[TriLUG] From the same "Penguin Shell" newsletter concerning Red Hat 9, the "other side of the coin"

[al johson]

Every coin has two sides.
Tuesday, we saw some very positive comments from a reader regarding Red Hat.
Never let it be said that we don't offer balanced reporting and reviewing
here in Penguin Shell. Today, we'll see the downside from a few other
readers with firsthand Red Hat 9.0 experience.

First up is this note from former fellow Iowan Kurt Rosencrants :


I have been using Linux for about 4 years and prior to trying Red Hat 9 I
had been primarily using Mandrake and then eventually Gentoo. After all I
had heard about Red Hat I thought it was about time I checked it out. While
I do not consider myself a novice I am not an overly technical user.
Although I do most things from the command line.
In short, I was severely disappointed in RH 9. In fact after attempting to
use it for a couple of weeks I re-installed Mandrake 8.2 on one box and
Gentoo 1.4 on another.

I am not sure I could say enough bad about RH. It had that whole "legacy OS"
feeling to me. Far too many things that I felt I had no control over and had
to hunt and peck to turn off or disable. The whole this is the way things
should be, because we say so, feeling.

The install is very easy (I used the DVD) and it recognized most of my
hardware fairly easily. It did fail to accept a second hard disk that was in
Reiser FS saying it needed to be re-formatted no matter what I tried. But
overall it was smooth.

Once I booted up though scary things were waiting. BlueCurve is (IMHO) an
insidious and scary prospect. While I respect Red Hat's contributions to
Gnome it seems to be away from the user being in control and more toward
father knows best. I will gladly give away some dumbing up of the OS for
greater freedom.

Open Office would not work and had to be downloaded and reinstalled. Once I
had started from scratch all was fine again. That is if I could keep my mind
focused on my work while the update notify icon was flashing in the lower
right hand corner. After looping through the update procedure and
downloading what I wanted I rebooted. Oops, here it goes again. Even though
I had downloaded what I wanted, flagged other things as not interested it
kept telling me I needed to update. My mailbox was filled with mails telling
me I needed to pay for a membership or fill out the questionnaire, etc. I
think this is all unneeded. I have always purchased the software rather than
downloading (additionally making contributions to Gentoo and Mandrake Club)
because I think it is a small price to pay for the hard work they go through
to make a good distro but I do not want to be nagged. Is this what it takes
for them to survive.

I could go on and on but there is a simple phrase that I think sums up my
experience. It is all too glossy and slick for me. If I can use and analogy.
The first time I ever went to Vegas I walked into a casino and looked at all
the flash, was given a free drink and free food and my thought was tinstaafl
if they can give all this away then the odds in favor of the house must be
incredible. Make sure you know what you are buying. My feeling with Red Hat
9 was similar. It is so slick, so packaged and so glossy that I was
instantly concerned with what I would be giving up to get all this glitz.
After about a month I knew and the price was way too high. For others it may
be less so and more power to them. I am eagerly awaiting MD 9.1 and the next
release from Gentoo. I can't ever imagine trying RH again. If this is the
leader, I will stay in second.

There's a lot to chew on there. Then, there's this brief note from frequent
Frankly commenter, Geek:


Sorry my thoughts are so late. I have blogged this several times, and I must
say I am still disappointed. I look at my Red Hat disks with sadness,
knowing that the distro is less beautiful, less... attractive, and certainly
less recommended than it once was. I once thought Red Hat the best of all
the options, more user friendly, moving toward the desktop OS that I want to
get my family members into as a Windows alternative, now I am telling
everyone who uses the distro that they ought to move to something more user
appreciative and cost effective, though I am not sure what that is.
Mandrake? they seem on thin financial ice. SuSE? It seems popular, but I
have a hard time finding a full install ISO online. Slackware, Debian, and a
few others are well known, but I am honestly not sure of any of them for
*user* friendliness, not just geek friendliness. Maybe some of the readers
can put a few cents in here? Perhaps they already have. LOL. I am pretty far
behind, but this is something that has been on my mind as I move my thoughts
to making my old main machine into a solitary Linux server/test machine.

There now. Decide for yourself.

Meanwhile, back at the little Penguin abode in Iowa, I'm sitting with a
brand-spanking new Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 at my side. Thanks to the fine
efforts of Devon Nagle at Stanton Crenshaw Communications (the PR firm
handling the Zaurus reviews for Sharp), the Z arrived this afternoon, just
as I was arriving home for lunch. In fact, I started playing and evaluating
immediately after opening the box. There will be quite a lot to talk about
next week when reviewing this latest Personal Mobile Tool from Sharp. And
I'll have the whole weekend to gather my thoughts. On Tuesday, we'll look at
the SL-5600 on its own. On Thursday, I'll clue you in to how it compares to
the SL-5500 and other PDAs in its class. It should be a fun week.

Now, read on and make your way back on Tuesday.