Redhat 7.3 Install -first thoughts:

**CMonster** · May 20th, 2002, 12:34 AM

I finally got around to installing Redhat 7.3 today:

Test System:

Celeron 1ghz, Shuttle mobo/VIA, 512MB, 30GB WD ATA100, 56xCDROM, Yamaha sound card (not using onboard), Geforce4MX 440, Realtec ethernet -generic mouse, keyboard, speakers, 17" monitor

Results: awesome! -I am very impressed. Easy install, rock stable, KDE3 is beautiful.... really nice -good job Redhat, this is the way Linux should be..... er except next time give me Reiserfs option on install.

**pbharris** · May 20th, 2002, 12:41 AM

cool! I am finding it a wee bit more polished than RH 7.2. The nice thing for this release is CUPs - so much nicer than LPd

**otheos** · May 20th, 2002, 04:43 AM

Can't wait!!!!

**SpookyEddy** · May 20th, 2002, 06:01 AM

Sounds like RedHat did a nice job on 7.3

As for the Reiser thing... I think this may be why its not available~

ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that promises very good small file performance, and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. However, we do not recommend ReiserFS at this time, due to repeated occurances of file-system corruption with the 2.4.x series kernels. ReiserFS has metadata journaling, but no data journaling.

Thats ripped from the gentoo website (not RedHat)... but they do know their stuff IMO.

Anyway... hope 7.3 is as good as it seems... keep us posted

**KraM** · May 20th, 2002, 08:04 AM

I also installed rh7.3 recently, I had 7.1 before. Generally it seems better, except for emacs. It is ugly and really slow now, and I was used to the way it worked before, ie. simple and clean. Anyone know how I can change it back? :|

**CMonster** · May 20th, 2002, 10:19 AM

KraM -xemacs or emacs? I don't use emacs and didn't install the package.

**storm2k** · May 20th, 2002, 12:24 PM

hehe, well i'm glad that some other people have agreed with me on redhat. i've been using it for a while now (as most of you know, i even ghetto dl'ed the iso's so the day it came out so i could have some reviews for y'all) and have to say it's fast, it's stable, and it's great.

cups ain't perfect... i can't get it to work with my printer, even though there's a printer definition for it included with cups. the printer is pretty new, there should be some support for it. boo.

**Scott Tiger** · May 20th, 2002, 01:46 PM

CMonster you've hit on something I wanted to ask about.

Which file system are you using for RH 7.3? I've read the pro's and con's of both Reiserfs and ext3 and I don't see how a journaling filing system would help me at all. I'm just running a simple desktop machine with specs very similiar to yours. No databases or webservers on this box. If I select ext2 will I get a noticeable improvement in performance over ext3? Applications launch a little slower in RedHat than they do on the same box with the an indentical drive in Windows.

Thanks for your help.

ST

**storm2k** · May 20th, 2002, 01:55 PM

comparing linux and windows is a bit of an apples and oranges thing since both filesystems are pretty different. on top of that, the structure of both operating systems are different, so you'll see different resulsts even on the same hardware.

i've been using ext3 with redhat and have found it to be plenty chipper for what i do with it. i don't feel like recompliling the kernel so i can't tell ya much about reiserfs...

**Whir** · May 20th, 2002, 02:05 PM

I don't know, as I've said before, I'm pretty impressed with 7.3. I'm really impressed with KDE3. Not knowing much about the internals, the GUI matters to me or something. I've heard that drake is easier to config, but I find that I don't have any trouble in redhat. I haven't checked out Gnome 2 yet. I've heard that it's basically just Ximian now. Which is cool, as I liked Ximian a lot. Anyway, right.

-Whir

**otheos** · May 20th, 2002, 02:10 PM

I've found ext2/3 a bit fragile for my power company's taste. More than once I had either data loss or ext3 errors (hardware related).

ReiserFS is ideal for SCSI as it makes full use of its tagged queing and burst capabilities, and has thus far been stable and crash-proof

Still ext3 is a better choice than ext2, comes at no extra "cost" and is backwards compatible with ext2. So I guess you'd better use it.

i don't feel like recompliling the kernel

I would strongly suggest you try it

BTW if you do use ReiserFS make sure you download the latest reisertools. Especially if you upgraded to a new kernel

**storm2k** · May 20th, 2002, 02:24 PM

i've never had any problems with ext3 so far... it's survived nicely through a few nasty freezes (mostly trying to get ogle to play a css-encoded dvd... since i can't get xine to do it) and ext3 has recovered itself nicely...

**otheos** · May 20th, 2002, 03:48 PM

Can't wait!! My CD's are in the post (all five of them)

**storm2k** · May 20th, 2002, 03:55 PM

yeah redhat is definately worth it. i'm glad i took the time to dl it.

otheos if you didn't live on the other side of the pond i'd have ya send me some rh 7.3 athlon optimized cd's, but the postage would kill us both :P

oh well.

**otheos** · May 20th, 2002, 04:20 PM

I will be sending my optimised stuff over the pond to upload them (and then everyone can download them). BTW on this matter I have decided some packages (around 50) are not going to be recompiled as they seem to be unstable after. Also, I will leave the system description as i386 (instead of Athlon) as RH seems to have standard paths set like that.

Hopefully I will have the athlon optimised isos soon after I install it

**CMonster** · May 20th, 2002, 04:47 PM

otheos - my offer still stands if you ever need it.

RH7.3 just may become my new distro of choice.

**KraM** · May 20th, 2002, 08:25 PM

It's just emacs, I was very careful not to install xemacs.

Had a problem last night as well. I went into KDE and none of the icons show up, desktop, toolbar and menu icons are all gone. The writing is still there though. Wierdness....

I think I'll reinstall a few packages later...

**KraM** · May 20th, 2002, 08:40 PM

Are the packages in 7.3 686 optimised??? 686 is best for pentium 2 right???

**vass0922** · May 20th, 2002, 08:43 PM

I went into KDE and none of the icons show up, desktop, toolbar and menu icons are all gone

Are you logging in as root?
AFAIK in kde (maybe its just drake?) they remove nearly all of the icons from the desktop and make it a bleeding red background

**linux_guru** · May 20th, 2002, 09:25 PM

vass0922:

Yep, it's only Drake that cripples KDE for root. Now that really p*sses me off, because I only log in as root. A way around that is to create a normal user, and then copy these directories to /root ........ ~username/.kde and ~username/Desktop.

You can disable that annoying RED desktop, as well. From memory, you need to edit /etc/X11/Xsession (or something similar).