Red Hat Linux 9, thoughts?

[Bodie_CI5]

Hi Waccoon,

I'm not at all techincally familiar with the intricacies of Linux, nor have I had any problem of this sort (re: dependancy probs), but maybe this link could point you in the right direction. Be warned, it is a slow site.

[Jope]

voytech wrote:
best linux?
for:
security/server - debian (master-like knowledge required)..
daily use/fool around - slackware (some above shelf knowledge required)

I'd say the difficulty level is the other way around. Slackware requires more linux savvy than Debian..

All that Debian really needs is *Debian-savvy* as many things need to be done "the Debian way" in order for everything to continue running smoothly.

Both are just as fit to run as servers, either way you need to know what you're doing in order to have a secure system.

Personally, I run Slack on x86 hardware and Debian on everything else. :-)

[Ilwrath]

Hmm... I started with Mandrake (7 or 8?) and went to RedHat 9 back when Mandrake was in trouble, and released a few really crappy versions that didn't install at all.

RedHat 9 has proven to be quite stable and usable for me.  Not as easy to finely configure, but then again, if you're just starting out, you probably don't want to jump into that much config at the very start.  

RH9 seems to have fixed a lot of the dependency problems mentioned above.  I've done some really strange stuff to mine, and it's kept its packages straight, even after a force or two, and a few installs from sources, etc.  Also, a nice thing is that you can install apt-get on it, as well, thus giving you simple updates.

RH9 base is probably a little dated to start from by now, though.  You should probably start with Fedora.  I'm going to go to it pretty soon, myself.

[manicx]

Redhat is fine but it is not the ideal distribution for home use. I would go for RH or Debian in a business environment, and Mandrake at home...

[MrZammler]

Give gentoo a chance.

Aside from it's steep setup procedure, it's downhill from then on. Absolutely great package system (ports fron *BSD), very fast and will always be as up to date as you want it.

[sir_inferno]

my analogy of linux is that it's a kit car.

if you can put it together and make it work, then it's fantastic, if you can't? then it's a big pile of junk  :-D

[Seehund]

dammy wrote:
by redrumloa on 2004/1/20 22:16:44

Any-hoo I'm attempting to swear off M$ completely, and going to give Red Hat another shot. So far the installer seems buggy, but I'll stick it out. Any other Red Hat users here?

I use RedHat on three systems (was four, had to go evil M$ for a must have application).  I would suggest that you go with RH 10 which is now known as Fedora which is currently with Core 1 release.

Excellent suggestion. Fedora really is "Red Hat Linux 10", only with a faster release/update cycle. It's still developed by Red Hat themselves - among others. The possible downside is that it's "only" community supported, you can't buy it in the stores as a Red Hat supported distribution. OTOH I have personally never bought any commercial Linux distro with support, and as usual the mailing lists and forums are filled with helpful people from Red Hat should you need assistance.


I understand that this is not suitable for all, as some apparently prefer to be told where they're allowed to buy their hardware and pay extra for it in order to participate on a Yahoo Groups mailinglist for their OS...

 Core 2 release is scheduled for Feb 14th.

Final release on April 2nd - April 5th, surely? Unless I've missed some good news...
Anyway, that will have goodies like kernel 2.6, GNOME 2.6, KDE 3.2...

I will also suggest buying Crossover so you can still get all the nifty web experience you're use to via IE without M$ anchor. ;-)

Some have already mentioned the lack of included commercial/patented/"unfree" media support, which is a result of RH's/Fedora's "GPL-or-bust" policy. This is easily solved with a quick downloading session at e.g. FreshRPMs, if you don't want to compile things like mplayer yourself. With mplayer/xine and Windows DLLs for WMP/Quicktime support plus OO.org and AbiWord/Gnumeric for MS Office support the only attraction with Crossover for me would be the Shockwave plugin.

Repositories like FreshRPMs can also be configured as additional sources for yum/up2date to keep third party stuff updated as easily as the Fedora Core stuff.