Revisited

June 22nd, 2003 | by Tony Steidler-Dennison |

So … I’ve started to get over my little Red Hat tiff of a few months ago. When Red Hat decided to limit their update services, I got a bit pissed. I decided then that I was going to move my machines to Debian. I did that with two of them - a server at work and my file server at home - but never took it much further. I didn’t want to mess with the production machine at home, a Red Hat 8.0 box. That was pretty much the case with the desktop at work, as well. I made a half-change, but never a full one.

Now, I’ve installed Red Hat 9.0 on the laptop and am very happy with it. The Dell actually went to Japan with SuSE 8.2. (I’ll write about SuSE over in uptime this week.) When I got home, I decided to give Red Hat 9.0 a shot. It’s been plugging away nicely for a week now.

The real plus is the ability to use apt in Red Hat. The distro has always been pretty stable, but it was the way Red Hat has seemed to lock out longtime users from its update process that really ticked me. With apt, I’ve been able to update regularly. In fact, I’ve left the RHN icon in the panel, letting it alert me to when there are new patches. Then, I use apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to grab the updates. The RHN icon even recognizes the updates, changing to blue when apt is done. I get the updates without “intruding” on Red Hat’s paying customers. While I still don’t agree with the approach Red Hat took, it’s clearly pretty hard to leave behind the distro I’ve used for years.

Watch this space for a more formal review of Red Hat 9.0 sometime this week.

  1. 8 Responses to “Revisited”

  2. By Frank Merenda on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    Tony,

    I’m glad that you decided to check out RH 9. As you know, I’ve been using it since the week it came out, along with APT. It’s worked really well for me, except for the kernel update I had to do by hand. I just installed the latest kernel (2.4.21) with the pre-emptive patch, and it’s really sweet, fast, stable and responsive. I’m looking forward to your review!

    Take care,
    -Frank

  3. By Chris B on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    Does apt come installed (or as an option) with RedHat 9.0? I had tried to install it on a previous distro of RedHat (7.3 I believe) when I saw the PenguinShell articles on it.

    Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it to work at that time.

  4. By William Hooper on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    Not to start an old flame war, but how did Red Hat “lock out longtime users”? I just filled out the second survey for an account I use here and I’m still using up2date just fine. I think it is worth it to fill out a survey every so often to access a free service like up2date.

  5. By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    I wouldn’t characterize it as a “flame war.” I just disagreed with the approach Red Hat took. Specifically, I felt that Red Hat should allow current users full access to the update services without the additional requirement of a survey. It would have made more sense to me to add that requirement for customer who registered with the Red Hat Network after a date certain. The customer base as it existed at the time Red Hat made the change was, in no small part, responsible for the overall success of Red Hat. The restructuring of the update service smacked, to me, of attempting to move this core user base to a pay model. While I have no gripe with profitability in the Linux world, I found the approach and general attitude of Red Hat less than tasteful and certainly poorly thought out.

    BTW - even after filling out the surveys, I’ve never since been able to access RHN for updates. The servers have always been full.

  6. By Tony on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    Chris:

    apt *isn’t* included with Red Hat 9.0. You can download an rpm from http://freshmrpms.net/apt/. I’ve not had any trouble installing and using it.

    You can also add synaptic to manage the apt program graphically. When apt is up and running on your machine, use the command:

    apt-get install synaptic

    This tool just keeps getting better with every revision.

  7. By William Hooper on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    I have noticed them being full right after an announcement, but that problem existed before they asked for surveys. Any other time it hasn’t been a problem. I always thought of up2date as an add-on service since the updates are readily available on the ftp site, so I guess that is where our viewpoints differ.

    I’ve been following the FreshRPMs mailing list and it looks like there are a lot of people happily using apt, also.

  8. By Frank Merenda on Jun 23, 2003 | Reply

    +1 on using apt.
    I’ve been using it exclusively since Tony mentioned it in the penguin shell, and it’s been my tool of choice ever since. If you haven’t checked it out, you really should. It totally takes care of all your dependencies and everything. The only thing I could never get is kernel updates…
    -Frank

  9. By MasterRa on Jun 27, 2003 | Reply

    Man.. i just downlaoded RH9.. but i don’t have a machine to try it out on! ARG!

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