Redhat 8

I just installed rh8 and I must say it's pretty impressive (using it now). The email client is almost a direct copy of M$ Outlook, minus the security concerns. Updating the system is a piece of cake.

The only problem I had was getting mysql and php talking. The default server install doesn't compile php with mysql support. You have to customize on the initial install and find the right check box.

I'd say Microsoft should definitely be concerned. About the only thing missing between the two OS's is the availability of applications.

Has anyone else messed with it yet? I also downloaded Mandrake 9 and will put it on a different harddrive.

Which installation option did you use?

I have been curious to see this one but don't have a spare machine to use right now...

I did the custom install option.

As for a spare machine, just get yourself a Romtec Trios drive (tigerdirect.com). It lets you plug in 3 different harddrives and use them separately.

Or,
1) bust open the case and install a slave,
2) make a dual-boot system. Pretty easy option, especially if you're comfortable mucking with partitions.

On redhat 8. I'm going to wait for the .1 release, but I'm psyched to give it a go.

For all your redhatters- get autoupdate. It does everything redhat network does, and it's free. I use it on a few servers and it's served me well so far.

http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~gerald/ftp/autoupdate/

I just read this article from Hero Zzyzzx's sig about a user griping that RH 8 was "slow as molasses". I don't really buy it given that the laptop he tried it on just barely met the MINIMUM reqs for non-GUI use (he was griping about GNOME and KDE running slow) and the desktop he used was a 500MHz Celeron with 128mb of RAM. Funny... they installed WinXP on P3 1Ghz, 128 MB ram PCs at my school and those damnable things run like a sloth caught in a tar pit (interesting analogy... sorry, midterms due tomorrow.. can't think, brain burning ).

Still, I experienced some troubles with RH 7.0 when I first installed it here. I run a P3 866 MHz box with 512MB RAM and two 7200 HDDs. Things like Mozilla, Netscape, GIMP, and StarOffice took forever to load until I recompiled a 2.4.18 kernel (original was a 2.2.16). I don't know if I want to go mucking back through all that crap setting everything up again with 8.0 now that I just finally got 7.0 working right....

As for worrying Microsoft, I don't know about that. It's going to be tough to get the OS to the point where you can make it easy enough for the "average" user to use (i.e. don't let them touch anything so they can't hurt anything) and still have it useful for it's target market (i.e. give us unrestricted access and let us go wild).

I don't know what was wrong with that user's machine (I read that article, too.)

I'm running RH7.3 on bunch underpowered PII-233mHz (with 128 meg of ram) for mail servers and staging servers. I wouldn't say that Gnome and KDE are fast, but they are certainly useable. (of course, these boxes don't normally run X)

And I do have some fast machines to compare to- My main home machine (just rebuilt) is an Athlon XP 1700+ with 256 meg of DDR 2700 RAM and ATA 100 7200 RPM drives. . .

I don't know. This article was such a specific situation and gripe, I wouldn't give it much credence.

I would have to agree with Hero on this. I have RH7.3 on my laptop and it is only a celeron 400Mhz w/128megs ram. KDE isn't blazing, but it is more than sufficient for the task. I used it almost extensively this past week while I was out of town. Whatever problems this guy is having with 8.0 probably has little to do with linux and more with him.
I will probably check out RH8 when .1 comes out.

Hmm... RH7.3 on a 120Mhz Thinkpad with 20MB RAM. As you can imagine, I work in the console mostly . WindowMaker is actually useable on it, though. GIMP wasn't too bad, but when I tried to run blender it took ~5 seconds for the menus to pop up.

RH 7.2 on a 400mhz AMD K6-2 ran fine. My only complaint was with Gnautilus.

nautilus is slow everywhere, even on my Athlon XP. . . I hope gnome 2 has fixed this. For now, I just stick to gmc or something else, though it'd be nice to have nautilus's graphical schwa along with gmc's speed.