Penguin Follower's Journal: Upgraded to Red Hat 8.0 tonight...

I recently (today) upgraded to Red Hat 8.0. As usual, upgrading your distro (at least for Red Hat) ends up with strange quirks in the "final result". Example: If I right clicked on kicker (the KDE panel) and chose "remove" and then "button", kicker would instantly crash! (I was in shock!) ...and kicker didn't restart either. (Good thing I know the keyboard shortcut for KDE's "run" dialog.) So, thinking it a fluke event, I did it again... kicker dies again! OK... a bug right? Not exactly, after a few other quirks popped up, I decided to shove all my important data across the network for safe keeping, then did a Red Hat 8.0 install from scratch. You know what? Kicker no longer crashes when going through the above mentioned process. Strange isn't it? Oh well, I have always found upgrades on Red Hat to be quirky. I always have best results on a clean install. (shit, kinda reminds me of Windows LMAO).

That aside, Red Hat 8 (despite the controversial blue curve theme) gets my vote for the best Red Hat yet. I don't mind the blue curve theme (actually, I hate to say it, but I think I actually LIKE it... I haven't changed it yet!) The icons are nice, although they arrangement of the menus are different from what I'm used to (that can be fixed of course). OpenOffice!!!! Yes! And the default office of choice this version! (Yes, that makes me VERY happy.)

So, what else do I love about this version?

1. Lots of cute administrative GUI tools - like'em or not, windows works that way, and it makes Linux (Red Hat) more competitive feature-wise
2. OpenOffice.org is "standard" in 8.0 (I know, mentioned that above, but needs to be in my list :)
3. Resolution & Color depth control for X in a GUI tool for "dummies" - One of my pet peeves on linux was the lack of a Windows style display manager. Even though I can hand tweak the X config file, I don't LIKE too. And joe average user will never get to that point so this was needed. And I never came across this app in 7.3 so it's new to 8.0 (I've used Red Hat since 5.2)
4. What can I say... Red Hat's new installer kicks ass! Again, more refined - I love it. I still think they have the best installer, but then the last time I checked out the competition's installers was about a year and a half ago.
5. PostgreSQL is "default" now for databasing (you have to specifically choose MySQL). Yes, I like Postgres.
6. More choice on mail servers! Postfix is now an option. (as are some others.)
7. The inclusion of a "first boot" program to configure your desktop is nice for newbies
8. Quanta - I don't remember if it was on the RH 7.3 discs... But I noticed it on the 8.0 discs. I like Quanta, I've just always downloaded and installed it afterwards before 8.0. Now, I don't have to download it :)

Damn, didn't have enough for a Top Ten list :) I think Red Hat is doing well in its decisions to make it to the corporate desktop, at least. Many home users will probably still prefer Mandrake. I myself never could get used to Mandrake (I tried many times.) Problem for me was, I knew Mandrake was RH based and therefore I expected it to RUN like RH, which was not so. Mandrake made enough config differences to drive me insane, and I am used to the "Red Hat Way" (which is probably why I find it hard to switch to Debian or another distro as well)(Side note: I tried Debian once, drove me up the wall, and couldn't work the installer! Which is funny, because I was able to install slackware right after that and could work THAT installer. heh).

Well, that's all for this entry. Let me know what you think about Red Hat 8.0

~Steve

SLACKWARE OWNZ J00

[LinuxPunk]

i find slackware to be the best distro out there right now.. and i've tried a hell of a lot of distros.. why is this u might ask? well, for one there is no commercial branding on anything in slackware - only clue that you are running slackware is if you find the /usr/i386-slackware-linux/ directory on the system. Slackware is also easier to upgrade packages and kernels with, since it uses a vanilla kernel from install to begin with (unlike Mandrake and some other distros that throw in "extras" such as supermount, and have highly customized kernels), and also slackware lets you install new software and upgrade packages without satisfying a million dependancies with the pkgtool command :) Beats RedHat anyday

Re:SLACKWARE OWNZ J00

[Penguin Follower]

i find slackware to be the best distro out there right now.. and i've tried a hell of a lot of distros.. why is this u might ask? well, for one there is no commercial branding on anything in slackware - only clue that you are running slackware is if you find the /usr/i386-slackware-linux/ directory on the system.

Slackware is also easier to upgrade packages and kernels with, since it uses a vanilla kernel from install to begin with (unlike Mandrake and some other distros that throw in "extras" such as supermount, and have highly customized kernels), and also slackware lets you install new software and upgrade packages without satisfying a million dependancies with the pkgtool command :) Beats RedHat anyday

Re:SLACKWARE OWNZ J00

[Penguin Follower]

Gotta post twice 'cause I hit submit instead of preview ;)

i find slackware to be the best distro out there right now.. and i've tried a hell of a lot of distros.. why is this u might ask? well, for one there is no commercial branding on anything in slackware - only clue that you are running slackware is if you find the /usr/i386-slackware-linux/ directory on the system.

I am one who personally doesn't care if there is a brand name on it or not. Unlike my cousin, who can't stand to wear certain shirts, because he "feels like a bilboard". If I like something, I use it, regardless of brand.

Slackware is also easier to upgrade packages and kernels with, since it uses a vanilla kernel from install to begin with (unlike Mandrake and some other distros that throw in "extras" such as supermount, and have highly customized kernels), and also slackware lets you install new software and upgrade packages without satisfying a million dependancies with the pkgtool command :)

I once used/tried Slackware. It most definitly would get the "most customizable" award from me. That said, the only thing I disliked, at the time, was uninstalling software. .rpm and .deb are inventions to simplify life, and I like them. Sure the pkgtool may solve the dependencies for you. I haven't used it, but I'm curious if it allows you to uninstall software? The problem I have with tarballs is having to manually uninstall software, which is a pain since you have to know where every file was put (and know which files to look for). Now, give me a list of files, and I can navigate around the console and rm as necessary, but it's just so "old" compared to an uninstaller. I configure my redhat network client to allow for rollbacks, in case I want to go back to the previous version.

Beats RedHat anyday

Everyone is entitled to their opinion... To each their own!