Red Hat 8

[Gayle29uk]

Yes, I dumped MDK 9 and actually purchased (with real money) RH8. Well what a difference THAT makes

Easy install, easy config on most things (there is a DNS config util but best avoid that unless you don't want DDNS or forwarding) and a handy X based service start/stop/restart tool (it also sets up what starts in what runlevel) that actually works (shock horror!).

To my surprise the whole thing from terminals through konqueror to mozilla was anti-aliased out of the box and looks ace

So, after all the hassle I had with my first SuSE setup (I can do it standing on my head now though ) and the nightmares I had with MDK I've finally seen the light

Bearing in mind I know what I'm doing but I'm certainly no expert, I managed to get a working DHCP server, apache server, mysql server, DDNS, SMB server, firewall (extremely easy), squid proxy, and the usual telnet/ftp etc in just a few hours with a distro I've never used before.

Sorry to all you slackware purists but Redhat 8 is by far the best quality distro I've come across so far

Now to configure dial-on-demand...

[Structural Integrity]

Sorry to all you slackware purists but Redhat 8 is by far the best quality distro I've come across so far

I have RH6 or 7 (I dunno anymore) at home somewhere (got it free from school to play about with) and I was wondering if my version is just as good as 8 (just as good is rediculous... but nearly as good?).
I might want to install it, but I'm having doubts because I also have win2k server running and don't want to lose it (ie: dual boot options for Linux?) and I haven't really found the Linux desktop as great (I used it at school, and it wasn't too stable (KDE)).

And I'd also might want to run some win32 compilers in Linux (Visual C++) and my own made apps. Is this possible with Wine?

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Structural Integrity
I have RH6 or 7 (I dunno anymore) at home somewhere (got it free from school to play about with) and I was wondering if my version is just as good as 8 (just as good is rediculous... but nearly as good?).
I might want to install it, but I'm having doubts because I also have win2k server running and don't want to lose it (ie: dual boot options for Linux?) and I haven't really found the Linux desktop as great (I used it at school, and it wasn't too stable (KDE)).

And I'd also might want to run some win32 compilers in Linux (Visual C++) and my own made apps. Is this possible with Wine?

I don't know about RH6/7 but...

Dual boot: RH8 has a choice of grub or LILO as a boot loader, either will happily detect your win2k partitions.

Stable desktop: Don't know about GNOME 2 as I haven't even looked at that yet, KDE 3 appears to be rock solid but as I'm running it on a low spec celeron it kinda drags. A quick installation of IceWM (unfortunately not included) later and it's flying

Wine: Don't have a clue, if I wanted to compile win32 apps I'd probably do it in XP Not that I actually own a win32 compiler hehe.

Hope this helps a little.

[meglamaniac]

Can't fault KDE3 - seems dead stable on mine (I use MDK9 though). With the accelerated nvidia drivers I can play chromium whenever I get bored too (I love retro arcadey game type things).
If I were you I'd get another HD and stick RH on that, rather than having to delete (or worse, resize) one of your windows paritions. Dual boot is not a problem - it can do it all for you.
If you don't want to use Grub or Lilo as the primary boot manager you CAN use the Win2k boot manager, but it requires some pratting about and a linux boot disk. If you're interested I can look out the info I've got on it (I use the XP boot manager, not lilo or grub).

I wouldn't recommend trying to code win32 apps via wine - just stick to windows for it. Wine can be 'odd' at the best of times, adn the chances of it fully emulating the entire windows API properly aren't great.

[mikay]

What exactly is the point of lilo? I've asked a few ppl why have a boot manager and nobody ever gave me much of an answer and certainly not one that made me feel I needed one.

Originally posted by mikay
What exactly is the point of lilo? I've asked a few ppl why have a boot manager and nobody ever gave me much of an answer and certainly not one that made me feel I needed one.

To boot multiple operating systems is the main use.

[meglamaniac]

Er, I think you've entirely missed the point here mikay.
EVERY operating system needs a boot loader/manager. Windows, by default, doesn't show any options when it's starts. You can configure windows 2k/XP (possibly nt as well?) to add options to the boot menu (eg. mine says: Windows, Recovery Console, or Linux).
The whole point of the 'manager' boot manager is to allow for choice.

There are 2 popular boot loaders for linux - lilo and grub. Lilo and grub both DO give you boot options by default (such as a normal boot, booting a kernel off a disk, etc). It's a lot more likely you will need the functions a boot manager provides under linux. If you recompile your kernel with different modules, or upgrade it, then you want to keep the option to boot the old one as WELL as the new one in case the new one fails to boot.

On my machine, if I choose linux from the XP boot manager, that then triggers lilo (which resides on my master linux partition) which then gives me more boot options which are specific to my linux installation.

This is not the standard way of doing it. Most people will use lilo/grub to boot windows (cutting out the options part of the windows boot manager) but linux is very much my "secondary" operating system (it's only there for aspects of my uni course), so if I ever want to remove it it's less hassle to just erase the partitions and remove the entry from the windows boot manager than it is to uninstall lilo properly and then try and coax the XP boot manager back into action.

I hope thats shown you some examples of why they are necessary.