloads the latest source code from each programmer that contributes to distros, then you'd have a distribution more cutting edge than any distro could provide you with. The only problem is that you risk cutting your hand off with a system filled with packages so new that they collide with each other due to inital teething. No one really has time for that, so let the distros do the packaging.

    It's nice to see RedHat following Debian's innitiative of releasing public betas and publicising it too. I've always admired how cutting edge RedHat is when it comes to bundling new packages, but I've never really liked downloading 80MB worth of patches for every version of a distribution 6 months after the initial release. Let's hoped RedHat's upped the ante for the other commercial releases.

  • Actually we do release ISOs (Score:5)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @01:45AM (#1170920) Homepage
    Subject says it all - don't judge a new version by what is on a mirror that's not done downloading (the fact that it's publically accessible while in this state is a bug).

    Once they're finished downloading, the iso will be at
    ftp://metalab. unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/redhat/redhat-6.2/ iso [unc.edu].

    Also, if you don't like it, let me know WHY (not that I'd agree). We're here to fix things.

  • XFree86 4.0 (Score:5)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @02:25AM (#1170921) Homepage
    We're not including XFree86 4.0 because it's not ready.
    It doesn't compile at all on sparc (we're currently working on fixing this), doesn't compile out of the box on alpha (we've already fixed that), doesn't have all the drivers 3.3.x used to have (fixing that is a LOT of work), it doesn't have a working configuration tool yet (XFree86 -configure is a start, but it won't let you configure international keyboards and such), and there are a bit too many bugs for a stable release even in the drivers that are there.

    In short, it's not even ready for Raw Hide.
    I have put up RPMs at
    http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimen tal [redhat.com] though, for those who have x86es and don't like waiting.

  • Re:features..? (Score:5)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @02:54AM (#1170922) Homepage
    It is almost only stuff you can actually benefit of; aside from bugfixes (which should be the most important stuff in this release):
    • Networking packages (telnet, ftp, etc.) split up in client and server packages
    • Kerberos authentication stuff, gnupg and netscape 128-bit included (now that the export restrictions are gone...)
    • Software RAID optimized for Pentium III (optional)
    • sysctl program that takes care of /proc/sys settings
    • more secure default installation (fewer running daemons)
    • compressed man pages
    • New xinitrc layout (xinitrc.d) for better maintainability
    • New font installations recognized automatically, no need to run mkfontdir etc. anymore; simply restart xfs
    • ISDN support
    • Autodetect and support up to 4 GB RAM
    • Beowulf added, piranha extended
    • vim preconfigured to support syntax highlighting and other fancy stuff
    • colorized ls used by default
    • Termcaps fixed up to be more consistent (Backspace, Delete, Home and End now do what you'd expect them to do everywhere)
    • New packages: Mesa, sawmill, anacron, docbook, joystick, rpmlint, stylesheets
    • Better internationalization support (16-bit display support; Netscape now speaks French, Spanish, German and Japanese)
    • updated base packages to latest versions (unless they're too unstable)
    • More than 100 new packages in powertools; among others abiword, SDL, glxMesa, nasm, postfix, powertweak
    • Probably more stuff I forgot to mention
  • Outdated packages:
    In 6.x releases, one of the primary goals is to remain fully compatible with prior 6.x releases, therefore we usually won't update libraries with API and ABI changes, such as current readline, slang or tcl/tk.
    Stuff that was built for 6.0 or 6.1 must be able to run on 6.2 without having to recompile, which is not possible with a change like readline 2.2.1->4.0.
    The current versions are all in our internal development tree (which will become rawhide on Tuesday).
    SVGALIB
    Deprecated because it causes a lot of problems on some systems (try switching terminals from X to SVGALIB and vice versa on a Matrox G200 card, for example).
    DOSEMU
    We needed more space on the main CD for more important packages, so we moved some not-so-important packages like dosemu to powertools. This doesn't mean they aren't available or supported through bugzilla.
    Versioning scheme
    lynx-2.8.3-2 means it's the second version of a Red Hat Linux RPM containing a 2.8.3 release of lynx.
    The -2 indicates changes to the .spec file used to build the RPMs.
    Other packages
    Diskspace issue; some of the packages you mentioned are in powertools, I'll check whether it makes sense to add the others to powertools as well.

  • Re:ssh as well? (Score:5)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Sunday March 26, 2000 @03:38AM (#1170924) Homepage
    "Thanks" to the RSA patent, we can't ship SSH or OpenSSL (which is required by OpenSSH).
    We are building RPMs for it at Red Hat Germany (where there is no RSA patent) though; they can be downloaded at
    ftp://ftp.redhat.de/pub/rh-addons/s ecurity/6.2 [redhat.de].

    We will include them as soon as the RSA patent expires (later this year).
  • It's not a lame excuse. I'm a developer, not a marketeer. The general idea is to include the version that makes most sense.

    In our default setup, enlightenment is used only when GNOME is running. e 16 does not have many new features that make sense in that environment, but it is a lot bigger, so it makes this environment slower on low-memory machines.

    Including the Qt beta makes sense because almost nothing uses Qt 2.0, but some interesting stuff uses Qt 2.1 (which is compatible with everything 2.0 did).

    If this were for political reasons, 'rm -f enlightenment*; sed -e "s,enlightenment,sawmill,g" $CONFIG_FILES' would be a much more consistent decision (so that would be what we would have done).
  • That all will be in 7.0; check rawhide once the current version has been pushed on the ftp servers.

    It's impossible to adapt to these changes that quickly without releasing a totally buggy distribution.

    We're almost ready for Kernel 2.4 (2.3.99 is in the tree that will soon be rawhide), but I'd rather not expect 2.4.0 to be the most stable release we've seen, waiting for 2.4.5 or something before releasing a distribution that has to be 100% stable probably makes sense; XFree86 will definitely take a while because it needs fixing up (works ok on x86, but not on anything else), Xconfigurator and the X configuration part of the installer need to be almost rewritten, ...

    By the time XFree86 4.0 has been patched enough to actually do something useful and kernel 2.4 has stabilized, it's time for the next Red Hat Linux release anyway...

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