For a few years now I've been using Linux with a headless box and off-and-on on a dual booter with Windows. Windows, however, was always the primary OS on the dual-booter. With the introduction of RH 7.2, I've decided to go crazy and try using Linux full-time as my desktop OS. It's been a few weeks now of using RH 7.2, so I thought some of you might be interested in my trials and tribulations. Since this is the Red Hat list, I'm going to keep things Red Hat oriented with discussion mostly centered on the 7.2 release, as well as some programs I found to greatly add to the desktop experience.
The Good: Grub: Grub is really cool. I was looking forward to tryng this new bootloader, and so far it's been interesting to play with. Some people seem to think it's "lilo light," but if you read the docs you'll find it supports a shell with a number of built-in commands. Not having to run lilo -s after a kernel change is sweet! It looks pretty in graphics mode to. Ext3: Unfortunately, I got plenty of lock-ups to try out the new journaling feature of the standard ext filesystem (see below). Works great so far. Also appreciate how easy it was to change my /usr/local partition from ext2 to ext3. A few people were puzzled why RH didn't use Reiser, but after seeing for myself how nice ext3 is to work with, I completely understand. Mozilla: Glad to see this is the default web browser. The version included in 7.2 is a bit long in the tooth, and it looks like a bugger to upgrade with all the dependcies, but at least it's stable if sluggish. The traditional Netscape is old, buggy and almost useless nowadays. Hopefully Mozilla will continue to get speedier as it matures, although I think it will always be a memory hog. I got half a gig; not worried. :) Of course, all the usual library and system upgrades that make a decimal point upgrade importnat. On the whole, I would say 7.2 is another good RH .2 release. Before I get into the other stuff, here's some other resources I found useful or important for the ultimate desktop experience: www.deja.com I'm so glad this resource is back online. Don't run Linux without it! http://enigma.freshrpms.net/ Check here for lotsa good RPMS to help round-out the desktop. Almost all the programs below have RPMS available here or at their own websites. Sylpheed http://sylpheed.good-day.net/ This is a _very_ good email client if you are looking for a light, fluffy, easy-to-use workalike of Outlook Express in Windows. Seems very stable already; I've only experienced a few very minor bugs. Red Hatted folks, this should be part of your distro! Pan http://pan.rebelbase.com/ This is a GREAT newsreader. Pan is included with 7.2, but it's a few revisions old and since every revision changelog since then has the line "Lotsa bugfixes" it's a good idea to run the latest and greatest. I read alot of USENET, and Pan works well enough to avoid making me miss Gravity too much. Multi Gnome Terminal Offhand, I'm not sure the address of the home page, but make sure you grab this at freshrpms. When playing with KDE a bit, I really appreciated the tabbed, multi-terminal that they use. This is a version for gnome. It should be the default, because once you use it you won't want to go back to have x-terms scattered throughout your desktop. MPlayer http://www.mplayerhq.hu Despite the fact that the developers _REALLY_ don't like RH's 2.96 gcc, it works fine on my system. It's the best general video player I've found in Linux: it's fast and play's all kinds of files other linux viewers can't. You'll have to compile it, though, no RPMS around. Don't forget to enable the GUI, it's pretty slick. Thanks to vlc, ogle and xine, I now have more DVD players in Linux than in Windows. LOL! The Bad: The Licq gnome plug-in is buggy. I had problems with garbled text and general unstability. The solution was to rpm -e RH's licq, grab the newer gnome-licq plugin and build my own licq in /usr/local. Now it works fine. I suppose I should file a bugreport on this and maybe RH will offer an updated RPM. A minor thing: I forgot how ugly regular X fonts look! I had to steal the TT fonts from my Window's font dir ASAP to make web pages readable. It would also be nice if RH would actually document how to install TT fonts, since they are so necessary. Sure, they mention it in the manual but go on to say it's a too indepth topic to cover in the manual. C'mon, it's only a few commands in the shell! I had to dig through the HOWTO's so I could recall the couple of commands you need to get the TT fonts working. There are a few other things I could gripe about, but nothing really important. I'm saving my griping for the next section. :) The Ugly: Wow, is the emu10k support really f*cked-up in the 7.2 kernels! It's absolutely horrible! Besides all the popping and cracking, it may have been responsable for some serious system instability. Here's the whole story: When I first installed RH 7.2 on this system, I experienced total system lock-ups every few hours. Very annoying! I then went through the entire up2date process. No help. Then I installed the new kernel. Still locking-up. At this point, I was about at the end of my rope and ready to make the Windows partition the default in GRUB when I decided to hit www.deja.news and search for a cure. After awhile, I discovered a post describing a problem very similar to mine (same RH 7.2 system). His solution: Turn off Gnome's sound support! Yes, Programs/Settings/Multimedia/Sound for Gnome. I couldn't believe this was the problem, but I gave it a shot. That was the last lock-up I had, and disable Gnome sound a few weeks ago. Now, I'm not sure if it's the bad emu10k support or something else, but it definately solved the problem. The odd thing is that the lockups didn't seem to have anything to do with sound! Usually the freeze was when I was moving the mouse around or typing. Very weird. I also use sound plenty with no lockups, I just have to stay away from the Gnome sounds. Of course, I get tons of clicks and pops. Sometimes when I start Soldier of Fortune or try to play a sound file, I get 100% distortion. The weird thing is that XMMS _always_ works. That's how I "reset" the sound card, play XMMS and then play SOF or play the sound file, then they work. I mean, c'mon, a Soundblaster card isn't exactly a fringe sound card! I've never seen such a bad feature regressions in a non-experimental kernel before, but I guess this is the hallmark of the entire 2.4.x series: bugs bugs bugs! Not entirely RH's fought, I just hope then can fix this problem. Overall I'm pleased with my RH 7.2 system. If the kernel guys ever get on the ball and release a stable 2.4.x kernel, I'll be a happy camper. -- Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
