first impressions of Red Hat 8.0

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

It might be old news at this point, but Red Hat 8.0 is available here:

    rsync://ftp.silug.org/redhat/linux/8.0/
    http://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/
    ftp://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/

(Take your pick.)

I've had it running on our laptop (zhaan) for almost a week now.
Overall, I'm impressed.  The system is much more responsive than it
has been for quite some time.  It obviously still could use more RAM,
but that doesn't seem to stop the system from being usable with KDE,
Mozilla, and OpenOffice running.

Before I go on about the good things, let me give a short list of
things that suck about Red Hat 8.0 as it is being released today.

    * rpm is totally, completely, and utterly broken.

      OK, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I've definitely had
      problems with it.  Problems that were bad enough that I totally
      lost the rpm database once.  Just keep that in mind if you try
      it.  Don't add or remove a lot of packages until you see some
      updates, just to be safe.  (That, or at least make a backup of
      /var/lib/rpm before you make any such changes.)

    * Anything that plays MP3s is gone.  Red Hat seemed to think they
      might need to worry about patent issues.

      Fortunately, freshrpms.net already has xmms with mp3 support.
      I'm not sure about noatun or anything else.  Now if I just had
      the apt repository updated...

    * Lots of stuff has been moved around.  In many cases, I see the
      reasons, but this is likely to mean some reconfiguration of
      upgraded systems.  (As an example, setting ESSID and such in
      /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts no longer works.  They have to be set
      in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth? or whatever.)

    * glibc is still an "unstable" 2.2.9x (in other words, pre-2.3)
      version.  While I can't swear this is the cause of any of the
      rpm problems or any other stability issues, it's certainly
      possible.

    * The "Bluecurve" desktop is a bit...  Different.  Fortunately,
      you don't seem to need to install it.

And now the good stuff...

    * The "Bluecurve" desktop and associated icons (and new icons and
      such in the installer) all look quite nice.

    * As I mentioned before, the kernel VM definitely seems more
      responsive.  This may be the new VM stuff, or the higher kernel
      HZ, or some combination.  I'm really not sure, but I know I like
      it.

    * Red Hat now includes OpenOffice and various other nifty things.

    * gcc has been updated to 3.2, which is almost certainly a good
      thing (although it might be a while before you can compile a
      stock kernel with it).

    * perl has been updated to 5.8.0, which I hope is a good thing.
      (Time will tell.)

    * There are a *lot* more redhat-config-* packages than there were
      in 7.3.  I've only played with a couple, but they seem to be
      decent.

There's all sorts of other stuff, but I'll let you all read the
release notes...

    http://ftp.silug.org/pub/redhat/linux/8.0/en/os/i386/RELEASE-NOTES

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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