RedHat

[Jason Clinton]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
>>They included the tools in the distro and didn't include
>>documentation
>>in the standard manuals on how to utilize the up2date command tool
>>properly.
>
>
> Well, up2ate gives a pretty good summary, as does man up2date.  Not
> sure just what you want.  See above about buying support.

But they never told you up2date existed! It weeks before I knew it was
even there! Once I found it, I thought, "Geez, this must only be for the
the serious hackers because RedHat never told me about it and they've
got all these nice pretty GUIs that are supposed to be working."

Okay. To put the whole argument in to perspective: Assume I'm a newbie
and I download RedHat 8.0 right now. I've been using Windows my entire
computer life and have _tons_ of software installed over there.

Now, RedHat Personal Edition has targeted newbies and made all these
pretty printed manuals and GUI configuration tools and told me I don't
have to learn config files. I install Quake3 (assuming RedHat configured
my 3D acceleration). And the 1.32 patch.

Now, I want to install XQF (the TCP/IP game browser) so I can play
online. Certainly this is not an esoteric request.

Now, seeing that RedHat doesn't support it here:
<http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/results.html?search%3Aquery_cb=xqf&search%3Asource=rpm&search%3
Afields=name&search%3Afields=summary&search%3Afields=description&search%3Aoptions=match_partial&sear
ch%3Afield%3Aarch=i386%2Ci586%2Ci686%2Cnoarch&search%3Ago=Search>

I decide to go compile it myself (assuming I can figure that out as a
newbie) and find that the following dependacies are needed for version
0.9.11:

qstat-25c
gtk+-1.2.10-r9    << RedHat provides
xqf-0.9.11

Assuming that all the standard libraries are in the right places, I
spend three days learning how to use the console and automake just to
play Quake3 online.

Now, if I'm a newbie that was told going in to this, "It's just as easy
as Windows," I'm going to feel lied to. I wasted all that time on
something I wasn't ready for and I may not go back to Linux for years
because of the bad taste in my mouth from experiences like this.

OTOH, if I had been told up front that Linux ISN'T like Windows and that
I'd have to learn a lot about text editors, consoles, shells, scripts
and the like to get comfortable then I would have waited until I was
ready to take that plunge.

I would have stuck with it instead of bemoaning the horror of running
RedHat in comparison to Windows. I, personally, spent a full year
switching between distros like RedHat, Mandrake and SUSE driven only by
the need to not be running Windows. Each time I ran in to this exact
same problem. In the process, I happened to pick up ALOT about consoles
by accident; not by design.

If you can explain to me how a RedHat/Linux newbie can do the following
things without reling mostly on the console, I'll give you 50 blank
CD-Rs at the next meeting:

* Install and play quake3 online
* Install the latest Mozilla 1.3b with antialiasing support
* Switch to KDE (because I'd like to try it out)
* Install sodipodi (the best vector graphics tool for Linux)
* get a samba share or server running
* watch TV on my TV tuner
* install new themes for GTK or QT or even XMMS

(all of which RedHat alludes are possible in their advertising)

If 8.0 can't do these things in the GUI, then my point will be this:
RedHat is lying to its newbie customers and that turns people off to
Linux because, like you said, 75% of Linux is RedHat. When people think
Linux in the Windows world, they think RedHat. If RedHat doesn't do what
it claims it can do, then all of Linux must be bad.

Therefore I submit that RedHat Personal Edition is BAD for Linux on the
desktop.

And for the record: installing quake3 for online play in Gentoo requires
only three commands:

emerge quake3
cp /mnt/cdrom/baseq3/pak* /opt/quake3
emerge xqf

Mozilla with antialiasing:
EXPORT "USE=-gtk2" emerge mozilla

Switch to KDE:
edit one line in /etc/rc.conf

Install sodipodi .30:
emerge sodipodi

Get samba share or server running
emerge samba
edit three lines in /etc/samba/smb.conf
smbuser -a username
/etc/init.d/samba start
rc-update add samba default

Watch TV on my TV Tuner:
insmod bttv
emerge zapping
zapping

All of which are promoted actively by the community and by the
organization, Gentoo. No one pretends that it can be done by some cute
Window-like GUI. The users love it. They have open, honest tools that
always get the job done and that are well polished because all the
developement resources are focused on making the command line efficient.

--
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.