According to an e-mail sent by Red Hat earlier today, Red Hat Linux 9.0 will be available over the Red Hat Network on March 31 and available via FTP and in stores one week later on April 7. While there are few other details and no pricing information, a Red Hat subscription is still $60 USD per system/year. Update: Why 9.0 and not 8.1? This post explains…
Red Hat Linux 9 Available March 31st
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Adam Scheinberg
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What happened to stabilizing the 8.x series? Wow…LOL
Someone’s trying to play a version numbers game. Can’t have mandrake be a whole version ahead of us.
Oh well…should be a good distro, long live Red Hat!!!
Didn’t version 8.0 just come out?
what happened to 8.1?
since when does redhat skip it’s X.1 – X.3 habits….
maybe they had so many changes they made a new version number… or to keep up with mandrake version numbers?
Their web site only tell you how to get the copy, no words about the features and contents included.
after trying 8.0, i switched non-rpm based distros such as debian…
i just installed debian on one of my new servers and it is so much easier to maintain then my redhat 7.3 server, which i may soon port to debian as well… and the server along with all the applications i need is less then 100mb! leaving me more room for my webpages and database!
my redhat box is well over a gig just for the OS.
>What happened to stabilizing the 8.x series?
The numbers are just numbers. By calling it “8.1” or “8.5” wouldn’t stabilize anything. Hard work stabilize things, not product names. This is just a marketing effort, nothing to do with “stability”.
“what happened to 8.1?”
Maybe it ended up being binary incompatible with RH 8.0. That’s the typical reasone for a major version bump-up.
I’m guessing it’s not really a full 1.0 difference… probably just a 0.1 but they want to catch up with Mandrake. Mandrake are on 9.1 though, so I’m guessing the first point release we’ll see for Red Hat 9 will be 9.2? :p
Can somebody explain to me, is this the successor to 8.1 Phoebe and is there any word on freely downloadable ISOs. Thanks in advance!
i couldn’t install debian…not because i wasn’t smart enough, but because it was too outdated for any of my hardware
i found one really old piece of hardware, but it wouldn’t pick up the PS/2 port on it so my mouse didn’t work
the point is, debian’s nice…but if you can’t install it on anything recent, what’s the point? they should have a 2.4 series kernel by now, and don’t tell me that you can by using unstable…would you use something called “unstable” on a server?
and as far as RPM, it’s really not that bad to work with…the hard part is figuring out how to supply all of its dependencies, but that’s what apt for rpm is for
just install it and you’ve got the ease of install of redhat and the simple package management of debian
i don’t see a problem here
-bytes256
>Maybe it ended up being binary incompatible with RH 8.0
It is not. 😉
>is this the successor to 8.1 Phoebe
Yes
> and is there any word on freely downloadable ISOs.
There always have been.
Thanks Eugenia for a strategic intel (notice the war lingo 🙂 )!
Version numbers of linux distro’s are basically becoming irrelevant, hell even the windows naming scheme is beginning to look sensible.
It’s madness, even slack once jumped several (!) versions numbers to keep up : http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0
i installed it on my old pentium 233 MMX,
i did not install X, or need to setup my mouse… so you can say i have the most minimal configuration possible, with just a keyboard, and i work on the server mostly from SSH.
the stable branch does come with a 2.4.x kernel, and i can run the most up to date serving applications by grabbing them from unstable or testing branch.
also, i’ve worked with redhat and rpm’s, setting up a server was not as easy as in debian. after apt-get’ing apache, php4, and mysql… it set up everything automatically, even put apachectl in the $PATH. and i didn’t have to touch init.d scripts
also the config files were all neatly placed in /etc where i can easily find them.
in redhat apache files were in /etc/httpd/… i know it’s not that bad but debian set it up in /etc/apache which just made more sense to me…
if you have trouble with debian on anything recent, try knoppix… they have a new version out with xfree4.3 and kde 3.1.1, and it autodetects most hardware out today, even my wireless pcmcia card on my laptop.
im too lazy right now but one day i’ll install knoppix permanently on my laptop and/or desktop. you get a nice debian unstable distro, which is pretty damn stable, with the easy installation via knoppix
Hm.. I hope the graphics of this RedHat 9.0 will have that swirly background look, pretty nice
From my previous experiences with RedHat, I can say that I propably will not use this version until I either get a more modern video card and a faster processor, or until they fix the issue that will not allow X to start on my machine. With 7.3, 7.2, and 8.0, I set it up to automatically start x immediatly after login. it would not, so I just entered in “startx” and I got the error message “Improper memeory allocation. Unable to start xwindows.”. So then I tried just launching kde and hoping that it would initiate xwindows, but I got the same error message. So, until redhat fixes this bug, or I find a way to get xwindows to work on my machine, I will not use thier product. My video card is a S3 Trio64V2. I am using a P1 166.
I got the email, and went to google groups – and I found this response:
The reason is pretty obvious: they use major jumps whenever a switch of the main library API is involved.
One should avoid mixing binaries from systems with a different major number, because then large dynamical libraries for both flavors will get pulled into memory.
When you switch major release numbers, you should for that reason recompile everything you compiled yourself (typically the stuff in /usr/local).
Things will still work if you don’t (we are not talking MS Windows here), but will take up more performance and memory than optimal.
With the switch to gcc-3.2, we have a new C++ API, which for example affects the whole of KDE. I should not be surprised if that is sufficient to warrant an x.0 release.
no offense, my friend, but how’s RH supposed to build a business catering to people who won’t buy a newer machine, and probably won’t pay for their service anyway? there are other and smaller distros that are more appropriate for older hardware.
now, my 700mhz machine runs RH too slowly. that’s more a reasonable problem, I think :-).
the saddest thing is that between RH8.x, Knoppix and XP, XP runs fastest on my 700MHZ machines. who’da guessed.
They are not jumping to 9 to catch Mandrake up, they are just pressing forward to catch up with OS X ;o)
“the point is, debian’s nice…but if you can’t install it on anything recent, what’s the point? they should have a 2.4 series kernel by now, and don’t tell me that you can by using unstable…would you use something called “unstable” on a server?”
apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-686 or -686-smp shoud work on Stable… well, add initrd=/initrd to lilo.conf and rerun lilo.
I have not such good memories from RedHat. 5.0 did not support my graphics card and could not shrink my Fat32 partition, a friend has RedHat 7.x at the university and there KDesktop does not work, Konqueror crashes all the time…
I then had SuSE 7.3, but all newer RPM’s on the internet needed libstdc++blablabla, which I couldn’t install. Debian works great.
http://www.redhat.com/mktg/rh9iso/
http://www.bedope.com/stories/0089.html
Oh, what a surprise… Red Hat Linux 9… this year everything’s gonna be 9… I’ve got Slack 9 and Red hat 8.1beta3… and I’ll have Red Hat 9 soon…
The other days I saw the “Mastering Red Hat 8.1” book at Amazon.com. They have “Mastering Red Hat 7.1” and “Mastering RH 8.1” was supposed to be available in a few weeks… and surprise no 8.1 available… 9.0!
I’ll see what 9 means… Well I really like Red Hat 8.1b3 (it’s much better than RH 8.0). And, of course, I also like Slackware. I’ve got Slack 9 and I prefer it to Debian. The dropline-gnome is so nice… Even better than apt-get. It’s really simple, no dependencies, … no more confusing dselect or strange synoptic. I love both Slack and Red Hat. I would like to have the OpenOffice. TGZs as well.
To all you
keep whatever you’re doing
-RedHatting, Slackin’…-
n0dez
from an administration point of view. They are not providing enough feedback to their community. It feels like they are replace their current products with a whole new set of products based on the exact same software their current products are made of. But at the same time they are changing around their support and licensing services.
I have to support an enterprise of desktop, lab and server systems. What redhat products do I support? How long will they be in circulation? This becomes a very difficult task when new hardware is not support by the old OSs, but everyone wants to develope for the old 7.x series because nobody knows how long the new (8.0) OS will be supported. Or the new new (9.0) OS for that matter. Can we expect a 9.1? Or is RedHat going to jump straight to 10 or call it “X” or “2003”?
I have heard much recently about reluctance to use RedHat products because of the lack of trust in their support structure, release cycles, stability, etc. I was hoping that lack of trust would have been solved with the 8.1 release, but 9.0 will have to stand on its own. It won’t be part of the 8.x series.
If Eugenia is hinting at something, such as the full integration of GNOME and KDE into a single desktop environment running on Metacity. Or something similar to that, then I could understand the 9.0 version number, but I personally would feel much better if I could show my coworkers that 8.1 was fast, stable, etc. like I said it was going to be.
Now my job will be to convince them that 9.0 is not entirely unstable, something I will have to convince myself of first.
Anyone remembers the O’Reilly article on Next Generation POSIX Threading vs Native POSIX Threads Library?
Well, this release is going to feature NPTL and I must say it is quite efficient compared to the old LinuxThreads and even NGPT. I am making some tests and stuff for a school project.
On a sadder note, NGPT development will not continue. They apparently didn’t think the Linux world was big enough for both of them :-
> If Eugenia is hinting at something, such as the full integration of GNOME and KDE into a single desktop environment running on Metacity.
I don’t know how you got such an impression. I never stated anything like that. Red Hat 9.0 has both KDE and Gnome in the same way as Red Hat 8.0 had them. “Full integration” is not ready, and it won’t be ready for at least 2 more years from now, if ever.
“no offense, my friend, but how’s RH supposed to build a business catering to people who won’t buy a newer machine,”
Simple. Sell RH as a way to get more usefulness out of old hardware, i.e. use the old hardware as a file/print server, or firewall, or an X terminal hooked up to a more powerful server.
Its an early April Fool’s day joke.
Maybe Redhat should pull an AMD and call it “Redhat 9+” : it’s really 8.1 but equivalent to a 9.0 distro 🙂
do you mean its not binary incompatible or its not not binary incompatble (ie, its binary incompatible).
please clarify, i know english sucks…
Being that there is a 8.1 beta, could this just be a marketing person’s mistake that the next release is 9.0? If they already have books out for 8.1, it would seem to be a huge mistake to make this one 9.0.
First is Microsoft, after that Sun, now RedHat… who’s next? Apple? 😉
Hey, let’s do a Point Releases Preservation Society 🙂
Maybe Redhat should just forget the whole version numbering and be the first to come out with “Redhat Linux ULTIMATE!” or “Redhat .NET Server” or “Redhat Final”. You can’t release two major version releases within 365 days of each other and have anyone take you seriously.
There isn’t any 8.1 beta. Phoebe 3’s version number is 8.0.94. So, going from 8.0.94->9.0 is the same as 8.0.94->8.1.
Kevin,
Marketing doesn’t *make* mistakes. They make *decisions*, and engineering is supposed to implement them…
On a more serious note, the recent betas have never been “8.1beta..”, they’ve ALL been “8.0.9x beta”. I think everyone has been assuming that they are pre-8.1, but that isn’t strictly implied by the numbering scheme they’ve been using.
My guess is that they want to get to Red Hat 10 for Linux 2.6.
So they are going to have Red Hat 9 be their last release for Linux 2.4.
The email Red Hat sent out, in fact, says it is the result of customer feedback. The email, in some ways, is more oriented to belonging to the Red Hat Network more than anything else. Members get to download iso’s two weeks before anyone else. I don’t know, but it may be that the numbering scheme is simply to reflect this new push toward their network services. Like Eugenia said, it’s marketing, and maybe it’s just to indicate this change.
Hi,
anyone knows something about new hardware supports on the Red Hat 9, I was wondering if it supports the ADSL ECI USB modem,
thanks
Where is the first place you will be able to buy a (non-boxed) copy? I normally buy from linuxcentral but they seem slow. Cheapbytes only has the Redtie version (which just isn’t as cool as Redhat). Any suggestions?
Second question… is this the final nail in the coffin for Mandrake? Or will 9.1 (magically) arrive before the Redhat 9?
all your linux,
I think you were correct when you said “since when does redhat skip it’s X.1 – X.3 habits….”
You almost found the truth that Redhat would like their OS compared with apple.
How does Redhat OS X v10.2 sound
and Redhat X OS X v10.2.4
😉
index2.html … hmmm, just seen before 2 hours at http://www.whitehouse.org/index2.html
It’s no hack. It’s there on the front page too. And the e-mail is further proof.
For that to be true, someone would have to hack Red Hat’s webpage, RHN’s customer e-mail database, and Red Hat would have to be silent for the last few hours.
Trust me, it’s not a hack.
Much like Volkerding said, distros now seem to inflate their number just to increase marketing. I wonder when we’ll reach RedHat or Suse 15?
Rimmer,
I always thought RedTie was just the exact same as the gpl version of RedHat. They just can’t call it RedHat for legal reasons… Am I wrong here?
I actually did purchase boxed copies of thier software. I also own a boxed version of SuSE 8.0 Personal, Mandrake 8.1 Standard, and Mandrake 8.2 Professional. Unlike some people, I belive in supporting the company if thier product is good enough. Unfortunatly I bought RedHat without testing it first, so now I practice a try before you buy solution. Considering that XP is usable on my machine, I do not see why RedHat cannot start xwindows when I request it to. Itis not like I have a memeory shortage, I have 512 MB of RAM in my machine.
It seems to me that lots of people are ignoring the fact that the fully compliant native POSIX threads are a big deal. This is major progress, but it also might break some things. That’s what a .0 release is all about. The amazing thing to me is that open source software if advancing so fast. Lots of people are complaining about how this makes support more difficult, and that is a valid concern, but the only other option for Redhat is to fall behind.
Something else that’s interesting to note is that the Linux desktop seems to be getting faster and faster with more optimized compilers, libraries and schedulers while Microsoft and Apple’s stuff gets slower (almost like they’re trying to force hardware upgrades).
What is going to happen with the validity of the RHCE? According to this page http://www.redhat.com/training/rhce/rhce_faq.html#current holding a certification for version 8 doesn’t seem to be valid for version 9!
For a bit of the skinny on the reason for the version change, see Matt Wilson’s message here on the Phoebe list-archive: https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/phoebe-list/2003-March/004919.h…
There are some binary incompatibility issues with the new glibc, but there are also some marketing considerations arising from Red Hat’s repositioning/segmentation of its product line.
Redhat is incredibly bloated and horrificly slow.
Again from Matt Wilson on psyche-list:
“Red Hat Global Learning Services wasn’t left out of the discussions that resulted in this new direction. They have a plan developed but are waiting until we officially launch Red Hat Linux 9 to provide details. Please bear with us as we go though this transition.”
Not gay gay, but stupid gay.
No other product besides maybe the auto industry (2002, 2003, etc) go through such crap and at least the auto industry has some logical basis for what they do even if nothing has changed from year to year.
The reason, the need, to do this, is because people are basically stupid. The first FAQ on the link below at slackware explains this whole situation rather well.
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general
People have complained that Gentoo has only crept up from 1.2 to 1.4-rc3 in the past year.
But that’s a good thing. The 1.4 signifies the advance from gcc 2.95 to gcc 3.2, a significant shift. It’s meaningful.
Which is quite unlike the corporate linux world that seems to think that bumping the numbers up turns heads…
If anything, it gives linux a bad reputation. Hell, my company is pissed off enough with Windows changing every 3 years… in the corporate eyes RH, MD are changing every 6 months!!!
Besides, any linux user worth his / her salt would go with a decent distribution. Debian, Gentoo, hell even Knoppix of Vector Linux.
Red Hat Linux is like many, a commercial linux distribution. Unlike many other commercial distros, it still provides ISO’s for download and a demo account at RHN. IMHO there is to mutch noise about this version number change. I never took version numbers seriosly, I’d rather toulk a look at the packages it contained. I’ve used RH Linux, but I don’t anymore. It’s becomming to bloated and requires to many hardware resources. I have almost the latest hardware, still WinXP is faster (LoL). For my part I use Slackware 9, which, by the way has a justified jump from 8.1->9. P.V. once inflated the numers from 4 to 7, and this link explains it:http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general
So, if you like RH use it, but stop complaining about it, it’s stupid. But remember 2 things: RH was not the first distro, and it is not the only one…
Actually, Microsoft doesn’t dump point releases… it just charges for it… and hides the fact from the user. For example, Windows XP is 5.1, Windows 2000 is 5.0. They could very well used “6.0”, but of course, it didn’t make sense cause people would still call it Windows XP anyway.
Lets say the product is Foo Bah 2.4.1
lets break it down:
2 = Major revision, generally used when new/major features are being added
4 = Minor revision, generally used when new features are added but are no major additions. The best example would be FreeBSD 5.0 which will gradually merge throughout the 5.x series more smp features as they stablise.
1 = The patch revision to the minor revision.
Conclusion:
Major release (2), (4) minor revisions and (1) patch release
NGPT still had a lot more to be done, for example it was only single-cpu POSIX threads compliant and still suffered from some major problems from what I have heard.
IBM wasted their time on things that would have been done by the Linux community without their help. If IBM want to do something useful, how about get their Lotus desktop stuff on Linux?
it was only single-cpu POSIX threads compliant
You mean it didn’t fully follow the POSIX standard when using more than one CPU?
still suffered from some major problems from what I have heard
The same can be said about almost any software. Can you name any specific major problem?
IBM wasted their time on things that would have been done by the Linux community without their help
That’s quite arrogant…
Some user comments :
– “Redhat is incredibly bloated and horrificly slow.”
– “XP is way faster on my 700 MHz machine”
– “How does Redhat expect me to support 9.0?”
Redhat is going a M$ Titanic collision course currently. Redhat will be history, will be bought up as some desert on a plate, i’m afraid.
7.3 has been running fine here on my dual Xeon PII 450/1024 for some time. Redhat always was the distro to me , which combined speed , stability etc.. together. (Redhat 8.0 is a mess IMHO).
However if Redhat is introducing sloppieness in favour of marketing tricks, (and suggesting you as the redhat user to get rid of the sloppieness to just take a annual subsription on redhat network) they loose me as one of their installed base users. And its only installed base which matters in the OS industry. Selling expensive Enterprise labeled versions doesn’t count, when no-one ever has seen or tried them.
Robert M. Stockmann
RHCE
Redhat, should not ahve done this major jump. They are messing with too many people with RHCE books etc. It’s not as abd as fucking up KDE though (amazing how subtle but devastating many of their modifications are, therefore making it look like it’s a KDE problem)
more info here: http://mosfet.org/noredhat.html
Personally, I like Mandrake 9.1 RC 3 a LOT better than RH, they have a tie in consistency, look n feel and the amount of updated sofrware they contain. However, Mandrake really stands out with their control center, installation and community support. RH’s control tools really are very limited, and very few. Mandrake has a tool for almsot anything you need to do adn it is fast and stable just like Redhat.
8.1 its ok. . . but with kde 3.1.1 and gnome 2.2.0004. . . must be 9.0
damn “user friendly” marketing!
what’s next?
redhat xp?
anyone know if when will nvidia release nvidia graphics card and nforce2 driver compatible with rh9?
i won’t use it till i got my LAN and VGA with OpenGL enabled work.
Are there any screen shots of the new Red Hat 9?
… It’s a FREAKIN’ NUMBER!!!!
Personally, I judge a distro by its content *after* it has come out… not by how it is versioned.
Chill, people.
Hi,
I think they explained their reasons the number change was due to braking Binarys with Redhat8, I don’t have a problem with that because I get the latest technologies, I also know I’m going to have to wait at least a month or so to get RMP’s for it. Regards Jim
well Redhat 7.3 and 8.0 are both LSB compliant as will no doubt Redhat 8.0 will be so as long as comercial companies compile their software against the LSB base they shouldn’t have much of a problem.
As for versioning inflation, does it really matter what they call, i mean i’m more interested in the contents of the distro then in what it’s called. There are always people here bitching about Redhat but least they still provide their ISO’s free of charge.
Ok another RH thats got most of the visual and UI portions of it completely reworked. I personally dont like what theyve done to Gnome or KDE. After testing phoebe, I can barely find anything exciting in this release to warrant more than an 8.1….or even an 8.0+. How about showing some innovation for a change RH. How about improving the pathetic rpm system or somthing. Every release of Mandrake and SuSE are showing great improvments with added value, software, and capabilities. RH has none of that in this release. Theyve added, new Gnome, new KDE (molested), new gcc, libs , etc. They stamp this thing 9.0 with little more than upgrading packages from other projects. How bout some INNOVATION RH!! Like Mandrakes Control Center and SuSEs YaST2. Or how about Debians apt system or Gentoo’s Portage system….anything. The linux community has given you #1 market share and you wont even fix the poor rpm and dependency hell issue.
Oh well, this isnt flame bait…..its just a rant. My recomendation position remains: for new or potential windows converts……..SuSE 8.2 or Mandrake 9.1. For experienced power users, hobbyists, enthusiasts, purists with plenty of time on their hands…..Slackware. For experienced power users, hobbyists, and enthusiasts that like the highest level of customization with by far the best package system…..Gentoo. I use Gentoo…it r0><0rs.
Long live RH?? bahh……long live Linux and innovation!!
>>Maybe it ended up being binary incompatible with RH 8.0
>
>It is not. 😉
Uhh, yes it is.
Note this email from Andrew Anderson of RedHat Inc.
On Monday 24 March 2003 05:44 pm, Andrew Anderson wrote:
> > Especially when it comes to GCC/GLibC compatibility — Red Hat is the
> > _only_ vendor that has, at least in the past, made it easy to track.
>
> Take a look at the latest versions:
>
> Glibc GCC kernel XFree86
> Red Hat Linux 8.0: 2.2.93 3.2 2.4.18 4.2.0
> Red Hat Linux Phoebe: 2.3.1 3.2.1 2.4.20 4.2.99.901
>
> So, there’s a new glibc, a new XFree86, and updated kernel/gcc.
>
> Browsing Phoebe’s RELEASE-NOTES gives a better clue for the version jump:
>
> o Red Hat Linux 8.0.94 includes the Native POSIX Thread Library, a
> new implementation of POSIX threads for Linux.
>
> Part of NPTL is in glibc, part of it is in the kernel. The potential to
> break older applications that assume the LinuxThreads behavior (which was
> not fully POSIX compliant) is very real:
>
> – Signal handling has changed from per-thread signal handling to
> POSIX process signal handling.
>
> – getpid() returns the same value in all threads.
>
> – Thread handlers registered with pthread_atfork are not run if
> vfork() is used – no manager thread
>
> This is my understanding of why things went from 8.0 -> 9.
I really wanna see what’s new on Red Hat Linux 9.
n0dez