[NTLUG:Discuss] RedHat 6.1 (+ dists in general)

[Jeremy Blosser]

Jeff Rush [jrush at timecastle.net] wrote:
> Actually the big problems with RH 6.1 are much more painful.

[snip several upgrade-related problems]

I had a lot of issues with it, doing a fresh (ht|f)tp install.  These are
all using the text-mode installer -- the GUI one was never offered to me,
apparently because I was installing over the network:

1) The rpm-chooser no longer contains rpm -qi info for the packages.  You
have to refer to the manual (printed copy or web page).  Which means you're
more or less stuck if you're installing on one machine with no real access
to snag another one to browse the web, and didn't buy a copy of the manual.

2) The rpm-chooser gives no running total of how large the install is --
you get to find out after the disks are formatted/bad block checked and the
install starts running and shows how much time is left.  I had limited
install space on this drive, so that was more than annoying.

3) I found no way of specifying a non-anonymous ftp login or proxy for the
ftp install.  This is just dumb.  I don't have anon ftp on the machine I
was installing from (because I don't use it, so why bother with the
security risk), so the quickest workaround turned out to be using the HTTP
install.

4) There is no option to use fdisk instead of Disk Druid to set up
partitions.  Disk Druid is far from perfect -- it tends to waste space and
just not work for all situations.  In my case it told me I didn't have
space to add a 10 MB /boot partition (or any other partition), even though
there was almost a gig available, all well within the 1024 sector limit for
LILO.  I ended up using another boot disk to run fdisk to partition the
drives, then go ahead with the 6.1 install.

5) It no longer runs ntsysv from the installer, so you aren't offered the
chance to turn off services you don't want running.  I knew enough to do it
after, but this seems rather dangerous for newbies, esp. since things like
sendmail and pcmcia(why?) and netfs and linuxconf are still installed by
default on all systems and turned on.

6) It no longer asks if you want to setup networking from the install, but
instead takes the settings you gave for the network install to set it up --
but not all of them.  It kept the route/gateway/etc. info, but not DNS.  So
when it got done I had half a network set up.

7) It no longers gives the option to format swap partitions, which I
suppose means it just does it without asking you, but I prefer the choice,
esp. the choice to check or not check for bad blocks.

8) Continues the trend to install rather large packages the average person
won't need as part of the "base" (read: don't ask, just install it) group,
including such things as raidtools.

Those are the ones I remember.  Again, the GUI-mode installer may be
different, but that would be moot IMO.  The text mode installer has to stay
functional, both as a matter of preference and practicality.

I am not generally a Red Hat basher.  But this stuff really annoys me, esp.
since they seem to be by choice, not just as bugs.  They did do a few new
things in the new install I really like, like the interactive boot up mode
and the option to add one or more regular users during the install.  But
overall, it was not as pleasant an experience as the 5.x or even 6.0
installs.

So on to the next part of this post -- there are a lot of Linux distros out
there, and more are appearing all the time.  But all the new ones seem to
be going after the luser^H^H^H^H^Hnewbie market.  Are there *any* distros
that focus on 1) doing things "the right way"[1], 2) staying almost
bleeding-edge current[2], and 3) being as secure as possible[3]?  Using or
allowing RPM would be a plus, as I much prefer it to other package
management systems I've seen (I use src.rpms to compile my own copies of
most everything, and Debian's system of rebuilding source packages wasn't
something that I liked).

Anyone know of anything that fits these criteria?  Debian strives for (1),
but is way behind on (2) -- they still have no publically released 2.2
kernel or glibc2.1 based release, which wouldn't be SO bad if they'd
release slink-appropriate upgrades for such basic packages as XFree, etc.
Rule by large committee seems to be slowing them way down.  SuSE in my
experience falls behind in regards to (1) quite a bit.  RedHat has been the
closest to what I want, but they're moving away from it instead of toward
it.  Which is prolly fine for their stock options, and I don't want to diss
anyone that uses it (or any of the other ones I mentioned), but /I/ want
something else, so I'm hoping a dist I can really like is out there.

Footnotes:
[1] - Obeying any relevant accepted RFCs/etc., as well as the general
design principles that made Un*x what it is.  See the development model
followed by the mutt-dev crowd.

[2] - If a new Mutt or Screen or VIM version is released, I'd like the dist
to release a native-package format for that version within the week,
including versions for the last /several/ major releases of the dist.
RedHat does this with stuff like X, and I appreciate it (4.x, 5.x, and 6.x
versions are available), but not with other stuff that's still pretty basic
for most users.

[3] - Native packages for ssh/pgp/gpg/Mutt-i/etc.

-- 
Jeremy Blosser   |   jblosser at firinn.org   |   http://jblosser.firinn.org/
-----------------+-------------------------+------------------------------
"If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds
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