Re: New devel version...

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 10:50:01PM -0400, Jef Spaleta wrote:
> True maintance might be an issue...but I see maintance of any grabified
> repositories just as hard to maintain.

True (if not harder), but it is now on your grounds. My issue is kind of like
what Matthias did with FreshRPMS. He changes the location of many of the
files, and has changed the repository format.

It just means that if someone decides to change something (which is their
right to do), I have to go and check to make sure nothing is broken now... Not
a big deal, but unless it is a large repository I just prefer to mirror the
entire thing locally.

> Right...but I certainly can imagine a situation where someone doesn't
> ncessarily want to burn the space to mirror an ftp repository...but
> would like to be able to use grab on a few machines without having to
> burn the bandwidth to pull the provides multi times the slow way.  True,
> ideally you want to find an ftp server that was grabified...but I think
> being flexible about where grab can look for a provides database to
> pull, can reduce the amount of unnessary mirroring.  You don't want to
> HAVE to be the one and only mirror for all the RPM's out there that is
> grabified.  It's not a big deal its just extra flexibility to get acess
> to the quicker method of pulling provides without having to be a full
> miror.

I see the point. I will give it some thought, but it will force a bit of
architecture change from the update perspective...

> So should I time the provides pulling with the devel version?

If you have the time! 8^)

> Oh and so you said you installed redhat 8.0.  What do you think about? 
> So far the new release seems to be polarizing....among the competent
> linux users I've talked to who have tried it, they have either liked it
> a lot...or people think its an embarrassment.  At this point I've been
> beta testing redhat for a number of months so I'm over whatever initial
> shock I felt at the new Redhat.  But I'd be interesting in seeing what
> you think about it Greg, now that you've had a couple of days to live in
> it. 

I can not believe that people would think it is an embarrassment! Why? What is
their problem? This is Linux, and anything they don't like they can just
change.

Honestly, I deal with a lot of scientists and people converting to Linux from
Mac and Windows. I see where their frustration is, and I am glad that RedHat is
finally spending a bit of time developing a consistent look and feel. Aside
from that, the system resembles 7.3 a lot with several exceptions (that I
like).

This was a good move for the distribution. For example, I have never liked
Gnome because of the inconsistencies. First they used Enlightenment with GMC, 
then they used Sawfish and Nautilus. Basically, Gnome was a silly little
button bar and a control panel (IMHO). I went from FVWM, FVWM2, Enlightenment,
KDE, and now I finally use Gnome on RedHat 8. Why? Well, It is lightweight (or
seems to be because it works rather nicely on a 300MHz system I installed for
someone), and it is consistent. Anyway I have always liked the look of KDE,
but I never used 1/10 of the buttons there. I did not realize how much they
got in the way until I started with RedHat 8's version of Gnome. 

Seriously, I just look at it as a slightly upgraded 7.3, with a lot of GUI
changes. But to answer your question, it rocks!

> 1) What do you think about the menu layout and the default applications

I have been using Gnome exclusively on this system. I don't know if the layout
is consistent on the KDE side, but as far as the Gnome world, it is fine. I
mean what more is there? I 99% of the time only use the button bar to launch
my dozens of shells.

Looking at the menus, they all seem fine. Once again, a new Linux user that
wishes to customize their working environment can grasp everything well. Isn't
that the point? Low learning curve? The last thing I want to do is to have a
user call me to help them change their background! So far, all looks
promising!

BTW, I just had someone ask me how to modify the menu layout. I did not see
the menu editor in the preferences menu. Anyone want to save me some time by
enlightening me?

> 2) Anything tools you expect to be installed but weren't in the 
>      	install type that you performed

Yea. RedHat took out Netscape, and some other various tools they used to ship
with. But so what? I will be adding them to the extra RedHat extras GRAB
repository so you can just GRAB them all. It does not get any easier then
that, which is why it really does not bother me.

So what if it does not come with it. The only issue that I see is for
maintenance of these apps. It would be very nice to know that if something
needs to be fixed RedHat will fix it (as opposed to searching for the
maintainers site, and doing the grunt work yourself).

Besides there was a crap load of stuff that I had no idea they would support.
For example, not only can you install Sendmail, but also Postfix. They both (I
think) support Spamassasin, and pop/imap servers! How cool is that? Not to
mention Mailman is included! I guess it was a tradeoff, and I would rather
loose Netscape to gain these other great packages!

> 3) Do you think Redhat jumped the gun on the whole mp3 licensing issue  
> 	by pulling all the applications that have mp3 code in them
> 	(xine,mpg123...etc)

Maybe they did. But as I mentioned above, how hard is it to install? As it is
anyway, many of these applications never worked for me anyway. I would always
update them from the maintainers site to get the latest features.

Although, for some reason xmms does not work on my newly installed system. I
guess it is OK, because mpg321 (from RedHat 7.3) works great!

Hope that helps. What are other people saying about it?

Greg
-- 
Greg Kurtzer
[email protected]
http://www.runlevelzero.net
LINUX,... The choice of a GNU generation!
:wq