Red Hat Linux 9

Red Hat 9's installation utility was very good and offered everything users of "home" versions of Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE) have come to expect - step-by-step guidance and an easy to understand and use graphical user interface. The process was staightforward and it went smoothly. However, more experienced Linux users may be very disappointed with the installation procedure which makes a number of assumptions about how you want to set-up the system (the default runlevel is set to 5 and graphical login managers are installed by default). I expected Red Hat 9 to at least offer an "expert" mode during install which would offer more configurability of the system, which is exactly what other distributions like Mandrake do - but there was no such option. The package selection system was very good (although I found some of the default choices for 'Personal Desktop' slightly unusual - eg. the kernel source code is not installed). The graphical disk partitioning system (use of which is optional) - DiskDruid - was easy to use and works similarly to the high-acclaimed DiskDrake program included with Mandrake.

Upon first booting after installation the graphical user interface and well-designed graphical login manager were a pleasant surprise and I'm sure that someone migrating from Microsoft Windows would feel at home straight away. The "Blue Curve" theme (which is automatically applied to GNOME and KDE) looks nice and I was quite impressed by it although I've now removed most aspects of the theme because I disliked the icons and window decorations.

Red Hat includes some brilliant pieces of software such as OpenOffice.org, the Microsoft Office compatible suite including a word processor (compatible with Microsoft Word), spreadsheet program (compatible with Microsoft Excel) and presentation designer (compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint) - and more. Other key programs are Ximian Evolution, which is very similar to Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla 1.2.1 - a stable and reliable webbrowser (it's a shame Mozilla 1.3.0 is not included and that no plugins are provided for Mozilla). I was annoyed to discover that MP3 support has been ripped out of the WinAmp-like media-player, XMMS (apparently because of Red Hat's concerns about patents), although a quick visit to xmms.org fixed this. I was also disappointed to discover that support for NTFS partitions (used by Windows NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) is not part of the kernel (again, because of patent worries) - so I had to add this feature myself before I was able to access my Windows 2000 partition in Linux.

The package itself is very good and great value for money - you get three binary discs (including a bootable installation disc), three source code discs, one documentation disc, a detailed 125-page installation guide, a set of Red Hat stickers and a product ID code which entitles you to 30 days' web-based support.

Overall, this package is extremely good value for money but whilst some aspects will be pleasing for new users (graphical login by default, straightforward installation procedure), others may put new users off (no MP3 support in version of XMMS included, no NTFS support in kernel included). Experienced users will find Red Hat 9 straightforward to get into although they may be annoyed by some of the default set-up options. This package is definately worth trying although those with no Linux experience may find Mandrake 9.1 or SuSE 8.2 easier to get into.

Well lets look at the good side. If you just install redhat 9 as a client or workstation machine it will find your network, your modem, your wireless, your video, your printer etc,. It will install all of the operating system and all of the applications you might want and at the end of it you will have a complete working system. It's slick, it's complete and there's nothing else you will need to get working.

If you come from a windows background, and let's be honest most people will be coming from that background, you will probably be used to a box which arrived with windows already installed so the first thing is that you will not know that installing an operating system can take the best part of an hour. Similarly you might look at the specs and want to know what on earth takes up 1.8G without realising that windows small install size is only possible because an out of the box installation of windows will let you play patience and do nothing else until you install several gig of applications.

There are a lot of minor points like this where Linux may look worse if you are comparing it to windows without really understanding what you are looking at. For example booting up linux with a standard build is slower than windows but if you know what you are looking at you will see that Linux is starting a lot of services that windows will not even consider.

Are there any points which could be better? Well of course there are, for example it could make it clearer which services can be disabled, linux will start a lot of mail and web services which are extremely powerful and useful but not needed if all you want is a single machine with a mail client and browser. Also installing as a dual boot machine is still confusing, it's better than windows in that it won't assume it can destroy everything but it's still unclear for a novice user how to set this up.

In short if a novice user were to be given this and windows and to install them on two empty systems they would probably find both easy(ish) to install. Linux would win slightly on installation as it generally seems more reliable at working out what your hardware is. Linux would win as a usable out of the box solution as once installation is complete your applications are there. Windows would probably win for applications appearance once they had been installed. The only problems Linux really faces are that people are unwilling to face the learning curve for something slightly different.

The OS is incredibly easy to install on a new system, and if you can't bear to get rid of Windows completely, then it is a fairly straight forward procedure to set up your system with a dual boot option giving you the choice on start-up: Linux or Windows.

Red Hat uses a version of KDE that gives Red Hat a Windows-esque interface and allows a mass of software to be downloaded especially for Linux. And the good thing... is that most of the software for Linux is free. OpenOffice is the typical example. This is software that has most of the features of MS Office 2000/2003 but is open source, free, 99.5% compatible with MS Office and you can download updates/upgrades any time you like. But just about every conceivable piece of software that is written for Windows now has its counterpart for Linux and, generally, they are all free too. That’s a significant saving in on-going costs.

Other good points include a relative speed-up. If you’re doing the same task in Windows and Linux, then generally the Linux version runs faster. Certainly, if you use Linux as a server platform then you can expect some nice speed-ups in most Java applications.

Yes, it has a few downsides aswell, but they can be fixed relatively easily. There was a significant security scare about the Linux kernel (the processor machine code) about six weeks ago but a new version of the kernel has been released to fix it, and it is readily available. Another technical difference is that around 80% of the world uses Internet Explorer to browse the internet and there is no version of this for Linux. You can use other excellent browsers such as Firebird, but there are slight differences between the two. So if you’re a web developer, you need to double-check all your stuff.

You can fully expect Linux to be the operating system of choice within 10-15 years. Oh, and if you’re a true masochist, you can actually download the 1.8Gb version of Red Hat for free… I’d personally pay for a set of CDs and some nice documentation!