DistributionWatch Review: Red Hat Linux 7

By: Brian Proffitt
Tuesday, September 26, 2000 12:27:41 PM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/2371/1/

A Set of Updated Tools

Zffftt!

(Sound of non-disclosure gag being ripped off.)

Ahh! At last I am allowed to speak of the latest release from Red Hat. After being a beta tester for the last few months and constrained by the NDA from speaking of the development of Guinness, a.k.a. Red Hat 7.0.

And the verdict?

Not a lot of changes to see here, folks, I am sorry to say.

The Point Release Disguised as a Version

There were, of course, quite a few changes in this new version of Red Hat, such as the addition of Gnome 1.2, XFree86 4.0.1, and (for the server junkies) included OpenSSH encryption tools. When all put together, they add up to a significant change. But was it enough to justify a new .0 release? On the surface, many of the configuration and interface tools are exactly like those found in Red Hat 6.2, so those of your looking for a quantum leap in the Red Hat OS will be disappointed.

It does deserve the 7.0 moniker for at least one technical reason: the binaries for 7.0 are not compatible with those for 6.2. In development terms, that means its time to roll out the old .0.

One of the first noticeable changes to this release is the inclusion of multiple CDs, which, if you install anything other then the Workstation install path, means you are going to have to swap CDs during installation. While Red Hat certainly did not include as many installation CDs (two) as the SuSE 7.0 release's six, I don't know if I would be running around touting this as an improvement like Red Hat seems to be doing. Multiple CDs mean a longer installation, which in Red Hat's case is already edging to the long end of the spectrum.

As reported earlier, Red Hat 7.0 is shipping with the 2.2.16 kernel. There were some hints early in the development phase that they might try to use the 2.4 kernel, but those proved to be unfounded. For the really cutting edge users, the prerelease of kernel 2.4 will be shipped with the distribution's CDs, but this is only for the brave of heart. Red Hat is sticking with the 2.2.16 kernel for now.

Something that was a real disappointment to me while testing was the decision to not release KDE2 as the KDE release for Red Hat 7.0. The rollback occurred because KDE2 product could not be thoroughly tested before the final release. While I agreed with the decision at the time, it was still a bit of a disappointment because from what I saw of KDE2, it is much improved over KDE. If you want to try KDE2, it, like the pre 2.4 kernel, is available for installation in a preview section of the installation CDs.

As far as toolsets go, Red Hat still offers a large variety of packages for users to work and play with regardless of the environment they choose. While not as feature-rich as Slackware, Red Hat still does a good job of culling out the chaff and providing users with a solid base of apps to choose from. One complaint I do have was the decision to release productivity applications like StarOffice only with the Deluxe and Professional editions. If Red Hat seriously wants to entertain the new user market, the lack of this kind of application on the basic release is not the way to go about it.

Getting connected to the Internet is handled solely through the Add New Connection wizard, run by RP3; you can't go in an modify your setting manually through linuxconf. Linuxconf does not handle these settings any more.

Once connected, the full Netscape Communicator suite (as well as a host of other tools) is available for the novice to expert surfer.

For those who want more, GnoRPM, now using the RPM 4.0 format, will assist users not only to install RPM packages, but also to find more of them on the Internet to download and install. Of course, the Powertools CD (available in the Deluxe and Professional versions) has quite a few applications to choose from, as well. The Up2date application, outwardly unchanged from earlier versions, still provides an easy path to upgrade the applications a user already has installed.

Red Hat's site has a complete breakdown of all of the new features and a full package list as well.

Installing the Guinness Release

Installation of Red Hat 7.0 basic was done on my test machine, which has an AMD K6 chip, 96 Mb of RAM, and is connected via a PCI Ethernet card to a cable modem.

The installation application, Anaconda, is basically identical to Red Hat 6.2, with some minor improvements. Now entry-level users don't have to decide between Gnome or KDE workstation installs: they can have both, or neither, as they choose. Besides Workstation, Anaconda will has the Server installation setting, Custom, or Upgrade. Upgrading from 6.2 to 7.0 was fairly painless, but we still recommend a clean install if you can manage it.

Disk Druid still manages disk partitioning in a reasonably straightforward manner, and the explanatory text has been cleared up a bit to make the whole partitioning thing easier for newcomers. (The automatic partitioning option works very well, even for dual-boot machines.)

Package selection can still be handled on an individual level, though there are three preset package groups (Gnome, KDE, and Games) that make it easier to just get going without a lot of fuss. Should you choose to select both desktop environments, a setting on the X configuration screen will let you set the default environment.

X configuration is handled in much the same manner, though you can now specify the amount of video RAM your card has. The PCI probe did a great job of recognizing most of the cards we used, and a fair job of identifying monitors. X is still a critical area of the installation process, but we were left with a sense of security before leaving this section, as long as we tested our settings first.

One additional pleasant surprise was the automatic detection and configuration of our sound cards, a feat that in the recent past was not consistently handled. Hearing sound without having to run sndconfig right off the bat was a nice improvement.

Another nice addition was the ability to configure LDAP and Kerebros settings, instead of doing post-install work on it.

Once installation was complete, I did not find a lot of open services, as I have in past editions of Red Hat. Those I did find were easily found and shut down with the setup utility. The server installation, of course, had a lot more services running, as you might expect, but using basic security concepts, I managed to get the system locked up pretty quickly.

Other Comments on Red Hat 7.0

The addition of XFree86 4.0.1 to Red Hat 7.0 is a welcome upgrade for users. Font and display management is increasingly better as each X upgrade is released, and this one is no exception.

Users will see a new look to their desktop environments, especially if they are using Gnome. Red Hat has packaged Gnome 1.2 with release 7.0, using the Sawfish window manager underneath. Sawfish, rather than Enlightenment, is now the window manager of choice for Gnome, and while we missed some of the features of Enlightenment, Sawfish and Gnome work fairly well together. Theme management was the only source of contention, since you have to apply GTK and Sawfish schemes separately and sometimes I had to play around a bit to get two themes that work well together.

I liked the addition of USB support and the USB mouse I borrowed from a friend of mine worked perfectly.

Samba setup is still a rather convoluted rigmarole, something on which I wish all of the Linux distributions would take their cue from Corel Linux, where Samba is automatically set up. Still, everything worked out fine once the setup process was complete, and I had no trouble seeing the Windows machines and printers on my network.

In short, Red Hat 7.0 is not going to throw a lot of changes at its current user base, so don't look for a lot of surprises in the interfaces or the basic toolset. Stability and ease-of-installation have been enhanced, as has configuration, so Red Hat still offers users a comfortable place to hang their hat without becoming a plain vanilla Linux offering like Corel.

Red Hat, while it would like to be thought of as an all-around platform, still mostly excels in the server category. Despite the improvements for the end-user noted here, Red Hat is still a better platform for back-end services, particularly in the pricey (but loaded) Professional edition. This is a worthy goal, one which I hope Red Hat does not lose sight of in future releases as they keep trying to tap into the end-user market.