Review of Red Hat Linux 7.2

Review of RedHat Linux 7.2

by Mark Riedesel - [email protected]

INSTALLATION

Installation was really quite painless compared to most Linux installations just a few years ago. The installer boots directly from CD and in most cases it will jump into a nice graphical installer. From there you configure your keyboard and mouse.

After that, the installer gave me a couple options for setting up my harddrive partitions. I could use Linux FDISK or DiskDruid. Linux FDISK is very similar to DOS FDISK except it has quite a few more features. DiskDruid is Red Hat's drive partitioning tool which uses an easy to understand GUI, similar to that of Partition Magic.

Now comes the time to set up my partitions. For my laptop I removed my single large partition that I was currently using for Windows98 and created two partitions for Red Hat. As a general rule, Linux needs at least 2 partitions, one being your root filesystem and then the second is for a swap partition, although you have the option of having many more. Often a boot partition is required, but since my laptop is fairly new I can go without one.

So now I've got my partitions set up, quite painless, I have a large partition for root (which is mounted as / ), and a 128MB swap partition (mounted as /swap ).

I'm now ready to install system files and packages. The installer allows the user to choose which ones to install during system installation, but you can still add and remove packages later as needed.

After sytem files and packages were installed, the installer prompted me to configure my display settings for X (X's official name is XFree86 in this case, I'll call it X from now on). X is a freely redistributable open-source implementation of the X Windows System. X also runs on a variety of other operating sytems as well, even MacOS X via Darwin.

Without X, your Linux machine will simply be operated via a shell. A shell is a text based environment, just imagine MS-DOS with much much more power and options, my favorite shell is Bash (Bourne Again SHell).

Anyway, back to the installation! The installer recognized my graphics card, but something was wrong with 2D acceleration so it was drawing windows without buttons, I then disabled 2D acceleration and now everything looks great.

After configuration of X was complete, the installer prompts for the installation of a bootloader. My options were LILO (LInux LOader), GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader), or install LILO to a floppy disk.

Since I have a particular dislike for GRUB, I went with LILO. LILO was then installed to the master boot record of my primary harddrive (my laptop only has one), which linux calls /dev/hda.

Finally, installation is complete.

The installer rebooted the sytem and I watched the fresh installation of Red Hat Linux 7.2 boot up for the first time, within a minute or so, it was up and running.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I logged into my user account and started up X, I was glad to see I had a couple options for window managers, including Gnome and KDE, as well as a few more slightly obscure ones. I chose KDE since I have a particular preference for it, within a couple seconds I was at the desktop. A couple things I noticed were a few shortcuts on the desktop which were links to Red Hat's website, and a couple Linux guides, which most linux newbies would be happy to see.

I started checking out some of the packages that were installed by default, one that really impressed me was KDevelop, a very nice programming IDE which reminded me a lot of Microsoft Visual Studio, except it didn't seem quite so bloated.

KDE comes with a variety of useful applications such as KOffice, which includes KWord, KPresenter (similar to PowerPoint), and a couple other apps which are comparable to Microsoft Office, even a nice little spreadsheet program.

There were also a few amusing little games to keep me entertained for a short time, although I can't do too many fancy things with my pathetic old laptop.

PAST THE SURFACE

After a while I was getting very annoyed by the almost constant running of my harddrive, I assume this was due to the fact I only have 96MB of ram in my laptop, and Red Hat appears to start up a bunch of daemons (programs that run in the background, like windows services) which suck up all my ram. Also KDE is a bit of a system hog with all of its wonderfully pretty graphics, which are very nice, but once eye candy gets in the way of productivity, I get unhappy.

I switched from KDE to Blackbox for my window manager, since blackbox is a lot cleaner and less flashy than KDE or Gnome, it was a little better, but I still wasnt impressed by all the things running in the background. Although many of the daemons can be disabled, I don't like the idea the default installation runs them all by default.

On the flip side, I did like it that most of my devices were auto-detected. Including my PCMCIA ethernet and my USB ethernet adapter (I switch between the two, depending which one is currently lost under a pile of junk on my computer table).

I also love Konquerer, the web browser included with KDE, although this isn't a Red Hat specific feature considering KDE is available for almost every linux distrobution, I still like it much more than Internet Explorer or Netscape. Another good browser available for Linux is Opera, not many people are aware of its existance, partially because it's not free, although a free version is available which contains banner ads.

NEW KERNEL? NOT SO QUICK

Something I commonly do, compile a new kernel for my linux machines so my machine boots up slightly quicker since it doesn't contain drivers for anything but the hardware my particular computer has, makes sense doesn't it?

I attempted grabbing a fresh kernel source from ftp.kernel.org like I always do with other Linux distro's such as Mandrake, I unpacked the kernel, configured it, and compiled it, then I tried booting it, not so good.. Red Hat freaked out. I checked out Red Hat's website and they recommend using one of their "modified" kernels, I don't like this because 1. when a new kernel is out, you have to wait for Red Hat to modify it before you can use it. And 2. it's modified.

So I grabbed a modified Red Hat specific kernel, and I had a screwey time just trying to get the kernel to compile cleanly.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS

While Red Hat 7.2 is very nice and flashy, and probably runs fairly cleanly on a large fast computer with plenty of ram, I disliked the lack of simplicity and elegance that some other Linux distro's provide. Needless to say, I got fed up with Red Hat and installed Debian, I absolutely love Debian.

One thing I like about Debian is that it is maintained by volunteers, and not a large corperation like Red Hat, but that's a whole other article :)