A Review of Red Hat Linux 5.2.2

Product: Red Hat Linux
Version: 5.2.2

Summary: We tested the burn-your-own-CD-based installation, using Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 3 for Windows to record the disc. Unfortunately, this did not produce a bootable Linux CD. Thus, we first had to use the DOS utility RAWRITE to create a Linux boot floppy to allow the Linux OS to access the CD-ROM drive in our test system. Using  DOS, we entered the command:

rawrite -f  boot.img -d a:

...after first copying the rawrite.exe program and the boot.img files from the CD over to our PC's hard disk. Then, we inserted the boot floppy these commands created and rebooted.

Installation went smoothly, after we figured out that the so-called "mount point" needed to be named "/" and the amount of hard disk space defined in the Disk Druid utility needed to be 2MB smaller than the number it said was available. Go figure.

Another puzzler was the first prompt when the 800MB+ installation finally finished. It asked us for our login name -- a name we hadn't defined. Fortunately, we knew from our previous Caldera Linux trials that the default name is "root".

Application Tests:
Even after selecting the "install everything" option during installation, we were utterly unsuccessful in getting the GNOME graphical environment to work or even install at all. It failed with multiple error messages, complaining that certain files it needed were not present. As the GNOME program is still in "Alpha" state, we elected to defer this aspect of our tests. As well, we noticed that, at least when we tested it in mid-January, the version of Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux at Download.com appeared to be corrupted. We downloaded both the segmented and single-file versions multiple times, but could not "gunzip" them. However, the version at TUCOWS worked more or less properly. However, we noticed a few bugs: the main document window grew smaller each time we re-opened the program, and we suffered a full-fledged "blue screen of death" crash during one of our tests. (Linux, meanwhile, kept right on running!) Still, Corel should be commended for its leadership role among application developers in its support of the Linux OS, and thanked for releasing this useful program for free. It's at linux.corel.com.

We downloaded StarOffice 5.0 from www.stardivision.com and were dismayed to find that, as we had encountered with the 4.2 release, the online registration process wouldn't accept our registration code. However, by re-registering without a number sign (#) in our address, it worked! If you are experiencing difficulties when registering, try removing any unusual characters from your registration data. Registration, like the program itself, is free.

Once running, StarOffice 5.0 was quite sluggish on our test system -- a 200 MHz Pentium Pro with 32 MB of RAM -- but visually, very attractive.  In fact, its "Desktop" is as close a clone of the Microsoft Windows 95 user interface as you'll ever see. StarOffice is basically a clone of Microsoft Office, providing word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, web-page authoring and related office-suite tasks. Boosting our system's RAM to 40MB improved performance considerably, although the program was still pokier for basic word processing than Corel's offering.

Conclusion
All things considered, we preferred both the Caldera 1.3 and the SuSE 5.3 releases to this Red Hat version for trouble-free functionality, especially in the GUI department. However, Red Hat continues to have the best plug-and-play hardware setup and automatic network configuration capabilities. We look forward to testing the next release.

Sidebar: Interface Eccentricities
More than 15 years after the introduction of the Macintosh, we wouldn't have guessed that graphical interface inconsistency would be so commonplace. But Linux is still maddeningly inconsistent in its interface. Netscape Communicator, for example, uses Alt-V to paste text. Corel WordPerfect, StarOffice and many other programs, however, uses Ctrl-V. And some "classic" free source tools, such as EMACS, use Ctrl-Y or still other variations. Fortunately, a growing number of Linux developers, like Corel and StarDivision, have chosen to conform to the Windows standard key commands. Linux needs many things, but human interface guidelines are an important piece of the puzzle, if it ever hopes to become a user-friendly alternative to established operating systems.

For Further Reading:
Welcome, Linux users!
Linux Versions - Comparing the Linux releases from Red Hat, Caldera and S.u.S.E. Plus, Corel WordPerfect and Linuxberg.
Linux_versions-pt2 - Linux for Mac.
Ars-Technica: Red Hat Linux installation
Linux Today: What's in the 2.21 version of the Linux kernel (available at www.kernel.org), released Jan. 29th, 1999.
Jan. 2001: Linux Kernel 2.4 released Jan. 5, 2001.

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