On Sun, 29 Dec 2002 15:16:48 +0800 Robert Storey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I know some people are going to take this as a troll, though it's not > meant to be. It's a constructive criticism of Redhat 8.0. I hope the > RH management people are reading this. > > I'm a long-term Redhat user, recently defected to Debian. I still have > a Redhat installation on one partition, and I've been testing RH 8.0 > recently (and I'm using right now to write this). > > On the one hand, I'll congratulate Redhat on the move to gcc 3.2 and > Gnome 2.0 - both are improvements. It's also interesting how Redhat is > (finally) getting a handle on package management. And yes, 8.0 seems > quite stable. Security and good configuration tools are strong points. > > BUT, the big issue is the missing apps. It was already a blow to > Redhat users when the Powertools CD disappeared in version 7.1. I > still have an old Powertools disk, but those rpms (compiled under gcc > 2.96) can no longer be used with gcc 3.2. And now, starting from > version 8.0, multimedia apps have vanished. Yes, I know some of the > politics behind mpg, but the current situation is ridiculous. Also > newly vanished are lightweight window managers (FVWM2, IceWM, XFCE, > Windowmaker, etc). Rp3 has disappeared, and I don't see any > replacement (right now I'm using /sbin/ifup ppp0 to get online). I > actually know a few people who tried 8.0 and then went back to 7.3 > because they needed the apps. Compared to the competition (Mandrake, > SuSE, Debian), Redhat can now claim to have the leanest distro of the > bunch. This seems to contradict Redhat's recent push to capture the > desktop market. > > Of course, you can try to repair 8.0 by scouring the Internet for > downloads. In most cases, you wind up with source code - sometimes it > compiles, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it compiles but the app > segfaults when you run it. You need time, good luck and karma to > assemble a working system. With all the compiling and downloading I'm > doing, I feel as if I'm running Gentoo rather than Redhat. I'm an > experienced user, and I'm finding it a struggle - new users must be > blown away. > > OK, I know I'm going to get flamed. That's OK - I'm used to being > called an idiot. But before you turn on the flamethrowers, ask > yourself if the above isn't true. If Redhat has a secret Powertools > disk out there that I'm not aware of, just tell me, and I'll buy it. > If I've erred in my reasoning, I'll gladly admit it. > > I do hope all these problems will be solved in the next release. I'm > willing to give 8.1 a try when it comes out - I just hope they don't > remove all the Email clients and web browsers from that version. I won't address directly things such as rp3. I don't do dialup and don't know what tools are available. I do know there are some. I used to do dialup and used them. For the remainder, two words: look around. Two more: compile tarball. My "pristine" Redhat-only installs last about 15 minutes. That's just long enough for me to start adding things in and putting newer versions than they release on the machine. I currently have a huge mixture of tarballs, RH8.0, RH7.3, Mandrake, SuSE and Rawhide all over this machine. This is the way I always do it. Even some of the Caldera binaries have been known to work. I also have some from the last powertools that still work. Almost all of mine are in RPM form even though many of them didn't come to me that way. There are other sources, too: freshmeat, falsehope, freshrpms, just to name a few. The one bit of criticism Redhat users come into that I tend to agree with is the idea they need to stick to pre-packaged stuff (Debian users could rightly come into the same thing). Redhat isn't linux. Neither is Debian, Slackware, SuSE or any other distribution. I understand (partially) the notion of keeping things in packaged form. There are ways to do that. One doesn't even need to go through a lot of effort to do it when tools like "checkinstall" are available to do all of the work for you. The option of learning to roll your own is always available as well. Personally, I think people do themselves a disservice by tying themselves strictly to one package manager or another, I completely understand noobs doing it until they become comfortable with things. But, after awhile, we should all be comfortable enough to move on. And we can still use the tools available that take most or all of the effort out of maintaining things. While I don't necessarily agree with the steps taken on the multimedia front, I don't see what the big deal is either. It took me all of 15 minutes to fix it, from the time of discovery (I never read the release notes, for shame) to the point of running gcombust to burn a CD and have everything else working. True, newlings won't know these things. but when they ask, they get told. Only one caveat to the above: it can mess up the use of up2date* doing this. It has never caused me any problems**, but it very well could under the right circumstances. Finally, while a few things may be missing that it makes sense to add in (such as a dialer, which I'd bet is available even if it isn't the one used before), they can't possibly put everything out there in each release, even on 3 CDs. SuSE does as close as anybody will get. But you have to buy the super-supreme version to get it. The ftp-install (the only free way) and the personal boxed version are limited in scope. So, to get beyond the natural limits that are inherent to releasing distributions, one still needs to go looking around to find the missing items. * My up2date hasn't worked in 8.0 ever, not even with the very first try. I get an error about not having permission to access i686 or something along that line. I never bothered trying to fix it. Autorpm works just fine. ** I had more problems trying to use red-carpet and getting up2date to play nice again. In addition, up2date has even managed to add the capability of tracking items that were added-in by me, things that weren't even included in the base install. not all, but many. -- I can't remember if I'm the good twin or the evil one. -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
