[NTLUG:Discuss] Redhat9 - hostid doesn't work

[Kyle Davenport]

Is it time to dis' RH9?

Chris Cox wrote:
> 5. Lack of various tools because they might cause
> some legal issues (emphasis on might).  Granted
> RH could be considered the "safe" distribution.  I've
> never been a big fan of technology that tries to
> be "safe" though.  Most of the tools are things like
> mp3/decss related software.... though other dists
> also have some difficulties here.

don't forget the mpeg4 and ac3 mess.  It's difficult enough getting DVD's
working, try getting dvd-audio or SACD's working!  At least for RH I can
jump on freshrpms, gurulabs, or atrpms.physik.fu-berlin.de.  For Mandrake
there's the Penguinista Liberation Front, but SuSE cripples a bunch of
their packages (like disabling IR control and TV-out on some video cards -
well, that could "potentially be used to steal copyright material"...yeah,
sure) and there's only one small site for fixes.   What's next - a
distribution without the linux kernel because that's the subject of a SCO
lawsuit?

The biggest problem I have with RH9 is the NPTL change.  Perhaps for some
server app's there will be a performance improvement, but I always roll my
own kernels, starting with Linus', and the whole system suffers expecting
NPTL in the kernel.  Getting Nvidia's drivers to work was painful.  My
measure of a good distribution is how easily it can be modified - and
RedHat's getting harder and harder.  At work, where I don't have a lot of
time to mess with my machine:

rpm -qa --queryformat '%{vendor}\n' | grep -v "Red Hat" gives 170 out of
1020 packages I had to add, and that doesn't even include the non-rpm
stuff!

Kyle