Review: Red Hat Linux 9

06-04-2003, 05:41 AM

Pretty good.

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.

That Guy · 06-04-2003, 08:08 AM

What kinda magic didja have to work with Samba? Mind posting your config file, or a link to a copy of it? I'm having a helluva time with mine.

vsp · 06-04-2003, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dave
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.

I hate you.

Or, more precisely, I hate the fact that my Athlon 1300 (on an Asus A7V133, with 256MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS 32MB) that I was so proud of two years ago is now below those "decent little box" and "modest machine" specs you mentioned.

Moore's Law sucks. Screw Moore and the CPU he rode in on.

-- jeff.
-- in denial.
-- my box still runs Visual Pinball at full speed, so screw it.

06-04-2003, 09:05 AM

Well, to be fair, I'm the Samba fuckin' expert, thanks to having "integrated" two versions of it into the COE (the government's Common Operating Environment). So...

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure it'll work. Let me check...

Nope! Awesome. Well, I will have to look at it and figure out what's wrong. But what problem are you having?

06-04-2003, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by vsp
Or, more precisely, I hate the fact that my Athlon 1300 (on an Asus A7V133, with 256MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS 32MB) that I was so proud of two years ago is now below those "decent little box" and "modest machine" specs you mentioned.

Moore's Law sucks. Screw Moore and the CPU he rode in on.

-- jeff.
-- in denial.
-- my box still runs Visual Pinball at full speed, so screw it.

That's still a decent box. It's only 100MHz slower than my box. I'd definitely up the RAM (which is super cheap these days), but other than that, it's good. It's not the fastest machine ever, but I'd still call that a "decent little box". It's just not a superbeast.

So what? It does what you want it to, and that's what's important.

That Guy · 06-04-2003, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dave
Well, to be fair, I'm the Samba fuckin' expert, thanks to having "integrated" two versions of it into the COE (the government's Common Operating Environment). So...

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure it'll work. Let me check...

Nope! Awesome. Well, I will have to look at it and figure out what's wrong. But what problem are you having?

No connectivity for one thing.

I don't remember the first error I received, so I'll have to fire up the box when I get home and get back to you on that.

06-04-2003, 10:55 AM

Fuckin' iptables was blocking it. Now it works fine.

vsp · 06-04-2003, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dave

That's still a decent box. It's only 100MHz slower than my box. I'd definitely up the RAM (which is super cheap these days), but other than that, it's good. It's not the fastest machine ever, but I'd still call that a "decent little box". It's just not a superbeast.

It wasn't a superbeast when I bought it, either -- I'm just waving dead chickens in the air trying to ward off the Curse of Entry-Level Specs.

My one problem with a RAM upgrade is that I need to go in and find out what type is in there now. (I know it's 256MB of PC133 SDRAM, but do I need unbuffered non-parity, unbuffered ECC or registered ECC? 2 or 3 CL? Beats me until I open the case and look.) Plus, even the cheapest of those is $56 at Crucial right now, and I'd plan on spending that $50-$60 on more pressing needs first (a second (bigger) HD, a faster CDRW than my LG 12x8).

With the way my wife has taken to P2P, I'm half tempted to try and put together a cheap gaming rack (now THERE's a contradiction in terms) and invest in a router (wireless or otherwise) for my DSL. I probably don't need the temptation right now, of course, and I'm not sure that I'd save a bundle by DIY'ing it.

Tobiasly · 06-05-2003, 05:30 AM

I agree that the Red Hat installer has come a helluva long way from just a few iterations ago. I just wish that the disk druid allowed physically shuffling partitions around. I still have to go down to fdisk to get it the way I want it. Although I will say that the new feature which lets you copy one drive's partition table to another is a godsend when setting up soft RAID drives.

Tobiasly · 06-05-2003, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by vsp
My one problem with a RAM upgrade is that I need to go in and find out what type is in there now. (I know it's 256MB of PC133 SDRAM, but do I need unbuffered non-parity, unbuffered ECC or registered ECC? 2 or 3 CL? Beats me until I open the case and look.)

Unless you're running a server, you have unbuffered non-parity. Did you try Crucial's memory-selection "wizard"?

vsp · 06-05-2003, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tobiasly

Unless you're running a server, you have unbuffered non-parity. Did you try Crucial's memory-selection "wizard"?

Not much point in trying it -- my system is a homebrew from a local dealer, so I get stopped on question one ("Find your system here.")

Again, the only game that brings it to a screeching chug is Morrowind, and everyone chugs playing that, so I'm pretty much okay with 256MB for now. Soulseek can hork things up if it runs for long periods of time, but Soulseek also has acknowledged memory-leak issues.

Tobiasly · 06-05-2003, 09:23 AM

Crucial's wizard also allows you to input the model of motherboard, which oftentimes is stamped right onto it.

mbpark · 06-09-2003, 08:33 PM

Samba 2.2.8a

HP-UX 10.20

HP-UX 11.00

I say no mas.

06-09-2003, 08:51 PM

er, what about them?

(Are we talking about segments, i.e., CIFS? By "DOD COE" you do mean "Department of Defense Common Operating Environment", right?)

06-04-2003, 05:41 AM	#1
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Review: Red Hat Linux 9 Pretty good.

06-09-2003, 08:33 PM	#14
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	Samba DOD COE Samba 2.2.8a HP-UX 10.20 HP-UX 11.00 I say no mas.

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.

06-04-2003, 08:08 AM	#3
That Guy He who reads, sometimes writes. Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: at the keyboard Posts: 791	What kinda magic didja have to work with Samba? Mind posting your config file, or a link to a copy of it? I'm having a helluva time with mine.

06-04-2003, 09:05 AM	#5
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Well, to be fair, I'm the Samba fuckin' expert, thanks to having "integrated" two versions of it into the COE (the government's Common Operating Environment). So... I haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure it'll work. Let me check... Nope! Awesome. Well, I will have to look at it and figure out what's wrong. But what problem are you having?

06-04-2003, 10:55 AM	#8
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Fuckin' iptables was blocking it. Now it works fine.

06-05-2003, 05:30 AM	#10
Tobiasly hot Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Jeffersonville, IN (near Louisville) Posts: 892	I agree that the Red Hat installer has come a helluva long way from just a few iterations ago. I just wish that the disk druid allowed physically shuffling partitions around. I still have to go down to fdisk to get it the way I want it. Although I will say that the new feature which lets you copy one drive's partition table to another is a godsend when setting up soft RAID drives.

06-05-2003, 09:23 AM	#13
Tobiasly hot Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Jeffersonville, IN (near Louisville) Posts: 892	Crucial's wizard also allows you to input the model of motherboard, which oftentimes is stamped right onto it.

06-09-2003, 08:51 PM	#15
dave Guest Posts: n/a	er, what about them? (Are we talking about segments, i.e., CIFS? By "DOD COE" you do mean "Department of Defense Common Operating Environment", right?)

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