Why not redhat 8?

[Lilwolf]

I am thinking of setting up a second linux machine at home (since I don't really want to touch my firewall).

anyway, I hear guides for installing on redhat 7.2, but never 8.0

how come? Or is it 7.2+

I would like to keep both systems 8.0 if possible, but not if it's going to cause me a lot of problems.

(but 7.2 will run EQ in wineX without slowdowns I hear... but 8 is having some problems... so maybe I should stay with 7.2).


and the real problem... I have 8.0 disks... and have to redownload 7.2...

[KaL]

RedHat 8 works great.

I only had to install one RPM from the install CDs before getting the libEQ.a and CVS and compiling.

[Iam_Walrus]

There were a number of threads concerning RH 8.0 including one titled something like "easiest install yet," or something to that effect. Basically:

install RH 8.0 -> everything
grab libEQ.a
grab seq from cvs
compile

you don't need to worry about QT or even the wiley QMotif, just run the make commands. it's like out of the box ready to go.

i use a static linux box. i haven't mucked about with anything like wineX, so i can't speak for performance. i don't imagine you'd have much difficulty setting up a firewall on 8.0 if you were considering upgrading, but then i guess it depends on what you do for security. 8.0 is definitely the most user friendly distro yet from the RH gang. i guess the choice is between ease of use vs. familiarity.

[SurfAngel]

Call me a n00b but I had problem with RedHat 8. Couldn't find gcc3 and g++3 among other libraries. 7.2 was much easier for me.

[Lilwolf]

Reason I want to go with 8 is that I moved all my ipconfigs to iptables a while ago and don't want to move back.

But if you got it working, I will try. I just kept reading about 7.2 and didn't see any 8 talk... so I thought there might be a real reason.

[S_B_R]

Here is the thread (http://seq.sourceforge.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1980&highlight=RedHat+8.0) in question. ;)

[Iam_Walrus]

Surf,

If you choose a custom install of RH 8.0 and then pick the "Everything" option, you'll use disks 1 through 3 and install about 2.6 gigs of crap that you don't need along with the roughly 2gigs of crap that you do. I goofed around with different packages for a couple days and kept hitting dependent packages so I ended up with the "Everything" option.

Keep in mind, you don't need to do all the export commands that we previously needed to use with RH 7.2 and you don't need to grab a new version of QT as 3.0.5 is out of the box with RH 8.0.

If space isn't an issue, install everything.

[edit]
May as well give you the steps corrected from otterpop's post:

cd /usr/lib
wget --passive-ftp ftp://smurfette.trifocus.net/pub/libeq/linux/libEQ.a
mkdir /seq
cd /seq
export CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected] :/cvsroot/seq
cvs login (enter with no password at prompt)
cvs checkout showeq
cvs update -P
cvs logout (it's courteous)
cd showeq
make -f Makefile.dist
./configure
make && make install

[CiscoKid]

Yep, RH8 was much easier for me...worked "out of the box" for me.

[Tristatic]

Originally posted by SurfAngel
Call me a n00b but I had problem with RedHat 8. Couldn't find gcc3 and g++3 among other libraries. 7.2 was much easier for me.

Just for your info. In Redhat 8, its just "gcc" nothing more nothing less, plain oh gcc.

Thats also saying you just did the complete install and nothing else.

Have fun

[Ratt]

You should be using Gentoo 1.4, not Red Hat :p

[Lilwolf]

why gentoo? I have to admit, I've never looked at it.

do they have better/nicer tools? More options?

I always liked corel myself. VERY nice tools with it. I LOVED the install (after making all the decisions for the install it would let you play tetris, it wouldn't wait for you to choose things, but first install everything that all installs needed, so if you took some time reading, it wouldn't slow down the install... ect). But they seem to stop putting effort into them.

[Dedpoet]

The FAQ specifically mentions that RedHat 8 is better than 7.2 in several locations. I wrote those sections.

[Iam_Walrus]

Ok Ratt, you keep pimping Gentoo so what's the benefit comparison?

I've been using RH for four years now and I've become very accustomed to it. I've never felt the need to change, although I've tried FreeBSD, Debian and Mandrake. The former was just too clunky and the latter didn't wow me enough to make me want to change. So... what's so much better about Gentoo? About the only thing I can see so far is it seems significantly more lightweight.

[SurfAngel]

Thanks Walrus and Tris. Next time I blow the machine away I'll try that. :)

[Cryonic]

The biggest advantage of Gentoo over RH or mandrake or debian is the fact that everything is built optimized for your system. RH at best optimizes the kernel (i386, i586 or i686 rpm), but the rest is still able to be run by a 386. Mandrake optimizes for Pentiums (i586). This means they lose out on potential gains that could be had by building and optimizing for a PIII or a P4 or Athlon, etc...

[Ratt]

The biggest advantage that I like is the fact that it only installs what you need, not all the extra crap (which represents a security hole, as well as extra bloat for no reason) that Red Hat does.

The other major advantages for me is the portage system for installing new software, and as Cryonic said, it optimizes everything you install for your personal system.

[sam]

The nice thing about redhat is that when I'm not in the mood to read install docs and compile something for a hours, I can simply drop in the rpm and use that to get the job done until I feel the need to remove it and install the source version. It sounds like gentoo uses nothing but source balls, but has it found any way to automate this for near download-and-play ability? I understand there is no way to get around the compile process but somethign that could automate it for you would be nice.

I'm gonna go read up on gentoo some and if I answer any of my own questions, I'll add them to this thread.

[Iam_Walrus]

I haven't had the time this morning to really dig into Gentoo, but if models ports just like FreeBSD, it's going to compile the source for you. I don't have any real FreeBSD experience, but someone did show me how incredibly convenient ports is including, if I remember correctly, parsing for depends and grabbing any appropriate dependent source. Yes?

Well, I'm going to be building a new gaming box soon so I'll have some trickle down opportunity to change my kids' machine that they never use into a test box. P'raps I'll give Gentoo a try then.

Do you get a medal for converts, Ratt?

[Dedpoet]

Sam, you're exaxtly right. It works much like Debain's apt-get system, but it's called portage. It uses what they call ebuild scripts to do the job. Say you just got done setting up your system and you want to install KDE. You just type "emerge kde" and walk away for 10 hours. The source is downloaded, unzipped, untarred, compiled, and installed. It gets and installs all dependancies automatically, so it would get X if you didn't have it, Qt, etc.

For most packages, this is all pretty quick. Gentoo isn't something you would run on a Pentium 133 though. With a decent machine, something like "emerge tcpdump" would take just 2 or 3 minutes, while "emerge qt-3.1.1" might take 3 hours.

Really, though, once you have your big stuff installed it's great. It took me 2 days of near constant downloading and compiling to get my laptop set up the way I wanted (X, Qt3, OpenOffice, KDE), but after that it's great. And -so- fast. Also, their documentation is top notch. Follow 2 docs (install guide and desktop guide) step by step and you'll have a working KDE/Gnome system without much hassle other than the compile time.

[S_B_R]

I tried 1.2 when it came out. I really liked the concept, and it was very well documented. I had no problems until I got to X. For some reason the X server it used by defualt for my Intel graphics wouldn't work at all. I found the version of the driver that redhat was using for the same chipset and compiled and installed that. At that point it worked but the screen would never center correctly and the refresh rates were out of whack. I configured the X server exactly as it was on my Redhat 7.3 box on the same hardware but it still wouldn't work right. In the end, I gave up on it because I needed the machine I was installing.

I'm going to give it another shot next time I get some time and some available hardware.

[dbrot]

I chose Redhat 7.3 over 8.0 because SEQ was slow as hell on RH 8.0 system. To many bells and whistles for my poor little PII 266 Mhz to handle.

Redhat is now making people pay for an account to get the updates from the redhat network. Even if you bought a Redhat product in the past you will have to buy a subscription to the update feature. Starting to sound more like Micro$oft. Buy the product then have to keep on paying to keep the software running.

Maybe I'll give Gentoo a try.

[Pokesfan]

This still works great on RH9. Just thought I'd drop that info on this discussion.

[bubbahlicious]

I found a good compromise for RH8 between space constraints, and taking the time to install each package one by one, was to choose 'development libraries' from the installer, and add qt-devel and xfree86-devel at the end.