I think you might find it interesting that I actually was able to get RedHat 5.x to work quite well (I think it was 5.0 when I used it, but I can't recall for sure).

It was on an old P133 system, although the motherboard had a VIA VX-Pro+ chipset.

Still, in another thread someone posted that the RedHat distribution seems to sometimes have serious problems on non-Intel hardware.

I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know that recent attempts at using 6.2 and 7.2 have failed for me, using the AMD Socket 7 CPU and VIA MVP3 chipset board.

Couldn't say for sure about AMD Socket A systems though. I imagine it *should* work on those, else there'd be a LOT of complaints.

Out of curiosity, what sort of hardware did you have when you tried RedHat 5.x?

I believe I had installed it on a couple of Dell systems. Overall, the OS worked good, but there were just too many little nagging things that I finally got to the point where I just couldn't ignore them and be happy. Not that Mandrake has been flawless for me, but I've been able to work out just about every problem I've had with MDK.

My main reason for choosing it over RH is generally there's far fewer problems during a full install. I think the Mandrake folks really went the extra mile to make sure that part of it goes smoothly... there's no bigger turn-off than a botched install.

Well, just my .02 cents, but I have probably done several dozen installs of Red Hat 7.2 and I've yet to have any serious problems. I did have a bad cd-rom that caused weird things but replacing the drive fixed that. In fact I just finished building a new MySQL server for work and I put 7.2 on there as well. I'm not saying I've never had problems with Linux in general but 95% of the time it is due to either a hardware problem or something I am doing wrong. I also had an instance where I couldn't even get 7.2 to install..at all. I ended up setting the BIOS setting to failsafe and suddenly no more problems. Mandrake is nice, but IMHO it just has a lot of "fluff" that I don't want on a server machine. I like it fine for a desktop though. I'll shut up now.

I agree with the fact that a lot of *stuff* seems to be in Mandrake (although I noticed this in RH 7.2 when I could get the install to at least partly work)...

I haven't really tried much with it, but I know that in "recommended" mode, if you uncheck all the groups during Mandrake 8.2 instal then continue, it will give you some "minimal install" options.

This might be right up your alley. But take that with a grain of salt . . I've only read a little about it, and tried it once (though I then went along with the "Oh, but I also want this, and also want to add in something else . . and . . ." and you get the idea if where my minimal install went!)

But the bare minimal to get a running system with no X comes to about 65MB

I can say this about RH 7.2, it has a much better "minimal" install than any mainstream distro I have run, Mandrake will actually install gimp during an expert install without x

I
I installed RH 7.2 from 2 cds that I got from the book Red Hat Linux 7.2 Weekend Crash Course. Let me tell you something, the installation was a breeze. I only had 1 complaint and that was disk druid wouldn't partition my HD. So I used a little utility called FIPS to take care of that, and everything worked perfectly. After installing it I took a look on the internet to get some drivers for my modem and lo and behold my winmodem that wouldn't work in slackware worked in RH. I don't see why people knock RH for being unstable. I haven't had any problems with running it on a 1.1 gb partition with a 200mb swap partition. So, maybe before anyone disses anything that a newbie can install and get working in less than 2 hours on a PC that is mostly generic/cheap hardware they should maybe check their own system for problems or check their CDs....

I have a Cyrix MII x86 366 processor (Socket 7 cpu), and once agian, I had no problems installing or using RH 7.2. It runs much faster than Win98, and if it wasn't for the fact that there isn't any good mp3 sharing software (that i have found anyway) for Linux I have to stick with a dual boot RH / Win98 for that and a few other apps that Wine won't run too well..

Actually you can use one of many file sharing programs for linux, eDonkey2000, gnutella, knapster, dctc which is my favorite is a text client to direct connect which can be found at DCTC .

WOW!! RedHatMN is just a bit touchy about his favourite distro!! I too gave up on trying to install redhat... total pain in the butt. Mandrake 9.1 was a breeze, recognized all my hardware, I was on the net immediatly, and my sound worked like a charm.
If that many people are having a problem with it Red Hat, something is probably wrong. Simple as that.

I think JUSTICE IS BLIND is correct. I recall having a hell of a time trying to get Redhat 7 installed only to find ONE sentence at the bottom of page 700 or so, that said something like "meant only for intel systems" I was a little choked!!

Hehe yeah i remembered the time i tried RedHat 7.2 on my Athlon XP. it was so slow.

I think that's just a matter of kernel configuration, being optimized for Intel based chipsets or whatnot. I'm sure it's something someone could fix with a kernel update or changing the kernel configuration, but I don't know because I'm no expert on hardware or linux for that matter, but I would guess that it would be as simple as that... but if you don't like RH, why bother with it and use a distro that you do like.

Whoa, hold on here, are you buying into RedHatMN's PR machine already?

I don't see how I was "dissing" RedHat, all I know is what I went through, and what I have, and what I've read on other posts here.....

Allow me to reiterate . . I already allowed for the fact that I might've had bad CDs or corrupted ISOs. I redownloaded 7.2, and further, separately I downloaded RedHat 6.2

Both exhibited very similar symptoms. Maybe if I'd bought the CDs it might not have been a problem . . etc. I've gone through this already.

AND . . if you haven't read my previous posts . . I stated that Windows 9x seems to work trouble-free with this same hardware setup, as does Mandrake 8.1 and Mandrake 8.2. Thus eliminating the possibility of hardware problems.

Let me reiterate here . . I am not any sort of reviewer of Linux distros . . and I didn't come here to dis any particular distro.

I simply showed up and said "A, B, and C are happening when I try to install RedHat 7.2. What is going on, or what am I doing wrong?" I was simply hoping for help to get it working.

Geez . . .

... apologies to everyone who has been helpful in trying to give me advice. I'm really just irritated about how I suddenly got this title of "Linux Distro Reviewer" or "Chief Slammer of Red Hat"

Like I said in a previous post, the best GNU/Linux distro is the one you personally have the best experience with, be it Mandrake, Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, or on of the other hundred distros out there.

Ok, ok, I was unfair to "label" you that... I have had problems with some software that will refuse to load or won't run properly under Win98, and I had a rather unpleasant install of Slackware from CD that wouldn't work very well, I guess that there are somethings that are just highly selective. You weren't "dissing" RH as much as you were showing your displeasure that it wouldn't install....Hopefully any conflict is resolved.