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Project: Linux  Reviews
Red Hat 7.0
By Mayank Sarup <mayank@freeos.com>
Posted: ( 2000-12-20 13:12:11 EST by )
Red Hat 7 is the latest and greatest release to come out of Research
Triangle Park. Should it have been later and could it possibly have
been greater? Let's find out.
Version 7 (Guinness) certainly has been one of the most anticipated and
hyped releases of Red Hat. It's been out for a while now and it's time
to see whether all that hype was justified. We'll be reviewing the Red
Hat 7 ftp release here. The first thing new about the distribution is that there are now two
installation CD's. Red Hat has added a lot of new stuff here namely
OpenSSH and Tripwire for security, Kernel 2.4, Abiword, Xfree86 4.0
and USB support. Is the added software worth it? System administrators
are still likely to go for the latest software release off the net.
Desktop users will like this because there is quite a bit of useful
and more importantly, up-to-date software to work with here. Coming to the installation. There's not a lot new in the Red Hat 7.0
install. If you've been through a 6.2 install, you've already seen
what the 7.0 install looks and feels like. There are some improvements
though. One new thing in the install is the ability to select both the
GNOME and KDE desktop environments for installation. Red Hat 6.2
allowed you to choose either but not both. X configuration has also
been beefed up and it's much more structured now. You can select which
environment you want to use by default here. Detection of the video
card and monitor seems to work better than in previous releases.
Though our monitor was not in the list, the default values detected
worked just fine. All relevant parameters of the Matrox G200 with 8MB
on our test machine were detected correctly. We also tried an install
on a system with the 810 chipset. Previous releases promised support
but did not deliver. No such problems this time. The chipset was
detected correctly and we were also able to test the configuration
right there. Disk Druid still remains very capable but is nowhere close to
Mandrake's partition tool, which just steamrollers the competition. We tried a couple of upgrades from Red Hat 6.2 and they worked very
smoothly, and more importantly, without a lot of input from us. We found that the second CD was not required for the workstation
installs. It is only required for the server, custom installs or the
upgrades. We initially thought that some packages might have been
dropped but a quick check showed that it was a proper and very
complete installation of Red Hat. An early test release of kernel 2.4 is included. This is really only
for the enthusiast to check out and is probably there to give Red Hat
users some bragging rights. Just about everyone will want to stick
with kernel 2.2.16. The new kernel also includes USB support. This
feature has been available in Mandrake and SuSE for some time now so
it's really nothing new. You now have RPM 4 as the default package
manager and it is backward compatible but RPMs created using this
version cannot be opened using older RPM releases. The best feature of Red Hat 7 would be XFree86 4.0.1. This is the
latest release and it is definitely the one to include in any
distribution. The GUI is increasingly gaining importance and it's good
to see Red Hat going with the latest right from the start. We had
reviewed SuSE 7 a while back but we were disappointed to find that it
carried Xfree86 4.0. XFree86 3.3.6 servers are also available if you
have problems but you really shouldn't have to go there. There's also
GNOME 1.2, not Helix GNOME, partnered by the new Sawfish window
manager. Sawfish though not as flashy as Enlightenment, is lighter and
the system definitely feels faster. KDE 2 is included but only as a
preview. It is only accessible if you do a custom install or do a
manual install off the second CD. KDE 1.1.2 is still the installed
default. One much touted feature is the Red Hat Network. This is supposed to ease
the lives of ordinary users and system administrators alike. Red Hat
first profiles your system and then depending on your system
configuration and packages installed, you receive information
regarding updates. Downloading of packages is also simplified as any
package dependencies that need to be satisfied are also downloaded and
installed. The setup is quite simple and it does work quite well but
it is clearly most effective over a broadband connection. Still it is
a very good feature for new users and even system administrators who
would like to stay on top of things. There is a free trial available
so you might as well use it and check things out. Red Hat 7 should probably have been Red Hat 6.4, but the same charge
could also be leveled against many other distributions. But it is
getting to be a very competitive market and it's sad to see that
marketing is taking over from the technical. In conclusion, we do
recommend Red Hat 7 for 3 reasons -- Xfree86 4.0.1, kernel 2.2.16 and
Helix GNOME 1.2. There aren't many changes and surprises here. It
still remains probably the most up-to-date distribution around. On the
other hand in true Red Hat tradition, the X.0 release is buggy. The
general view is that this release was rushed out. If your server is
running fine then you should probably leave it as is. Desktop users
who would like to unleash the power of their 3D graphic cards must get
this release because Xfree86 4.0.1 comes along with it.
Red Hat
Red Hat 7 installation guide
ZDNet - Evolution, not revolution
LinuxOrbit - Red Hat 7 review
LinuxPlanet - Red Hat 7 review
Other articles by Mayank Sarup
Current Rating: [ 6.06 / 10 ]
Number of Times Rated: [ 16 ]
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