Why do you say 8.0 sucks?

I agree, RedHat 8 sux

RedHat stepped up from version 7.3 to version 8 - and all that they did was turn Linux into bloatware. Well, not exactly, but they might as well have. Here's my rant ...

This new version is aimed at getting Linux into the personal workstation market. They added a whole collection of office/productivity apps, redefined the entire GUI - and, in my opinion, cluttered it up to improve its "prettyness". It also seems a lot slower and a bit more buggy than version 7.x.

This is okay though, and do you know why? Because when RedHat first stepped up from 6.2 to 7.0, version 7 sucked horrendously! It was completely unreliable, buggy, and bloated. Version 7.1 fixed most of the bugs, and versions 7.2 and 7.3 were two of the best linux distributions I've ever used.

Now we're stepping up once again from 7.3 to 8.

Version 8 is RedHat's first try aimed at the general pc power user. Sure it may be buggy, but the cool new task-oriented GUI and RPM package management upgrades (e.g. while installing/upgrading the distribution) make it very easy for a newbie to get started and do some simple customizations right off the bat. What it comes down to is that they're on the right track to get Linux into the mainstream market.

Right now version 8 is disliked by many linux power users because they all feel that RedHat sacrificed power and stability to make pretty RAM-hogging graphics and make it newbie-friendly. My opinion - wait until 8.1 comes out before you pre-judge. RedHat did a nice overhaul here and it'll take at least one minor step upgrade before bugs are worked out of it.

A few more things I forgot to add ...

It's gotten a lot of hype lately, but for those of you who aren't aware, RedHat 8 doesn't come with anything to play your multimedia files! The new version had some sorta problem with the justice dep't (not sure of the details) but what it comes down to is that they aren't allowed to distribute many of today's popular codecs with their software.

Which means that you'll have to go to their website (or one of 1000000000 mirror sites) to download a few small files. Really no biggie deal. (The equivalent of having to go to Windows Update to download the latest Java virtual machine to run any java applet because of Microsoft's beef with the justice department).

The big problem is that RedHat is contradicting themselves, here. These hypocrites came out with a whole new newbie-oriented version. And yet, a newbie will get the distribution up and running 1-2-3, go to play their .mp3s, and no sound will come out! And they're going to be the ones who don't KNOW they have to download the codecs!

One more problem with RedHat 8 I'm not happy with. They came out with their own highly optimized (yet in my opinion, bloated) versions of KDE and Gnome (desktop managers for XF86). Sure, RedHat8 makes them look nice, but I was having some problems upgrading KDE to the latest stable release (from kde.org). I never had a problem upgrading KDE on RedHat 7.x. Maybe I just haven't yet figured out how to do it, or you have to do it a different way with this version, I dunno. So far all that I was able to see was that RedHat altered some of the file structure behind these two "programs" from how they were originally designed. Maybe I'll take another looksie when I get a chance (been really busy lately).

Once again, just my rant.

Thanks for the feedback. I don't blame RedHat for making Linux "prettier." Most desktop users (people who use Windows) want an easy solution, and of course this is one way to draw them in, by making it prettier and giving them the illusion that it's easier to use. Hey, a company is there to make money. You can't blame RedHat for doing something like this. They can't just worry about what's best for the Linux community. They have to worry about what will sell and catch on, even if it's not necessarily "the best" solution for current Linux user. It's a company after all. Just my two cents.

I'm going to roll back to 7.3 on my server box.

RedHat 8.0 SUCKS!
First thing I noticed was when I upgraded my Linux Server from RedHat 7.3
that it lost it's NIC and Soundcard. Other software quit working. I had to
format the drive and start from scratch!

First thing I noticed is RedHat removed ALL MP3 players, all DivX players, and all MPEG players!
Not to mention they removed the GUI RPM manager, and all web browsers
except Mozilla. The File Browser has NO Tree view so you can't navigate anywhere!

Also, removed LINUXCONF, the only GUI way to manage your partitions and
edit your /etc/fstab file. There's a version of LinuxConf for Redhat 8,
but without an RPM manager it won't install. Besides you need to
download a separate GUI for this version!
Same for Adobe reader. You can download it but it won't install!

RedHat 8 SUCKS!

I'm sure glad I never installed it on my desktop.
I've left it at ver 7.3 and sure am glad I did.

Vic

Thanks for the feedback vbradley. Everywhere I go I hear the same thing about it: it sucks, stick with 7.3. All this hype makes me want to get into Linux more and more.

That last post was me by the way. For some reason the forum didn't save my login session. Dani, what are you up to... :shock:

vbradley, you just reminded me ...

I've been trying to find a RPM package manager for Redhat 8 for the LONGEST time! I was able to force an install of the RH7.3 version of gnorpm, but I'd much rather use Kpackage. When I tried installing kpackage though, it said it was missing a whole lotta KDE files it was dependent on. Which doesn't make sense b/c KDE is all working properly and all available KDE-related libraries, etc are installed. I tried installing the KDE files kpackage said it needed (I swiped them off www.rpmfind.net), and it gave me a whole bunch of "conflicting files" errors. Which brought me to my point above that RedHat8 screwed up the whole KDE file structure!

BTW, if you want to install a package without using an rpm package manager, you can type the following in a console:

to install a new package, "cd" to the directory where it's located
rpm -i packageName.rpm

to upgrade to a newer version of a package, locate the package again...
rpm -Uvh packageName.rpm

If you're not sure if a previous version exists, use the -U switch instead of the -i switch. If RedHat can't find a previous version, it'll default to installing it normally.

The above relate to installing/upgrading an .rpm package, which must be already built for the current version of linux you're using (your kernel). You may also encounter source RPMs, whose extension is .src.rpm, which must be compiled for your kernel before they can be installed.

In RedHat 7.3, you compile an .src.rpm (Source RPM) package by typing:

rpm --rebuild fileName.rpm

It'll spit out a whole bunch of weird looking lines as it compiles. Just make sure the last line says that it didn't fail. What's important is to pay attention to a line about 3/4 down which will be something along the lines of "wrote to: /usr/src/redhat/RPMs/i386". (The last folder may be different, depending upon the archetecture of your machine). This is the path that the compiled .rpm file was written to. Browse to this directory and now type rpm -i or rpm-U as usual.

This method is different in RedHat 8. Instaed of using rpm --rebuild, you use:

rpmbuild fileName.rpm

It took me forever and a day to figure this one out! I finally found the answer in RedHat's man pages. I couldn't install any source rpms for the loooongest time! In fact, I downgraded to RedHat 7.3 from 8 on one of my machines just b/c of this fact!

Another program which is a godsend is "apt-get". This is a ported version of Debian Linux's infamous package manager system. Basically all you do is type in the URLs of a bunch of FTP sites which contain a large selection of .rpms. (e.g. sourceforge, etc).

Then, lets say you want to install a program such as mplayer, one of the best Linux media players around. All you have to do is type:

apt-get install mplayer
or
apt-get upgrade mplayer

And the program will do the rest! As long as you're connected to the 'net, It'll search it's huge depositories of .rpm files, and automatically install the right one for your computer. Dependency problems are no more, as well! Suppose it encounters another program which is needed to install mplayer. It'll automatically find and download that one as well. And if that second one needes files, off it goes again in a split second.

And it takes care of this all by itself! All you have to do is type apt-get mplayer and within a minute everything is installed and working. (That's my personal experience, anyway). BTW, apt-get also works with cd-roms. For example, you can install a program from the RedHat CD.

Note that the original version of apt handles .deb package files for the Debian Linux system. This ported version only handles .rpm files for, you guessed it, RedHat ... and also for Mandrake Linux and all the other distributions which also support .rpm packages.

If you wanna get apt-get, search for it on www.rpmfind.net.

Hope I was some help to someone, somewhere, struggling over RedHat 8's lack of package managing systems! Good luck!

This topic-subtree has pretty matured from the initial question whether samba does move files to a recycle-bin or not to a discussion about redhat 8.0 ... so I will post something else about redhat 8.0 here. You can read about a lot of red-hats "features" aka "cripples" here:
http://www.mosfet.org/noredhat.html

This text isn't written by me - I'm not mosfet - but it shows pretty well how things are handled by red-hat team.

Have fun reading it ;-)

Best regards,
blueICE

Well, I just split this topic in half, so the RedHat 8 debate is now its own thread.