Red Hat 8.0
 

I was planning on putting the new server together this past weekend, but then found out that Red Hat 8.0 came out today. It has a new GUI, "Bluecurve", that is supposed to be a lot more user-friendly, and also tries to make GNOME & KDE more similar to each other.

However, it appears that the "official" mirrors don't yet have the 8.0 ISO's. I don't know if this is an intentional move on Red Hat's part to try to sell more CD's. Anyhoo, this site currently has them, in case anyone else is looking:

ftp://mir1.ovh.net/ftp.redhat.com/ft...0/en/iso/i386/

That is just perfect timing, because I was going to rebuild my Linux workstation today. :)

dumping xp, dave?

tobiasly, have you tried it yet? do you like it?

~james

No. But I'll always need to have a Linux workstation, because I do a lot of work on it. Right now, it's located in my office (with a new motherboard, processor and RAM and 2x36GB U160 drives waiting to be shitted on by Linux). I just brought in the drives today, so I was planning on installing Red Hat... and now I think I will. :)

The home system is happily running Windows XP Professional.

No, I'm still downloading.. maybe I shoulda waited until it was finished before sharing the link. :)

It's friggin' huge.. 5 CD's. Altough I believe one of those is mostly OpenOffice, and another has various admin utilities.

It looks like aside from the new GUI, there isn't a whole helluva lot that's new. So it may not be that big a deal for me, since I hardly ever use the desktop, although I might try it out more with the new setup.

I also never got Evolution to work right on my 7.2 box.. it was bundled beginning with 7.3, and it looks like 8.0 has an even later version. So maybe it'll work this time, 'cause I'd really like to give it a try.

Evolution is pretty easily the best email client I've ever used (with mutt a very close second). I got 1.0.8 working on Red Hat 7.2, 7.3 and Yellow Dog 2.2. The easiest way, of course, is to just use Red Carpet to install it (you don't have to install Ximian GNOME to install Evolution). Man is it good. :)

I'd be interested to know how much of a 'windows-killer' it actually is. I have to set up a computer for my roommate, and she's very much not a computer person, and I don't feel like buying all new software for the thing.

In other words, I wonder if it's ready for primetime yet.

I think my problem with Evolution is that I tried to install it the old-fashioned way, and it crashed or had some sort of missing dependency. Then I tried to uninstall it and use Red Carpet. And now something's screwed up.. it crashes anytime I try to setup a new user's Inbox.

Hermit, Red Hat themselves say that even now it's not ready for primetime.. their target is technical people who want a more unified environment. But I'll let you know what I find out.

Hmmm.. that link no longer works. I've only got two of the ISO's, and now there's this message in a README.txt:

Looks like the dealy in ISO availability is planned after all.

Ah, ok. I was going off the /. headline when I said that.

Well then hermit, did you see this link to the review? It looks pretty in-depth

Here's a screenshot from that article. Sorry for the slow load, but I didn't want to resize lest clarity be lost. Dave, you'll prolly dig all those font settings!

http://www.tobiasly.com/misc/cellar/bluecurve.jpg

I just hope all those fucking handicapped shortcuts aren't enabled by default, like in XP...

Yeah, I read the first page or 2, but then my short attention span kicked in...

I read her entire review and looked at all the screenshots. It looks nice. I'll probably buy it. :)

I don't think I like the red hat on the start icon.

Well, it's about fuckin' time... after several aborted transfers halfway through the files, I finally have all 5 ISO's. The FTP site doesn't appear to be working at all, although I got much faster transfer rates of the HTTP server anyway.

MD5's are A-OK, I'm burning the images as we speak, and hopefully tomorrow I'll actually get to install it!

do you actually need all 5 or are the last 2 source discs? i cant get even 1 of those friggin isos downloaded properly, so post whether or not its worth 40 bucks and maybe ill stick to 7.3 for now.

~james

Yes, discs 4 and 5 are just sources. Check out the README on any of the discs for more info.

Are you using the http link above? It's workin' a lot better than the ftp site.

funny thing about that, im downloading from a french ftp site right now (dunno which one, im at work) and i was getting a transfer rate of around 50kbps vs ~0.5kbps on any ftp located in the u.s.

any suggestions on how to burn an iso on an xp box without installing easy cd creator? i hate that program.

offtopic: i just had a client tell me his computer was stuck in 'hourglass mode'. :)

~james

Although I have never used Nero, I have often heard that it's the best CD burning software for Windows. I believe it's command-line only, though.

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue68/tag/11.html

Nero has a GUI.

Hmmm.. I thought Nero was the free one.

Maybe I'm thinking of CDRtools. Here is a link to a front-end for it; the "full installer" comes bundled with the CDRtools programs themselves, so that's all you need to get going.

I'm not sure how well it works, but it does support burning ISO files.

Of course, if you already have some flavor of Linux up and running, you can mount an ISO image just like a hard drive. Something like mount -t iso9660 psyche-i386-disc1.iso /mnt/iso/ should work. Then you can copy 'em to a Windows box or whatever.

well, i just finished burning disc 3 with nero, and im running a clean install of 8.0 on my laptop as we speak. ill let you know how it goes. :)

~james

this might be ignorance, but...

what the FUCK happened to Xconfigurator?

~james

uh. nevermind.

im a sucker for eyecandy, and let me say, redhat 8.0 has won my heart. i havent tried kde yet, but gnome is just beautiful even at a miserable 800x600 (thanks trident cyberblade!). the install went beautifully, would have been even nicer if i wasnt retarded. i still want to know why xconfigurator was in 7.3 but not 8.0. oh well. again with the eye candy, but im in love with the login screen.

~james

Yeah, the screenshot above rocks my world. Unfortunately, according to the article, the look isn't consistent with applications that aren't compatible with their window manager.

'Tis a shame.. screw the Gnome and KDE purists; I hope Red Hat can force everyone to finally start making all this shit work together the way it should.

well, id really hate to see red hat 'force' anyone to do anything. the sort of structured anarchy is what drew me to linux in the first place. but from going through kde, it appears i can still set it up just about any way i like, so im glad redhat didnt turn everything off, even though im going to stick with their look for now.

and i like the redhat start button. its cute.

~james

Stupid Linux question...

I almost never actually use my Linux box from the console. I use SSH with X forwarding on my XP machine, so that any X programs just show up as individual windows on XP.

So... is there any way to log in to the Gnome desktop this way? I guess VNC is almost what I'm lookin' for, but my understanding is you actually have to have Gnome running on the server to use that.

Any idears?

Well, well I've been downloading every dist of Linux for years now, hoping someone would finally put together a dist that didnt require me to think much to get running. And now I have it. Wireless with WEP-128, remote control of my XP Pro machines & terminal servers, everything working on the first try on my IBM Stinkpad. I'm in heaven. redhat 8 has won me over.

Now, the last time I got this excited about an OS build, the company was gone 18 months later. Can anyone name that OS? Prizes will be awarded.

Amiga?

bzzzt. want to buy a vowel?

BeOS?
 

Would that be the answer?

Bingo
 

You are correct, sir. Your prize is is a free BeOS 5.03 upgrade .

That and a few dollars should get you a cup of coffee.

Three days in, and I'm still using redhat on the laptop. Previously, I'd never made it past day two.

Question: is there a way to turn off the bells & whistles in Xwindows? it's messing with my audio a bit.