The up to now highly anticipated Red Hat Linux 9 is finally released. OSNews had its hands to the final version of Red Hat Linux 9 for over 3 weeks now and we were able to evaluate it in a number of ways. The final version is not too different than the Phoebe-3 beta for which we wrote a preview recently.I wouldn’t like to repeat myself, as most things apply as in Phoebe beta 3, so if you want more info on the product in a “review-mode” please read our article as linked above. Only new additions are the cursor theme for XFree86, a few cleanups on the system and some bug fixes. Also, a lot has been said in other reviews on the web about the installation and the feel of the OS. This mini-article will only focus on what’s missing, or what’s not there yet.
First, I will list a few things of what you can actually find in the new release: you will find a good choice of apps on Red Hat Linux 9, from office to fax apps, some entertaining games, a fully featured web suite and more. The NPTL library offers better responsivess of the system taking care of how the Linux kernel is dealing with threads, there is a cleaned up start menu, a bug fixed Nautilus (however it still has disabled the ability to edit Gnome’s menus), Mozilla’s good looking AA font rendering and more. KDE 3.1 and Gnome 2.2 are included, in addition to a number of servers like Apache, Postgresql, mysql etc.
So, now let’s see what — in my opinion — still missing from Red Hat (the below is indented just as constructive criticism btw).
Many users and admins will define this version as an “incremental” release rather than a full blown new featured version, despite the major version bump. The OS still lacks a number of GUI setting panels, like dealing with partitioning, boot manager, visual partition mounting (e.g. automatically show the partitions on the context menu under Gnome’s “Disks”), Internet connection sharing, Bluetooth support, a visual way to install fonts for both GTK+ 1.x apps and fontconfig, a way for a user to easily install applications in its own space without the need for a root password and without the almost always accompanied dependency hell, a way to add new services easily, a Gnome Gamma correction tool, energy saver tool, a better Camera app that is more integrated to an image viewer or an image manipulation tool.
Other Server config tools might be needed, like a client/server config tool for NIS/OpenLDAP, mail server config, and GUI mysql/postgresql database config tools. I would like to see GConf used more, and not just for Gnome stuff, but also for things like “enable/disable DMA” and other under the hood operations. The ability to mount NTFS partitions is also needed… And just a few minutes ago, I needed to change the MIME type of a nautilus script file, which won’t get recognized if it doesn’t get changed to text/x-sh. However, I found no easy way to do this simple change via the GUI (the “Open with an Application” gui panel just doesn’t do the trick here).
However, the biggest lacking I find on Red Hat Linux 9 today is the lack of multimedia and video tools. There isn’t a proper video player included that supports common codecs, and while normally that wouldn’t be a problem as on other OSes (you just download a package and double click it to install it), on Linux it’s more complicated than that. Most of the time, most users including myself will be able to go around these problems, but newbies might need the ability to download packages that are similar to the ones on Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, where no dependency problems occur. Things just work in these platforms (and no, I don’t see apt-get as the answer in this problem, it is not the cure to the root of the problem).
Unfortunately, most of the bugs I found on Phoebe3, are still on the final version of Red Hat Linux 9. KDE’s Bluecurve engine is nowhere near as cleaned up as Gnome’s (white non-transparent pixels are in place, while the taskbar font of an open app gets white sometimes making it difficult to read), mp3 will skip sometimes when loading a new web page with Mozilla (athlonXP 1600+ here), Samba via the command line or via Nautilus/Konqueror will still not connect to my XP PRO share (MacOSX, and even Lindows on the same machine don’t have a problem with this); *many* KDE apps will load under Gnome without a written titlebar, other KDE apps won’t load at all via Gnome while they do via KDE (KOffice does that some times), resizing any Metacity window is just painfully slow (I am able to see the redrawing!), while loading OOo takes more than 20 seconds. I was also able to hard crash this installation when running a configure script (crashed when dealing with libjpeg). This seems to be a rare condition for Linux in general, as I have also crashed SuSE on the same machine doing a configuration. These are just a few of the bugs I encountered on both Phoebe3 and the final version.
Personally, I like consistent workspaces with expected behaviors and, unfortunately, the Linux platform is not ready to offer me this yet. But it is getting better, with every release. Another thing that annoys me is GTK+ itself, which seems slow. Right clicking on apps like Galeon 1.3.x I will see the popup window coming up for a split second and *then* populating it with the menu options. This is mostly visible on Galeon as its background is a complex HTML page, but if you look closely to the desktop or other context menu items on *all* GTK+ apps, you will see the same behavior too (most people will have to look hard to see this behavior, but if you switch systems and OSes frequently, it is more easily distinguishable). It is not really a problem, but it just kind of annoying when you are used to instantaneous UI responsiveness.
Despite all the above, I consider Red Hat Linux 9 still to be the most polished and professional Linux distro out there, while Mandrake has closed a big gap recently with their 9.1 release, but SuSE is staying mostly on the same level as they were on 8.1 a few months ago. If Mandrake makes one more such leap in 6 months and Red Hat hasn’t, Mandrake can surpass Red Hat, but I don’t believe that this will be the case. I believe that Red Hat 10 will be as much evolutionary as revolutionary. But for this specific release, sorry, but I am not as enthusiastic as I was for Psyche. It’s good, more polished, but not without some serious bugs that get in my way when things don’t work as they are supposed to.
Installation: 9.5/10
Hardware Support: 7.5/10
Ease of use: 7/10
Features: 7/10
Credibility: 7/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 8/10 (UI responsiveness, latency, throughput)
Overall: 7.66 / 10
Is this an OS review or a desktop review. I know this is a distro review but it seems like the major of the review is based on look and feel of a desktop. The desktop on any *nix is only a small portion of the overall OS.
mp3 will skip sometimes when loading a new web page with Mozilla (athlonXP 1600+ here)
Well i wouldnt blame that on the CPU, nor would i blame that on the OS. mp3s wouldnt even skip on my p120 when loading stuff. I’d check out your harddrive settings, maybe you hvae a terribly slow harddrive.
I’ve read many articles regarding this release of RedHat.
Stated in this article:
“I consider Red Hat Linux 9 still to be the most polished and professional Linux distro out there…”
Everyone agrees that RedHat 9 is outstanding. However, as for Professional? Did you happen to look at the screen while the packages were being installed?
What’s with the fortunes? Very UNprofessional IMHO.
Examples:
RedHat Linux: “Better than duct tape.”
500: Internal Fortune Error!
Help! I’m trapped in the lab and I have to type fortunes for pizza or I’ll starve!
????
P.S. No, I’m not a Micro$oft Lacky. I’ve been a faithful RedHat user since V5.x
“Most of the time, most users including myself will be able to go around these problems, but newbies might need the ability to download packages that are similar to the ones on Windows, BeOS.. ”
Frankly, I don’t see the point of coming back to the same subjects again and again about Redhat. They do NOT target newbies. They do NOT target the home desktop market. It was even clearly said on an interview on that web site!
That stated, with freshrpms.net and apt-get, a user with a bit of computer experienceand a will to experimenet can very easily get a descent multimedia support on Redhat. But once again, don’t ask Redhat to put that on their system. They don’t care, it is not their market and it was even clear on the interview that some of these things could actually damage their market image.
I agree with Eugenia point by point. I’ve been with RH 9 for 4 days (before that on RH 8.0 since it was realsed) and it feels better than RH 8.0 but it’s only, just like she said, evolutionary.
a way for a user to easily install applications in its own space without the need for a root password and without the almost always accompanied dependency hell,
… (later in the review) …
Ok, at one point in the review, you say there is a way to avoid dependency hell, but then you say …
Most of the time, most users including myself will be able to go around these problems, but newbies might need the ability to download packages that are similar to the ones on Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, where no dependency problems occur.
So is it or is it not possible to avoid RPM dependency problems in Redhat 9? One of the first things I tried to install in Redhat was Ogle (for DVD). I double clicked on the rpm (which I got from freshrpms.net), nothing happened. So then I ran it from the command line and it said something like libdvdread.so could not be found, so I would say that ‘dependency hell, at least as it pertains to RPM, is still very real. Of course, it didn’t take me long to figure out that I needed to install the libdvdread library, but how the hell is Joe User supposed to know that? Either way, the whole installation process is still a pain in the ass, having to download/install multiple RPMs just to get one program running. apt-get might work better, but needs to be installed by default and kick RPM to the curb.
mp3 will skip sometimes when loading a new web page with Mozilla
Yes, I noticed this also, but loading any app … not just Mozilla. And I thought htat Linux was supposed to be able to run 4 mpegs, format a floppy drive, get 800FPS in Quake 3, and burn a CD at the same time without missing a beat? Or was that BeOS?
BTW: DVD playback is also very jerky in both Ogle & Xine on an Athlon 1.2ghz with 384MB RAM & ATI Radeon 7500. And yes, my hard drive settings are fine – both mp3 & dvd playback work flawlessly in Win2k.
while loading OOo takes more than 20 seconds.
Yes, same here.
As for Redhat not being for newbies, could someone come up with a definitive list as to exactly WHICH distros are for newbies and which are not? Let’s clear the air once and for all on this.
What happened to “You need to learn this”? Why is everyone always catoring to the neophites? Computer systems are notouriously complex these days. Why do people want for Joe Sixpack off the streat to be able to administer/install/use complex systems…
People take no pride in learning any more….
I give this terrible distro a 2 for hardware support. My hardware is all listed, yet I never saw the anaconda GUI while installing this pile of shit because it wouldn’t recognize my LCD display.
I give Shrike a 2 for speed also, since Xfree is still brutally slow, pauses are common, and I can make mp3 playback skip at will – something impossible on my hardware with BeOS or Win2K. I’ve heard people claim the superiority of Linux (“speed,” stability, etc) but I’ve seen none of these claimed benefits. Hell, this garbage even costs more than Windows, once my time is factored into the equation. I’ve bought distros, tried ’em, tossed ’em, still waiting for the magical distro that will live up to the hype.
PS. does no Linux user care about drag and drop start menus, or consistent cut/paste behaviour?
This is the part you don’t understand.
I KNOW that Red Hat only targets the server space and the workstation/corporate desktop and not the home desktop.
HOWEVER, that does NOT mean that if you make it hard for even the administrators to hunt down what they need is “ok”. It is not ok. The fact that a user is not a newbie, does not making the OS any better for puitting extra work to the user.
> I’d check out your harddrive settings, maybe you hvae a terribly slow harddrive.
It is not slow.
>Is this an OS review or a desktop review
It is nothing of the two. It is my opinion on how to make Red Hat better. Server settings and additional tools are mentioned in the article. The fact that you can do something with the command line does not mean that an advanced user wouldn’t like to see a GUI equivelant tool to make his/her life easier.
And yes, my hard drive settings are fine
I meant as in hardware as it pertains to speed, not software.
resizing any Metacity window is just painfully slow (I am able to see the redrawing!)
I agree, it’s one of most annony. This problem that is existing in the rest Linux Distros and FreeBSD. I don’t know what about KDE, I don’t use it so can’t make a comment.
I am planning to have use Openbox, Blackbox or Fluxbox as WM in Gnome, will it helps? Do anyone know or have any experience?
I think that computers together with OSs catered to the public (Joes & Janes) are nothing more that XXI century home appliances, so they have to be user friendly or get ready to meet their market demise. Where’s the joy in learning how to operate microwave oven 🙂
I will see the popup window coming up for a split second and *then* populating it with the menu options…[it’s] just kind of annoying when you are used to instantaneous UI responsiveness.
An alternative would be to delay showing the popup window until it has been fully populated. If it can’t be fully populated immediately (e.g. it requires data from a file) than this would be IMHO an even less responsive method.
Maybe the menu options that can be added immediately could be done before the popup menu is shown, and the others would be populated later?
I’d check out your harddrive settings, maybe you hvae a terribly slow harddrive.
You must be kidding, right? When, other OSs aren’t slow on her computer, but RedHat is. Then, it’s RedHat’s fault.
It is an ATA-66 Samsung 40 GB IDE. It is not a “slow” drive, it is a modern drive. You haven’t seen slow drives it seems. I run the same mp3 radio station on my MacOSX with a SLOW A$$ laptop drive (Fujitsu) and it NEVER skips no matter the load on the OS. BTW, the mp3 that was skipping was streaming, so the hard drive has nothing to do with it. (and no, it is NOT bandwidth problem, I have PLENTY of it).
It is very well known about the mp3 skipping when mozilla loading pages, especially on older machines. But on my machine it should never happen. But it does happen once every ~10 pages loading.
I’m assuming your running off the DVI connector. Try using the VGA one or switching to text install.
Eugenia: Check your HD settings. Is DMA enabled?
Does a user need to MANUALLY enable DMA in this day and aga in 2003 on an OS like Red Hat? If yes, then Linux is far more behind that I thought it was.
To reply to your question, yes, I have turned on DMA.
“What happened to “You need to learn this”? Why is everyone always catering to the neophites? Computer systems are notoriously complex these days. Why do people want for Joe Sixpack off the street to be able to administer/install/use complex systems…
People take no pride in learning any more….”
There is a distinction between learning things which are difficult by nature, such as GUI design, and having to learn things which are tiresomely difficult because the programmer has produced a confused or illogical system component.
I realize my post didn’t fit in with your defending your harddrive thread here, but it was an answer to Darius’s question for a post of whats considered a newbie distro and whats not. I’d say its about as on topic as “my harddrive is not slow”.
Sorry, it is not on topic. Plus your list is wrong. Hurd is not a desktop OS, not by far. And Darius does not need this list, he knows what’s what.
>I’d check out your harddrive settings, maybe you hvae a terribly slow harddrive.
I’ve had problems with ogg files skipping. It has something to do with the sound settings in xmms. I think the default sound setting (hit Control-P to get the window) uses eSound output. You might try using the OSS driver or another one. Changing to the OSS driver fixed it to me.
I doubt it is harddrive speed. If it is then you can use hdparm to test your speed. You’ll have to be root to use it. To test it just type “/sbin/hdparm -tT /dev/hda” (where the “hda” part is your hard drive) or “/sbin/hdparm /dev/hda” to see what your hard drive settings are. If “using_dma” isn’t turned on you can turn it on by doing “/sbin/hdparm -d1 /dev/hda”
Good luck!
So is it or is it not possible to avoid RPM dependency problems in Redhat 9?
Darius, mate, it’s pretty clear all the way through that it isn’t possible to avoid RPM dep problems in RH9. The excerpt you took as meaning that they COULD be avoided:
“…way for a user to easily install applications in its own space without the need for a root password and without the almost always accompanied dependency hell,”
makes a lot more sense once you reinsert at the beginning of the sentence…
“The OS still lacks….”
Problem solved. 🙂
>Does a user need to MANUALLY enable DMA in this day and aga
>in 2003 on an OS like Red Hat? If yes, then Linux is far more
>behind that I thought it was.
All the machines I’ve put RH8 or 9 on (about 5 of them) ALL had DMA enabled by default… I really doubt the MP3 problem has to do with the hard drive. I think it just has to do with xmms…
Please tell me that HURD wasn’t the only os listed that got that modded down…?
Stop taking it personally and stop talking about it, because it is also off topic trying to fiind “why”. I explained why. That list has nothing to do with this article and Darius is NOT a newbie, he doesn’t need that list.
And no, zOS is not a dekstop OS either. Now, get over it.
just thought it was kind of funny if you had accepted zOS. Most of that list was intended as a joke btw since Darius isn’t a newbie.
I’m writing this at a newly installed Redhat 9 system, but find myself working remotely on my NetBSD box!
Well, some points of criticism: first, why do I have to download 3 CDs for a standard install, and the 3rd CD only installs mutt! Secondly, why can’t I abort the installation when I have only downloaded the first CD. Redhat only displays a dialog box “insert CD no. X”, no opportunity to skip some packages, or whatever. Thirdly, once installed I see no way to see what packages I can install (like Debian’s dselect, or *BSD’s pkgsrc tree). I have to browse through the CDs. Fourth, unless you do the default install, there’s no way to reinstall packages (probably there is, but I’m not familiar with rpm), and there’s not even a friendly message, “read the help file in /foo/bar/HELP”. I just installed without GNOME, and now I have twm and no information about how to install GNOME except doing a reinstall… Fifth, there’s no mplayer and no gnomeicu. Really, I want to have a decent ICQ client which gets my contact list from the server, and I _certainly_ want to be able to watch videos.
What I did I download more than one GB for, with not even a video player? Is this Redhat’s grand strategy to make the average Windows user switch “yeah, pay 50 bucks, and not even watch movies, cool”?
The above might sound a bit rude, but I’m really embarrassed about the state of the art in Linux systems!
Oh by the way, Redhat boots up *dog slow*!
I’ll go on working on NetBSD, with the occasional WinXP for games, etc.
“Does a user need to MANUALLY enable DMA in this day and aga in 2003 on an OS like Red Hat? If yes, then Linux is far more behind that I thought it was. ”
Hell I still have to turn on DMA manually in Win XP.
>Hell I still have to turn on DMA manually in Win XP.
Funny, because DMA is ON for my hard drive on XP PRO, by default.
“Redhat only displays a dialog box “insert CD no. X”, no opportunity to skip some packages, or whatever.”
If you choose a custom install, you can select/deselect the packages you want to install.
In response to Eugenia: “HOWEVER, that does NOT mean that if you make it hard for even the administrators to hunt down what they need is “ok”. It is not ok.”
I agree on that. The problem is that your review does not really consider the tasks for a system administrator in the target market by Redhat.
Being simple for a newbie does not mean that it is convenient for a system administrator. And vice versa.
Saying there is no multimedia support is a problem in Redhat is like saying “the latest convertible sports car cannot carry a family of 5”! We all know that!
Sir mix alot said: apt-get might work better, but needs to be installed by default and kick RPM to the curb.
Guess what musical genius apt-get for redhat uses RPM.
OO 20 seconds!!!!!! give me a freaky break
The first time OO is run it setup the .openoffice in your home directory. Try rebooting and then run OO again and tell me it takes 20 seconds. What a BS.
Why does everyone seem to think you should be able to install software without dealing with dependancies? Complex software has complex dependancies… RPM tries to deal with that by identifying those dependancies at the outset. What’s the point of installing an application that won’t work because of a lack of a criticial library?
What’s the other solution? Include a version of every library needed by that app inside the RPM? Are you serious? What is needed are better tools to deal with locating packages to match the required dependancies. apt and synaptic for RedHat9 seem to go a long way towards it my mind. Now, if only RH would get with the program and include it by default.
I’m not saying RH9 or Linux doesn’t need help in this regard or is perfect. I’m only saying that dependancies are a FEATURE and keep you from installing software that WILL NOT RUN without additional libraries or packages.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Sounds like a driver problem. Try going into system settings/display and enabling hardware acceleration.
As for hard drive performance, it’s one of my beefs with RedHat (and others as well). They create a file called /etc/sysconfig/harddisks but they don’t even enable 32bit mode! I add this to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local..
/sbin/hdparm -c3 -d1 -u1 /dev/hda
and watch it fly.. On ATA-66 you can use -X66, and -X69 on some ATA-100 drives, but be careful with these settings do your homework first!
” I believe that Red Hat 10 will be as much evolutionary as revolutionary.” Revolutionary because it uses the 2.6 kernel? More cursor themes? Finally provides a decent open file dialog for GTK? Have MP3 support? Be named Red Hat X? Or maybe they could just fix all the bugs — now _that_ would be revolutionary! 8)
to sit a MCSE in front of an OSX server box, no training, and see how easy it is for them.
I hate the conversations about Linux being difficult to administer, it’s only difficult if you have no training. I wouldn’t allow ANYONE to administer a server without at least medium level training, and then they would still be only a JR sys admin.
I’m sorry, I don’t see the point of saying it’s difficult for newbies to administer, they haven’t been trained to do this. I don’t believe linux is meant for the home yet, as agreed by many others. I see absolutely NOTHING stopping it from being used by corporations for both desktop and in the server room.
>Sounds like a driver problem. Try going into system settings/display and enabling hardware acceleration
No it is not a driver problem.
Change its output driver from eSound to OSS and its fixed.
Any newbies that want to try a stable decent user friendly Linux, use SuSE. You cannot beat its setup tools and you wont be disappointed. Red Hat Linux 9 is good for some people and if you like Red Hat then by all means use Red Hat, Red Hat is for enterprise and they have made that more than clear.
Why does everyone seem to think you should be able to install software without dealing with dependancies?
Um, because it’s possible to do in other operating systems? I say if they are dependency issues, they should be dealt with by the package manager, NOT by the user.
A better solution (as far as RPM goes) is to tell me what packages EXACTLY I need to install, isntead of simply ‘cannot find lib123xyzgoscrewyourself.so.whatever’
Yes, yes it is. I don’t have a redraw problem on any of my machines. I *DID* have it on one, which happened to have an ATI card in it. Using the radeon driver, and turning on acceleration fixed it.
While I certainly agree that the technical causes of this type of sound problem is something that new users should never have to deal with, I am curious as to what might be causing it.
Perhaps xmms and or the sound drivers/sound server (is redhat using a sound server?) is not behaving well with the new nptl implimentation. Or RedHat simply hasn’t included desktop performance inhanceing kernel patches for the sake of maintaining raw server performance and this is causing xmms not to get the cpu slices it needs to function properly.
Acceleration *is* ON. Fully 2D acceleration.
This review is the epitome of an OSNews.com review, focusing on the desktop since the reviewer does not have enough technical knowhow to delve in to innards of the OS. Redhat 9 is designed to be a server or technical workstation OS, but it can also be used a desktop OS for technically minded people. If you are using Linux as a server OS, don’t expect their to be GUI configuration tools for every server function available, especially considering that an entry level linux sysadmin is supposed to know how to configure these services manually.
<P>
RHN 9 is designed to be a workstation OS, so support for a plethora of media types is not supported out of the box, mostly due to licensing or patent issues, not by Redhat’s choice. Personally, I think Redhat has made the right decision since because they are the most visible and largest Linux distributor, they would be the most likely candidate for a lawsuit.
<P>
What a comprehensive review, I believe it couldn’t even fill one printed page. The review spent 3/4 of the copy talking about missing features that are missing for obvious reasons.
Change its output driver from eSound to OSS and its fixed.
So redhat is trying to get around the limitations of most oss drivers of not mixing more than one simultaneous stream by using a crappy sound server that simply dies when under a cpu load playing anything more that the occasional pop or beep.
Hopefully once the 2.6 kernel becomes stable, and alsa becomes more commonplace these types of problems will go away as alsa supports software mixing in the kernel driver. Unfortunatly the alsa project doesn’t seem interested in fixing its problem of muting everything by default.
asv completely hit the point. Redhat and GNU/Linux in general is at this point in time a great os for a workstation/server. It isn’t really too great for a desktop for someone who’s ‘review’ of an os talks more about gui appearance than the actual os.
My “review” was not just about GUI appearence. I suggest you re-read it. There are many tools missing from Red Hat Linux 9, and I didn’t even get into the whole point like: slow start up times, terrible multimedia performance (3D workstations need that) etc etc
You guys need to be LESS deffensive and take that article for what it is: MY opinion on how to make this OS more widely accepted. It is NOT a review as the reviews I personally wrote recently about SuSE or Mandrake. It is NOT the same kind of article. I CLEARLY point that out on this article.
From the article:
I wouldn’t like to repeat myself, as most things apply as in Phoebe beta 3, so if you want more info on the product in a “review-mode” please read our article as linked above.
[…]
So, now let’s see what — in my opinion — still missing from Red Hat (the below is indented just as constructive criticism btw).
HOW is it possible to have missed that??!!??
This article is NOT your traditional review. Stop calling it as such.
I’m user of a workstation (crunching 4D IR mapping data, implementing ANN and various statistical tools in chem-biomed research) and still run away from any Linux whenever I can. I like listening to MP3, I like easy installs and to top it all I like focusing on task at hand, not solving RMP dependencies, recompiling something and other BS stuff and RH x.x or just RH x promises all of this but fails to deliver, thank god there’s a lesser evil MS Win XP.
most admins ssh into the server not click on some gui. OSnew should be called DesktopNew.com; which is more fitting since we have so many desktop user.
> OSnews should be called DesktopNew.com;
Hah, care to buy the domain for us?
You know, you have no clue what you are talking about. OSNews offers news for all kinds of readers: developers, admins, newbies, advanced users. Every day, we have a full collection of different interesting news.
OK, everyone needs to stop bashing RH for not including MPlayer by default. RH is doing what it can to keep their distro free for download.
Sure, it’s stupid… but that’s life in the US now, with DMCA & other ridiculous laws. RH is just covering their ass. Besides, if you can’t get MPlayer installed, just give $299 to Microsoft and they will be happy to help you out
Not sure if this is on-topic or not,.. guess I’ll find out soon enough [inserts tongue into cheek].
Has anyone been able to get simple glut programs to build and run on RH9? It’s not working for me. Yes, I manually installed both glut rpms, yes the same code works on another platform, and yes glxinfo/glxgears work.
Weird.
Also, it really pisses me off that people take a SINGLE sentense of the article, while the article explained MORE than 20-25 points that need improvement or offered suggestios, and people just take that single sentence that MIGHT be desktop-related, and then they start get DEFFENSIVE and APOLOGETIC for Linux and start SHOOTING the postman (that’s me).
Look sweethearts, if Red Hat didn’t care for some of the points I make (e.g. metacity being slow, or OOo being slow to load), then they wouldn’t bother coding Metacity in the first place (sawfish was doing the job just fine) and they would just include AbiWord and Gnumeric as default Office elements which are faster to load.
Point is, Red Hat HAS these problems/lackings.
There is NO way around it, Red Hat is not as perfect as you want it to look like as. Re-read my article. I make a lot of different suggestions there, and not all are “desktop-oriented”. Point is, no mater what market RH is after, some things can become BETTER. And this is what I try to outline.
But instead of listen, you TROLL and you become apologetic. Get out of your stupid Linux box and THINK for a second.
Computer
Pentium 3 933Mhz
30GB HDD 5400rpm
256MB RAM
RH8
Stress test
Compiling 2 libraries at 100% CPU
Launch
kungf00> xmms Mission Impossible.mp3; oowriter
Observation
OpenOffice took 19 secs to start acording to XMMS
XMMS did not choke at all
Comment
Either RH9 is involutionary or it seems someone has a misconfigured box…
Send me a copy of your XF86Config file.
Forgot to tell…
I didn’t use esd crap…
I will need to reboot to do so. I am currently busy on my current partition, but when I find some time I will reboot and get it.
ko. Whenever you have time. 🙂
my day off i’m just messing with you
peace
Ok, so you switch sound outputs in XMMS to solve the skipping mp3s .. so how to fix the jerky DVD playback?
Is this merely a problem with bad Radeon drivers that come with RH9 or crappy DVD apps ? Both Ogle and Xine exhibit this behavior – I haven’t tried mplayer yet.
In the review it was stated that menu editing is disabled which is wrong
either
right- click on menu items to add/remove items
or
open start-here and go to applications
and re: State of the art
By Ulrich Hobelmann
It is now simple to see what applications are available
menu->System settings->add/remove applications
you then get a screen with package groups and indicators of what is installed and available
“thank god there’s a lesser evil MS Win XP.”
Yes, it’s a great OS but I cannot use it because I can’t accept it’s EULA.
“It is now simple to see what applications are available
menu->System settings->add/remove applications
you then get a screen with package groups and indicators of what is installed and available.”
I’m a RH9 user but I’m sorry to say that you are wrong. Yes, the RH package manager shows you packages that have been installed off the CD’s, but it does not show you installed packages that you obtained from another ources — say the internet. Since it doesn’t show you these packages, there is no way to see them in order to remove them.
The RH employees that populate the various mailing lists have all acknowledged this shortcominb in the current RH package manager and have said it’s being worked on.
I have a radeon (first generation) on a machine and a Radeon 8500 on another. DVDs play fine on both.
Be sure to have “options ide-cd dma=1” to your /etc/modules.conf.
That’s stated, the radeon 8500 has some strange refresh problem if “Millions colors” display is selected on my machine. Works much better with “16 bit” mode.
I had the same problem with Redhat 8 and the ATI Radeon drivers fixed them (but they do not exists officially right now for RH 9).
Be more precise about “jerky”. Is Ogle / Xine dropping frames? The reason I ask is because Ogle’s current version does not support deinterlacing; you may be viewing an interlaced disc which your player software can’t deinterlace, causing playback to look combed, jerky, and all-around nasty.
Try DVD playback with a progressive DVD and see if it’s an better.
-inq
/sbin/hdparm -d1 /dev/dvd
Add it to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local
I think this was a great article. Generally, when I read reviews, this is the stuff I look for. You just saved me the time of having to sift through all of the stuff typically written about the “new installer” or “whatever”.
No matter how much I wish someone would release a real replacement for Windows based on Linux, I keep going back to Windows. But, I keep wishing anyways.
Darren
I’ll try the suggestions to the config files … when I get home
Be more precise about “jerky”. Is Ogle / Xine dropping frames?
Ummm, well …. it looks like you’re trying to play the DVD on a machine that’s not fast enough to handle it. If that is what dropping frames means, then yes
The reason I ask is because Ogle’s current version does not support deinterlacing
Would it then affect Xine as well? Both DVD players have exactly the same issue.
You will need to make sure that you have DMA ON, on your DVD drive. If you don’t, no matter how fast machine you got, you will still drop frames under Linux. I think Aitvo earlier showed how to enable DMA on your DVD. Red Hat comes with DMA off on cd/dvd drives you see.
20 seconds of startup for Openoffice ?
Something wrong here. ON my AthlonXp 2000 itis 4-5 second after reboot.
Look like itis DMA problem, if itis switched off by default
just switch it on.
It is just strange people expect that Linux will work on
all configurations out of the box without any extra configuration. But if for example WinXp have problems after install itis ok to search for drivers and tune system.
Once my friend (happy owner of p3 800 Laptop with WInxp) tried to play divx which played on my old p2-233 laptop with xine (via nice -10) without problems. But it was so horribly
slow that he just deleted movie.
Of course if he would spend hours he could find a reason
for this. The same with Linux donot expect that you will not
need any extra tweaking after installation.
“Samba via the command line or via Nautilus/Konqueror will still not connect to my XP PRO share (MacOSX, and even Lindows on the same machine don’t have a problem with this);”
I am on a home network, and I found that I could not use NFS over the network until I had turned off the firewall on my own box, which Red Hat had on by default. The network already had a firewall, so all the firewall on my own machine did was keep me from interacting with other parts of the home network.
Maybe it’s a similar issue with Samba?
I do not have the firewall enabled with Red Hat.
Eugenia I’d have to say that your hdparm settings are not set properly for your harddrive, I used to have this problem as well. It is something to consider though Richard was only trying to suggest a solution, no need to bite back.
I’m thinking about writing a review for the new Geo Metro, just because it’s fuel economic doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tested as a race car.
>Eugenia I’d have to say that your hdparm settings are not set properly for your harddrive
For Christ’s sake, for the last time, I DO have DMA ON.
If you are all so advanced over here, could you PLEASE tell me how to change the MIME type of an executable text file I have here to text/x-sh that Gnome will see it as such (so it will allow me to load it on Nautilus as a Script)?
Red Hat 9.0 blew up my nice old stable (ran for 72 days since last reboot) 7.2 distro.
Red Hat 9.0 detected it, upgraded the packages.
And now it freezes on boot up just after the INET bits have loaded.
Hmmmm…..!
>:-(
Obviously it is not an easy for everyone distro yet!
Think I will install 7.2 again as it only took 25 mins to do so it the first place.
Mandrake is the best.
rolling on the floor
be nice and may the source be with u
“Despite all the above, I consider Red Hat Linux 9 still to be the most polished and professional Linux distro out there,…”
Thats about the most depressing thing I’ve heard all week.
> mp3 will skip sometimes when loading a new web page with Mozilla
… other distrubtions which disturb the kernel?
NG_RedHat_Threating is on top of actual kernel rapers. I have since many years always problems with this patchwork. Maybe SuSE is now good, their next distro fails (and so on)
Btw, I use Slackware and have no (mp3) problems. Ok, haven’t had so much “features” than RH, SuSE or whatever, but every feature runs like a charm 🙂
My MP3s never skipped – unless I patched the 2.4.20 kernel with low-latency, preemptive, HZ=x (x=1000) …
Shame on me, but I want it to test it… it sucks…
You DO realize that there’s more to it than just DMA right? But you’re so smart, and cant accept someone trying to lend you a hand, so i’ll let you figure shit out yourself, cause you’re so much better than us.
One thing is for fucking sure. You mentioned your “oh so fast” processor for nothing when complaining about MP3s skipping. The problem isnt your processor speed.
If your mp3s are skipping might I recommend using ogg? I just put RedHat 9 to a test on my Dual Athlon 2000+ workstation. I was streaming some of my ogg 311 collection while streaming A Clockwork Orange at 720×480 xvid/ogm with its own 256 kbps stereo ogg track and loading 6 or 7 web pages simultaneously in Galeon. Not a single skip.
But all this software was compiled for RedHat 8, galeon, xmms and gxine all seem to have some small quirks. Maybe when I get some new binaries my ogm audio will match up to the video again. Gkrellm is really cool, tho.
I noticed the same problem with RedHat 8.0. Anytime I opened a window or moved it the mp3 would skip. It was also very slow in moving windows. I changed to Slackware 9.0 and now I don’t have that probelm at all. It might be due to the fact that now I’m using a lightweight window manager (blackbox) but I didn’t get any skips even while recompiling a kernel. I don’t know why this is but slackware with blackbox is very fast. Moving and resizing windows is instantaneous.
WTF is wrong with you Fillion?
I answered the 200th time that DMA is ON, and people STILL cross me over this. And the FUNNY part is, that the freaking mp3 was STREAMING, therefore is NOT an hdd issue. GET A CLUE before you open you big mouth.
You have no idea how stressful it is to put all these articles online, EXPLAINING to people things, and STILL getting crossed for things that people don’t understand or for things that people don’t read carefully. You are so easy to pull your finger and cross me, but you have no idea how it is like being on the other side of the fense trying to explain things and people still not get it because their are SET to a certain mindshare.
>If your mp3s are skipping might I recommend using ogg?
MY MP3s ARE STREAMING RADIO. IT IS NOT ON MY HANDS TO USE OGG, as I don’t control the radio station.
and no, it is not bandwdith problem. The skipping happens exactly when mozilla tries to render a complex HTML, it does not happen always and it does not hjappen when it downloads. I have plenty of bandwidth here.
How many times should I write the SAME things OVER AND OVER before people understand the setup of the situation before they open their mouth to suggest things?
Yes, I have this same problem. I was thinking about switching out my kernel with a generic and seeing if the problem disappears. I did notice that switching my output driver helped a TON, but it never happened before RedHat 9.
You DO realize that there’s more to it than just DMA right?
-Richard Fillion
WTF is wrong with you Fillion?
I answered the 200th time that DMA is ON
-Eugenia
Enough said? Besides there is an updated kernel that fixed my problems with my internet connections, maybe you are having similar problems? It’s only a suggestion.
Remember that you even have to patch windows to get it working right. Nothing is perfect….
“Does a user need to MANUALLY enable DMA in this day and aga in 2003 on an OS like Red Hat? If yes, then Linux is far more behind that I thought it was.
To reply to your question, yes, I have turned on DMA.”
That’s good to hear. I’m certain that you’re aware of the difference between “deliberate design decision” and “bug”.
I think with all the other answers we’re that much closer to a solution. Any other problems? Feel free to ask.
Me too, I had that kind of prob with Redhat 8.0. But mine was with resizing a window or scrolling a web page in Mozilla at a fast speed.
Btw, I was listening to a radio.
In Redhat 8.0, The CD-Roms DMA was off at default, so to enable it, you had to:
add options ide-cd dma=1 in /etc/modules.conf
I don’t know if it will work in Redhat 9.0.
1)Lindows, Xandros and Lycoris are desktop friendly Linux distros, RedHat is *not* a desktop distro. 2)RedHat boots up slowly because it doesn’t need to, servers and workstations just don’t boot or reboot often. As to why RedHat takes longer to boot than most linux distros, it’s checking for new hardware, most distros don’t do that. 3) In past versions of RedHat, you needed to “Be sure to have “options ide-cd dma=1″ to your /etc/modules.conf.” as Jean_J noted above or xine/ogle/mplayer won’t play DVDs smothly which I thought was worth repeating/quoting. 4) If your Video Card is NVidia, it is *extreamly* important to upgrade to the new (1.0-4349) drivers as the old (1.0-4191) drivers did horrible things to Gnome that didn’t show in KDE (check gnomes mailing list and or forum for details). 5) IMHO ext3 is horrible for desktop use, it just consumes to much in the way of system resources. Reiserfs will do much to speed things along (or just use plain ext2).
-cheers
Redhat 9 better than mandrake 9.1? I don’t think so, the new Mandrake is a joy to work with. And the full version jump is psychologically tough to deal with.
As for the problems with OO, I think those are serious. A lot more polishing needs to go into that product, especially considering the importance of an office suite. It isn’t actually a distribution thing. Someone should do a full review of OpenOffice as a standalone product.
Well, every time I’ve attempted to use it it’s taken DAYS to get it installed. Then once it was installed it’s never worked right. I’ll give their latest and greatest another shot, but it will have to have made GREAT strides in the last few years for me to not think it’s junk. I know 3 people personally that have switched from MDK to RedHat 9, so I’m not getting my hopes up.
After a long offline chat with Eugenia, I no longer believe that it’s entirely a driver problem. (Though, I still do think she can gain performance once the NVidia driver stablizes.) The problem is not so much X or even Metacity IMHO, it may be more of a BlueCurve issue, as resizing a window takes a second or two for BlueCurve to catch up to the window border. Least, that’s what it sounds like after our discussion.
Well, not entirely. As I replied earlier offline, ALL the themes show the slow repainting of the *Metacity window manager* when resizing a window, *regardless* of the theme used. IMHO, it is an X and Metacity problem.
I’ll try not to be too critical here as most are insulting the author blindly. I love Redhat, but if someone is picky I don’t feel like someone just slapped my mother.
A few things that constantly get on my nerves though is how people complain of no ICQ or Mplayer, or MP3. Hasn’t anyone ever had to download a program on windows or does it come with ICQ, Winamp, photoshop, etc. Redhat even says in release notes and readme’s “refer to your admin” They purposely make a point to say hey joe user this is not for you.
Eugenia is very picky which I think is great, IMO she contributes to better systems in her own way, not by writing doc’s or source code, but by pointing out things these systems lack. Getting the attention of these developers to address these issues if for no other reason than to shut her up on giving bad press
But on things that are out of RedHats control like MP3 (other legal issues) This is worth pointing out for sure, people should know what they’re getting, but to attack it as a flaw in the companys control is irritating. Being sued is a worse for the company than is having the users take 3 minutes out of their day every 6 months to install an app.
>>Hell I still have to turn on DMA manually in Win XP.
>Funny, because DMA is ON for my hard drive on XP PRO, by >default.
I beleive that is hardware/driver dependent, not OS dependent. Some older hardware isn’t capable of doing DMA at all or reliably. In some cases, the default drivers on an OS can detect this capability, but not always. Sometimes the drivers for some ide controllers default to non-DMA to keep your data intact. I have seen instances that some ide controllers and drives do not work reliably together either.
Its quite possible that you are arguing about apples and oranges being the same…
Just my 2 pennies
> servers and workstations just don’t boot or reboot often
Nice argument, looks like Win2000 Pro is a server and Slackware or FreeBSD only for desktop use *g*
Slackware plays mp3 very smooth so Slackware can’t be a server… 😉
(try to disable unuseful daemons in RH and it boots faster)
Adding “options ide-cd dma=1” to to /etc/modules.conf did nothing.
However, I followed Aitvo’s suggestion and added “/sbin/hdparm -d1 /dev/dvd” to /etc/rc.d/rc.local and now DVD runs smoother than a baby’s ass .. dare I saw it looks better than on Win2k on the same machine.
Sometimes, these comments can be real gems
can we please get off the issue of the skipping mp3 stream? It’s a bug, and hopefully eugenia has filed some sort of bug report.
As for the slow window refresh. Yes that’s another bug too. Same goes for the choppy DVD playback. Yes, I do consider DMA not being enabled on a disk drive a bug.
This “review” emphasizes whats missing from RedHat. It is not meant to bash it, but to help. I also feel that RedHat just quite isn’t there yet. For instance. I changed my hostname under the Network config utility. It said i should either restart my networking or just restart the Computer. To me that’s a problem. Now instead of using the gui tool to change my hostname i have to use the gui and the cli, or just the cli. Why is there a button that just says ok? How about place a button there that will restart my networking for me, and then warn me that any connected users will be disconnected?
RedHat is a good OS in my opinion. It just needs some added features like eugenia said, with GUI tools. Yes i know everything can be done from the command line, and that ssh is an option, but so is VNC.
I know that some of you may be able to type 90 wpm, but for most i would guess clicking and pointing is easier. Not to mention the fact that some of us have fart finghersd