What are your initial impressions of Redhat 9.0?

[The Coder]

SO what do you guys think of RedHat9.0? Is it basically a repackage of 8.0? SOme people mentioned that 8.0 had too many bugs for them and they will wait for 9.0? Did 9.0 fix these bugs? SHould I buy it or wait for the next version?

BTW what version of the Kernel is included with it?

[LrngTheHardWay]

RH9 is a 2.4.20 kernel, IIRC.

My overall impression of RH9, as installed on my daughter's machine, was pretty much of a shrug from the outset. It strikes me as a little faster than RH8.0, but the re-vamping of the Ui--as compared to RH7.3--bugged me a bit.

I'll admit that it's growing on me. I don't want it to, but it is.

At this rate, I'll probably go out and buy another pair of 120's and install it...just for fun, mind you. ;)

If you want to download RH9, go grab it from:
ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/linux/9/en/iso/i386
ftp://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/redhat/linux/9/en/iso/doc
Their bandwidth has always been good. (You'll probably have all 7 ISOs in under 7 hours.)

[rbrimhall]

I started using Linux a few months ago on Red Hat 8... I found it very stable once I learned my way around a bit... did not like that Bluecurve was pretty much the only interface you could use (icon wise at any rate)... 9 has fixed this by changing icons when you change themes... IMHO RH 9 seems a little more buggy though than 8.0. For instance, the GUI rpm interface stalls when loading RH 9 rpms from freshrpms... command line works fine. Realplayer doesn't seem to install properly... but overall I like it better than 8.0... it still has problems though since I am still learning... some of these are probably my fault and not the OS...:)

[sajchurchey]

After my initial installation on a Celeron 733:

The interface is beautiful. I do not like the idea of unifying GNOME and KDE, but Bluecurve as a theme is beautiful; I think RH should make their own DE or make other Themes/Behaviors avaialble at installation.

I did not like, however, KDE. It was running kind of slow i don't know if it's just KDE 3.1 being bloated, or RH's own version of KDE.

So b/c of KDE being slow, I have started using WindowMaker more, although I have yet to try GNOME indepth on this system.

[madcompnerd]

Been using RH9 for just over a week. I ran the upgrade from RH8.0; it worked and I didn't do any reconfing.
RH9 doesn't support my mouse fully, RH8.0 did.... So it's a M$ mouse?! It was the cheapest (thumb) trackball I could find :).
I use KDE, I like it. I haven't found it to be slow, but I have quite a bit of extra resources as far as typical desktop use. I think I've used my swap partition a few times, when dealing with scanned images in png format.

I like it overall, but I'm a RH fan. I don't mind the integration of KDE and Gnome. You still have the alternative of installing them standalone; I think I haven't tried.
Actually, they need to be a little more integrated. So my KDE theme will apply to the Gnome applications I run in it :).
The most important difference:
FONTS!
First good linux fonts I've seen.

[czgu]

I think RH8.0 is better than RH9.0. In GNOME, Nautilus, if I select view as list, I can't highlight a file and start editing it, if I select view as icons, I can't drag the file by pressing right button and copy it to other directory.

[LrngTheHardWay]

Originally posted by madcompnerd
RH9 doesn't support my mouse fully, RH8.0 did.... So it's a M$ mouse?! It was the cheapest (thumb) trackball I could find :).

Replace it?...Dirt-cheap, even! (http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PROFRAME&PROD_ID=33100)

[lordinfidel]

I noticed some differences over 8. Essentially it was all in the gui.

Text mode, can't tell the difference between 8 over 9, besides the kernel version.

They added some more things to make it more user friendly. Which was a plus. Like most others out there, even though the bluecurve is cool looking, the icons still remind me too much of XP's kindergarden style.

But overall, if you are just going to use it in text mode, then you probably won't need to use 9 anyways. Just upgrade your kernel to 2.4.20.

If you have RH8 and want the extra "navigational functionality" in the gui, then go to 9.

The only question I have is, when are they going to stop forcing sendmail down our throats? You uncheck it, it still get's installed. You do a custom install and manually deselect the package, it still get's installed. I mean WTF?

JMHO

[hard candy]

With RH9 3, things are automated which were a real pain to configure before:
1. Canon USB scanner- worked from the get-go, up till now I had to manually change the xsane configuration file.
2. USB Logitech keyboard- able to use it in the Grub boot-up screen. Before I had to keep a "old fashioned" keyboard hooked up to choose the OS.
3. Ethernet and wireless connected to ADSL- It worked as soon as I booted up after installing, no network configuring needed.
And all this happened after a clean install- not upgrading.
It's nice to start using the computer instead of having to rewrite configuration files for a couple of days. RedHat did a decent job with this release.

[KaiserFro]

Plain and simple...they should have called it Redhat 8.1.

Jeff

[Ed]

Having migrated from Mandrake to RH I would not know what previous versions looked like. The fonts absolutely rock. RH newsgroups do not seem to be as *****ious as Mandrake. RPM package handling from the people who invented it suck. Very slow installing RPM's.

Seems more stable and hardware friendly than Mandrake.

[kr0m3]

i'm a graphic artist and along the lines of the "hard candy" post above...
i had dl'd all of the Wacom Intuos USB graphics tablet how-to's and was contemplating trying (again...) to actually be able to use the corner-stone tool of my trade in Linux (just 1 less albatros from Redmond around my neck).

Didn't have to. The damn thing works great! No config, no nuttin!

I upgraded, now I can use my Wacom in Redhat. Simple as that.

Now...if there was only an open-source proggie comparable to Procreate's Painter...

hmmm..
:D

~k

[Hubbe]

Originally posted by KaiserFro
Plain and simple...they should have called it Redhat 8.1.

Jeff

You hitted the spot !!!! The only reason Redhat changed the number to 9 is that their "worst" competitor Mandrake have used number 9 for a while already....just buisness ;)

[madcompnerd]

RH8.0 and RH9 are incompatible as far as code compilation. It has a new version of glibc, and since it's incompatible they change it's number.
I guess now they're going away from the point system entirely, that's really annoying I think.

[Hubbe]

Originally posted by madcompnerd
RH8.0 and RH9 are incompatible as far as code compilation. It has a new version of glibc, and since it's incompatible they change it's number.
I guess now they're going away from the point system entirely, that's really annoying I think.

don't no how to put this nicely....but if linux can't get any system that stops theese new distro problem...allways when a new distro is comming you have to have new rpm packages of software to get it to run on your distro..... this is like shooting your self in the knee.....every version that is coming out is a new "operating system" god damn (sorry)......not even windows (that was an ugly word) have this problem......linux has to find a way to get theese distro problems to dissaper or this won't never last.......

[sajchurchey]

Originally posted by Ed
Having migrated from Mandrake to RH I would not know what previous versions looked like. The fonts absolutely rock.

It pretty much looked like any other distro prior to RH 8.0. As far as hardware compatability, I've never really paid attention b/c I've never had hardware conflicts, except w/ WinModems of course.

[busa_blade]

I think RH8.0 is better than RH9.0. In GNOME, Nautilus, if I select view as list, I can't highlight a file and start editing it, if I select view as icons, I can't drag the file by pressing right button and copy it to other directory.

Use the middle mouse button instead of the right button now.

I noticed this unobvious difference. If you are using emulate 3 buttons, then use both the left and right to drag and drop a file.

Nautilus cd-burner is really nice. I only wish it dealt with cdrw's.

To me, rh9 seems a bit faster, especially at login. I don't know if this is because they restart X after every session or what. But login is hella faster to me.

I definitely suggest to anyone to upgrade to 9.

But, I say scrap redhat's package manager in favor of apt. I think it beats redhat's package manager hands down.

Apt is one of redhat's little know secrets, even though it was originally for debian.

[sajchurchey]

Actually i've found KDE to run a little slower on my system since the upgrade. It boots up into KDE a bit faster, but it runs fairly slugish on my 733MHz Celeron. So I'm using WindowMaker a lot now.

[serz]

I'm going back to Redhat 8, I don't like it.

[rambo2_981]

I agree with KaiserFro; if RH offered 2.5.x, then they should bump their major release number (e.g. 9.0). But, with the same 2.4.x kernel (even a minor revision only fixed bugs but added no new features or kernel improvements), it should have been 8.1. I guess the RH MBAs were busy and thought they'd garner more seats if they bumped the major revision rather than a step release, which it should have been. Once I found out it was still 2.4.x, I wasn't going to bother. 8.0 is plenty stable for me.

[ChaosCommand]

Hubbe, when you wrote your last message, were you using Mandrake? I noticed every time you typed 'these' it had two "E's"

I have that problem in Mandrake as well, with it typing too many letters. I guess it is because I switch keys too quickly or something like that. I would like to know where speed settings and stuff like that are set in Mandrake and Red-Hat so I can finally get a good setup.

I like pretty GUI's, I love the cli and everything. But I think Mandrake has Red-Hat beat on that, and especially on hardware support (except my dag on keyboard)

How the heck do you get rid of the stupid red hat icon where the 'K Menu' should be?


And on to my first impressions:

I try to install Red-Hat 9.0, after having failed on ever getting 8.0 working, I wasn't going to be shocked if it didn't install. But suprisingly everything went fine, I got my Windows partition up, and the install was easy, although, I still don't like the fact that I have to use all 3 cd's, but hey, what can ya do?

I start up with gnome and everything looks great, I look around, and the interface looks cool (from 7.3 to 9.0) and I am impressed.
Although I like everything, I hate that stupid Red-Hat Icon where the Gnome Icon should be for the menu, I have yet to figure out how to get rid of it, but I am sure it is possible, but Red-Hat doesn't want to make it easy I can tell you that.

The fonts are hands down the best I have ever seen, even better than Mandrakes, they are just soooo cool, and I love them even more than Windows, so very nice job with that. I also love the cursors.... don't ask why, but they are cool looking.

Red-Hat is much more stable IMO than Mandrake, almost no bugs (but if you try to create an edge panel... moving it arond, some things get screwed up and force you to restart for it to actually work), but that is really the only bug I have noticed.

The RHN Icon.... it is buggy, it freezes, it has even made the computer freeze, which was a shocker. Sometimes it doesn't show right, some times it takes up too much space, and sometimes it doens't load at all, so.... I mostly turn it off, but I wish it was fixed.

RPMs... I do like them, although I don't download that much, I guess they are okay.... I would still like to one day get some compatable hard ware to run Gentoo, or Slackware or something like that, but until then, I guess RPMs will have to do. Compiling stuff isn't that bad.


One strange problem though... I get an amazing amount of BUS noise from my graphics card. I know my new graphics card has Bus noise problems, I have learned to live with it in Windows, but in Linux, it is amazingly louder, and more often.... so I don't know what is going on there.

Overall.... Red-Hat is heading in the right direction, and I wouldn't be surprised if Red-Hat steals a couple handfulls of users from Mandrake.

I will give it a 9.3 out of 10 - nice job with bluecurve

Mandrake I will give a 8.6 out of 10 - just because of keyboard screw ups, bugs when trying to restart the computer.

[KaiserFro]

I actually did do the upgrade at work.

I was using the 2.4.20 kernel anyway for other reasons, so I figured I'd give the RH9 a shot.

At least it upgraded Gnome, KDE, and Xfree. It looks fabulous with the anti-aliased fonts.

Took me a little while to figure out why I couldnt compile the kernel, but once I figured that out I've had no problems with it.

Being that it's not technically a major release I didnt feel that it was very risky.

Jeff