RH9- still in use... why/how/what?

I've been noticing quite a large number of folk still using RH9 or older. Even more curiously, new installations of RH9 or older.

I'll have a wither, whether, whest, with a wherefore to follow, and a big side-order of "why".
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox

I can imagine someone hanging on to the familiar distro, maintaining it to death. You get used to things and you get skilled with the way it works. Anyway - you may have mission-critical software that will only run on RH7.x ...

What about these new installs?

I have imagined that Wiley's "Red Hat Linux 9 for Dummies" may be hitting the second-hand bookstores or something (There must be a lot of these publisher's edition disks around)... but RH8?

I read something/somewhere recently, with reference to Windows NT 4.0 in fact, that a company cannot just decide to "drop" a linux distro (and expect it to die). I guess Red Hat Linux is proving the point.

So I am curious. For all you RHL users out there -

How did you get hold of it?
Why do you use it? (Instead of changing distro for eg.)
How does it hold up against the other distros?
What is it like to maintain? (Are there even maintainers, repos and stuff, or do you have to go the source route?)

You know - the general experience...

Try it out

Cheers
Z

I still have RH9 lying around here. Used it as my first distro, over a year ago. Was good for a start, but because I am an update junkie, I got FC3 once I found out about it..

-A

Originally Posted by zulfilee Try it out

... perhaps I should point out that my very first linux experience was in RH7.(something) on the University of Auckland Dept. of Physics Network. Followed swiftly by RH9 at home.

After up2date quit, I was upgrading by hand until FC2 came around and switched.

I, personally, wouldn't go back. Thanks.

The question is put to folk who use RH7,8,9 ...

Sorry to add to the list of people not answering the question, but I can't refrain from a brief observation.

There are probably lots of those disks lying around with complete doucumentation manuals. I think that may have been the last RH release that included all the manuals. I started with Redhat 6, and at that time, I got what I still consider the best newbie book I have ever seen. "The No BS Guide to Redhat 6," by Bob Rankin. I still occasionally fall back to that book for simple explanations of things.

Yeah - amazon.com is still running the ad which recommends Red Hat Linux 9 Bible and The Linux Admin ed4 (updated to cover the 2.4 kernel) to people interested in linux. Probably they've been snowed by emails telling them how out of date and misleading this all is.

(On the same page as the Official Ubuntu Book is advertised.)

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=378862
Is a similar thread - earlier.

The reason I still use Redhat 9 is because of my ancient computer being from around the year '98. It was something back in the day. I couldn't get the modem driver to install on Fedora Core 5, or sound either. Fedora Core 5 does not have the option of booting from floppy--it has to be from usb driver or CD, but I tricked from booting off a harddrive iso of the cd's by altering the grub.conf in my old redhat install. My PC's BIOS will accept booting from the normal internal (IDE?) CD drives, but it won't recognize my USB-cd drive, which is the only one I have because Compaq made defective components. Glad they are (sorta) gone. Redhat 9 fits my PC and I don't have the option of getting a new system, not yet anyways, unless I can somehow earn some money.

Still using RH6 in a secured environment (no internet access) due to dedicated HW and associated drivers (no new drivers available unless we pay for the development).
Also still running RH8 for same reason in same environment, althuogh I will probably be able to find newer drivers for that HW on the internet.

As both are in a secured environment (routers etc, not my responsibility) we don't care to much about security vulnerabilities on those systems.

That old RH8/9 seems to be doing a robust job still.

Smaller distros will still boot from floppy - but RH9 is the only full-featured one I know where the kernel image still fits.

Old machines will still run knoppix of DSL.

I'm curious about darkside's modem and sound. Though I note that the 2054(?) stock kernel that comes with FC5 will not allow proprietary drivers. The upgraded kernel (available a few days after release) will.

I'm curious about Wim's "dedicated hardware". The only time I ran into this was when I was building custom cards for 8086/Z80 PCs. I quickly discovered that the best solution was to provide the code as well as the card. (Though in those days I wrote in binary - so I'd have to provide a byte-for-byte description.)

I've also heard of "granny" systems which are in a similar boat. Running RH9 since it runs everything in the machine, no internet, no games, no fancy hardware. Why change?

The question really arises when someone runs into trouble, and then seeks support. Wondering why RH9 dosn't run the latest software/hardware... then wonder why it is so difficult to upgrade.

Can you imagine someone finding themselves having to bring up to date one of those 3-CD "publisher's editions" of RH9 still around?

Yeah I read somewhere about a problem with closed-source drivers not being allowed in FC5, so I guess that might explain it except for the fact that the driver that I was trying to install was compiled from source on my machine :-| .

I would like to run the latest version of Wine but I am afraid to upgrade my kernel (because of modem compatibility issues), and the 2.6 kernel is required by the glib 2.3.4, which is required by Wine, and I need Wine to run my old games. Then again, on second thought, I should spend my summer break learning how to develop open-source alternatives to those games. Right now, I am learning the basics of X11 programming with C/C++.

About the sound, I finally figured out that the only easy way to properly configure sound cards on my system is use the "sndconfig" tool that comes with RH9. The rpm info says that sndconfig is for "old" sound cards. And I got my PC in late '98. I guess that really is old.

If I get a new powerful desktop PC someday, I will try something else besides RH9. I might try Ubuntu or Slackware. I don't care as long as it gets my modem and sound running.

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge I'm curious about Wim's "dedicated hardware". The only time I ran into this was when I was building custom cards for 8086/Z80 PCs. I quickly discovered that the best solution was to provide the code as well as the card. (Though in those days I wrote in binary - so I'd have to provide a byte-for-byte description.)

This hardware is a PCI card with a specific function for a mission critical system. The drivers and software (server type application) were developped on RH6.2 and came in a RPM.

The developpers don't guarantee that it will work on other versions as well and we (the users) can not really take a chance.
Testing will take approx half-a-year and that's not worth the effort.

PS There are about 4 companies in the world that use this system.

From what I have read, and heard, from Linux users, having the latest version of a particular Redhat distribution didn't sound that important to me. Especially since most of the hardware in the box I'm building was made around '98 or so. So when I visited the Redhat site and tried to comprehend what I was expected to do, in order to get those Fedora ISO's, it was an easy decision to locate the RH9's instead. And yes, I'm still tinkering with it, but isn't that why we're all here? I mean, I can't remember when I have had so much fun learning from my mistakes (and thanks to this site, and Google, those of others). Maybe because I have spent so much time in the M$ environment, it only semeed natural to run an older version of the OS with my slightly seasoned Pentium MMX.

Interested,
....Monty.
computeworldwide at hot mail.

RH9 is fun, isn't it.
When I first installed it, it recalled my earliest experiences back before windows. (I don't think any of us really paid any heed to Bill Gates' "open letter to the hobbyist".)

One of the things about the managed or "secure" distributions, is that mucj of that early freedom is removed. But then, there's always slackware

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge How did you get hold of it?

I used the instructions here: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...stall-ftp.html

and I downloaded a minimal install cd with PCMCIA and network here:
ftp://archive.download.redhat.com/pu...mages/boot.iso (and minimal it was.. at 3.5 megs)

then, after I started installing the red hat archive went down so I switched to installing from this repo:
http://mirror.israel.net/pub/redhat/linux/9/en/os/i386/

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge Why do you use it? (Instead of changing distro for eg.)

I use it because it is most suitable for my laptop. My laptop is a 1998 Dell Latitude CPi with a whopping 128 megs of ram and a 266 mhz P2. Even if I use the fastest, light-weight-est distros (slackware, gentoo, et cetra) all the applications are written for the newest hardware. GNOME 2.14 and OOo 2 doesn't run so well on this, but GNOME 2.2 and Openoffice 1.1 work just fine.

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge How does it hold up against the other distros?

This is the first time I've used a Red Hat based distro, besides Fedora 4, and I am quite happy. It is stable, fast, and good looking. The only thing I miss is in Slackware just being able to go find a file and fix things manually.

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge What is it like to maintain? (Are there even maintainers, repos and stuff, or do you have to go the source route?)

I use the fedora legacy project mostly for security fixes. I can find most of what I need at http://rpm.pbone.net/ and http://freshrpms.net/ . I use apt with the repositories at http://freshrpms.net/apt/.



Hope that explains why I still use 9