The Cellar - View Single Post

06-04-2003, 07:16 AM

Okay, so honestly. I've got to play with Linux again because I'm doing work with BEA WebLogic and portal/portlet development. My Solaris box isn't really the greatest for running the required applications, partially because of a slower processor but mainly because it lacks RAM (and Sun RAM is expensive). Since it's really all just Java and scripts, I can do development on Linux and it'll work fine on the Sun boxes we've got at work.

So anyway, I've got a decent little box that I decided to install Red Hat 9 on. It's an Athlon 1600+ on an Asus A7N266-VM motherboard with 512MB of RAM, a 60GB IBM hard drive and an Asus GeForce 3. That's really about it. So, as you can see, it's not a top of the line superbox, but it's not a totally obsolete piece of junk either. A modest machine, you could probably build it for $400 or so.

Red Hat 9's installer is as simple as always (at least since version 6.2 or whatever it was). Previous versions of GRUB (Red Hat's default bootloader) didn't work with this motherboard, so in anticipation of some problems, I did some research. The included version of GRUB is 0.93, which is the version that the problem was corrected in (prior versions caused a "kernel will not fit into memory" error). I did some custom partitioning, selected my packages and was on my way to installing. Those that have been installing Red Hat's recent releases with any regularity will not be impressed by the installer, but having watched it come the whole way, I must say, they've done a pretty nice job with it. It's very pleasant looking yet powerful.

Once it finished (which took what seemed like forever - three CDs were required, and I only selected about two gigs of stuff to install!), it booted up to a command prompt. Since I have an nForce motherboard, I needed to install some modules for hardware that isn't supported out of the box - namely, the nvnet module so I can use the built-in ethernet (I'm not worried about sound - this is a workstation). Since ethernet wasn't working (kind of a conundrum, isn't it?), I downloaded the source on my main work PC, burned it to a CD and put it in. I got errors on the compile, but they were only for the nvaudio module, so I went ahead and copied the nvnet module to the proper directory, insmod'd it and then set up eth0. Once I had internet access, I downloaded the nVidia video driver installation script, ran it, edited my XF86Config file and was in X in short order. (X11 works with a GeForce 3 by default, but with the rather lacking open source driver. I could have started it before, but I didn't bother.) After this, I went ahead and played around with Red Hat's new(ish) tools for administering the machine.

First things first, I created a user. Pretty nice little app they have for doing this! Simple yet effective. I'm a big fan of things like this. After that, I set the display resolution to 1600x1200, set up Samba, stopped and de-selected a ton of services that I didn't want running, logged out and rebooted. (I like to make sure everything is going to work fine when I boot the machine, so even though I didn't need to reboot, I did anyway.) It came up fine, so I logged in and then started X. I was greeted with pretty much the same desktop that root had, which I was happy with. I got to work customizing it to fit my work habits and installing various softwares that I would be needing. All in all, good deal.

Where Red Hat (and, more specifically, GNOME and KDE) have been making great strides is in the looks of the software. You all know that this is a big thing to me - the visual element is what you interact with most in your computer, so it should be pleasant to work with and look at. I'm pretty happy with Red Hat 9 so far; I use GNOME and apps that are written for GNOME 2 look great. The big thing that's lacking is Evolution, which is Ximian's mail client (and probably the best one I've ever used); it's slated for an official GNOME 2 release next week, and I'll be downloading it as soon as I can. With a version of Mozilla supporting anti-aliasing included (1.2.1), Red Hat 9 is a platform suitable to most workstation tasks (i.e., surfing the web and sending email to friends).

The apps that are included are pretty good, though perhaps too numerous. For example, there sure are a lot of games that really don't need to be here.

All in all, Red Hat 9 is a pretty strong outing, and it's finally getting to the point where I could see using it as a replacement for Windows (nevermind that I did this for years with earlier incarnations). Color me impressed. I'll be installing it on my dual Athlon box so that I have a Linux workstation at home.

06-04-2003, 07:16 AM	#2
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Okay, so honestly. I've got to play with Linux again because I'm doing work with BEA WebLogic and portal/portlet development. My Solaris box isn't really the greatest for running the required applications, partially because of a slower processor but mainly because it lacks RAM (and Sun RAM is expensive). Since it's really all just Java and scripts, I can do development on Linux and it'll work fine on the Sun boxes we've got at work. So anyway, I've got a decent little box that I decided to install Red Hat 9 on. It's an Athlon 1600+ on an Asus A7N266-VM motherboard with 512MB of RAM, a 60GB IBM hard drive and an Asus GeForce 3. That's really about it. So, as you can see, it's not a top of the line superbox, but it's not a totally obsolete piece of junk either. A modest machine, you could probably build it for $400 or so. Red Hat 9's installer is as simple as always (at least since version 6.2 or whatever it was). Previous versions of GRUB (Red Hat's default bootloader) didn't work with this motherboard, so in anticipation of some problems, I did some research. The included version of GRUB is 0.93, which is the version that the problem was corrected in (prior versions caused a "kernel will not fit into memory" error). I did some custom partitioning, selected my packages and was on my way to installing. Those that have been installing Red Hat's recent releases with any regularity will not be impressed by the installer, but having watched it come the whole way, I must say, they've done a pretty nice job with it. It's very pleasant looking yet powerful. Once it finished (which took what seemed like forever - three CDs were required, and I only selected about two gigs of stuff to install!), it booted up to a command prompt. Since I have an nForce motherboard, I needed to install some modules for hardware that isn't supported out of the box - namely, the nvnet module so I can use the built-in ethernet (I'm not worried about sound - this is a workstation). Since ethernet wasn't working (kind of a conundrum, isn't it?), I downloaded the source on my main work PC, burned it to a CD and put it in. I got errors on the compile, but they were only for the nvaudio module, so I went ahead and copied the nvnet module to the proper directory, insmod'd it and then set up eth0. Once I had internet access, I downloaded the nVidia video driver installation script, ran it, edited my XF86Config file and was in X in short order. (X11 works with a GeForce 3 by default, but with the rather lacking open source driver. I could have started it before, but I didn't bother.) After this, I went ahead and played around with Red Hat's new(ish) tools for administering the machine. First things first, I created a user. Pretty nice little app they have for doing this! Simple yet effective. I'm a big fan of things like this. After that, I set the display resolution to 1600x1200, set up Samba, stopped and de-selected a ton of services that I didn't want running, logged out and rebooted. (I like to make sure everything is going to work fine when I boot the machine, so even though I didn't need to reboot, I did anyway.) It came up fine, so I logged in and then started X. I was greeted with pretty much the same desktop that root had, which I was happy with. I got to work customizing it to fit my work habits and installing various softwares that I would be needing. All in all, good deal. Where Red Hat (and, more specifically, GNOME and KDE) have been making great strides is in the looks of the software. You all know that this is a big thing to me - the visual element is what you interact with most in your computer, so it should be pleasant to work with and look at. I'm pretty happy with Red Hat 9 so far; I use GNOME and apps that are written for GNOME 2 look great. The big thing that's lacking is Evolution, which is Ximian's mail client (and probably the best one I've ever used); it's slated for an official GNOME 2 release next week, and I'll be downloading it as soon as I can. With a version of Mozilla supporting anti-aliasing included (1.2.1), Red Hat 9 is a platform suitable to most workstation tasks (i.e., surfing the web and sending email to friends). The apps that are included are pretty good, though perhaps too numerous. For example, there sure are a lot of games that really don't need to be here. All in all, Red Hat 9 is a pretty strong outing, and it's finally getting to the point where I could see using it as a replacement for Windows (nevermind that I did this for years with earlier incarnations). Color me impressed. I'll be installing it on my dual Athlon box so that I have a Linux workstation at home.