Red Hat Linux 6.0 Review by Joey.
Last modified on February 18th, 2000

Last monday shortly after Red Hat 6.0 was released I began my search for a completed mirror site. Out of all the mirrors, only 3 of them had the full version due to a problem that Red Hat was having with the server that all the other mirrors were downloading off. So at around 7pm on monday I began to download.

In total there was about 450 RPMs to get, which took my 33.6 modem all the way into thursday morning to complete. (You dont really need to download all the extra howtos etc if you dont want them installed). Next to get was the base/ and instimage/ directories which took alot longer then I had expected. In the instimage/ directory there was a ton of symlinks that I had to recreate etc which was easy, but a pain in the butt.

After the last file was downloaded, I created the boot.img disk that I used to boot into the Installation process with. Now at first I wanted to choose the "Upgrade" option but it kept on giving me the error "Mount: Device or Resource busy" when it would search for the RPMS. So after about and hour of fighting with it, I said screw it, rebooted into Linux, backed up anything that I wanted to keep, then restarted the Installation Process and chose to do a fresh Install.

As usual you can choose either a "Custom Install, Workstation Install or Server Install" and like always, I chose Custom Install. From there on, it found my RPMS and things went real smooth. I installed a total of 510 megs, which included installing everything but "Extra Documentation, Samba, DNS Server, Printer Support and Windows Connectivity" which took about 17 minutes to install. By the way you also have the option wether you want to install KDE or GNOME while choosing your packages. They finally dumped that old ugly fvwm95 crap and defaulted to 2 kickass window managers.

The installation process has changed a little since Red Hat 5.2. Some of the new features that it includes are
* Option to install KDE or GNOME in the package selection area
* Asks wether you would like to enable Shadowed Passwords
* Installs LILO before configuring X11 instead of after like in 5.2
* It literally starts X and asks if your configuration is correct

Finally after you choose your root password, it will congratulate you on installing 6.0 and then reboot your computer. Now during boot up, they have added little green "[ ok ]"'s after every process that loads okay. This might annoy some but I think it's cool, and plus I only reboot every couple of weeks so I don't mind.

Some of the new stuff in 6.0 include:

* Kernel 2.2.5-15
* Apache 1.3.6-7
* Sendmail 8.9.3-10
* Glibc 2.1.1-6
* x11amp 0.9_alpha3-6
* XFree86 3.3.3.1-49
* KDE 1.1.1pre2-2
* Gnome 1.0.4-34
* Afterstep 1.7.90-3
* Window Maker 0.52.0-2
* Enlightenment 0.15.5-32
* Gimp 1.0.4-3
* GTK+ 1.2.1-10
* Netscape Communicator 4.51-3

It took me about 5 minutes to untar all my backups into their proper directories and have everything set back up. Once that was done, I compiled BitchX, loaded up PPP-UP and was back on the net. Then I installed Kernel 2.2.7 (tar.gz version) without any problems.

Linuxconf has changed from what I can see. Now you can even configure apache and sendmail from within it. Also sndconfig worked like a charm and detected my cheap and old ESS1868 card without any problems. "ps aux" has also changed a little. Now processes are not organized by user but rather by date/time when they were started.

Litterally everything worked right out of the box. My mail server and webserver were functional within minutes after I got connected to the net. Since X was configured during the Installation, all I had to do was type startx and GNOME loaded up right away.

You might notice that the "code name" for 6.0 is kinda weird and lame. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, its the name in brackets on the login screen. In 5.2 it was (Apollo), well in 6.0 its (Hedwig). If you're like me and want something that looks a little nicer to read when you log in, simply just edit /etc/redhat-release and change it. The new changes will take effect once you reboot.

And for some final comments, Red Hat Linux 6.0 has impressed me alot. Although the "Upgrade" option didn't work for me, now that I think of it I probably would have rather done an "Install" anyways to clean up all the junk/crap laying around on my box. In my opinion, 6.0 is Red Hat's best release yet, they took the time and effort to produce it and it definetly shows. I urge you to either download it from one of the mirrors or buy it either from cheapbytes.com at $1.99 for the 6.0 CD or redhat.com if you want the boxed version which includes a small manual, bumper sticker, application cds and technical support for 30 days.

Way to go guys, great job.

Red Hat Linux release 6.0 (Blue Sky)
Kernel 2.2.7 on an i586

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