Gnome and KDE in Redhat
 

I am a Mandrake user, but have become frustrated with their buggy releases and am looking for a new distro. I have a couple of questions about the next fedora/redhat release.

I heard a while back Redhat merged Gnome and KDE, is this correct? If so, are they still doing it, and will this continue in the new Fedora Redhat alliance? I ask because I am a KDE fan and dont want a half-breed interface. I also dont want to have a castrated KDE, and I have heard that Redhat hasn't bothered with polish and stability with KDE in the past. Basically what Im asking is can I use a distinct, clean, stable version of KDE of comparable quality to the default Gnome (or Gnome/KDE halfbreed if that is the case) desktop?

Secondly, does redhat have a utility like URPMI (or does it have URPMI itself?) to easily update packages in the vein of apt-get?

Thirdly, how stable is Redhat, and do you expect it to be better/worse/equal now that it has merged with Fedora? I am not expecting Debian levels of stability here, but would like something a bit better than half a cd worth of updates immediately after release as was the case with Mandrake 9.2 =[

I know the best way is to install it myself and see, but I thought I would do some advanced research, because I dont have too much time to experiment at the moment.

Thanks very much for your help.

Re: Gnome and KDE in Redhat
 

No.

http://www.cyber.com.au/users/mikem/redhat8kde.html
http://people.redhat.com/otaylor/rh-desktop.html

up2date supports APT/Yum repositories. Yum is included with Fedora Core 1. APT and Synaptic are provided via add-ons, see http://fedora.us


Strange sentence here. Do you think Red Hat Linux is less "stable" than Debian GNU/Linux?

Testing it yourself is way better than relying on what fanatics say about their favourite distribution and about distributions they hate for unknown reasons.

Thanks very much for your reply. Those links were also quite helpful.

I made the Debian comparison simply because the whole Debian distribution is about the stability of a whole range of packages. This is partly the reason why they update so infrequently and have far less up-to-date software in their "stable" branch. Although I have yet to use it, I would think the far more often released and up-to-date consumer Redhat package couldnt hope to compete with that sort of stability. I may be wrong, and I make no comparisons to Redhat's enterprise product, but thats just the conclusion I have come to.

However I definately think I will give Redhat a try as my next distro, thanks.

no, man, don't do it:

Downgrade if you want to MDK9.1 or change to SuSE or Gentoo, but don't go for RH.

This I tell you as a 6years user of RedHAt, which makes me feel almost as a RedHat guru, but I'm fed up.

I've used RH 5.0, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, 7.3, 8 and AS2.1 all of them on servers and desktops. I'm done. I think 6 years is ok for a test of a distro, don't you ?

I'm fed up because of Redhat desktops always have something broken. always. There's good intentions on their tries but they never get it.

After switching to MDK 9.1 for desktop (never before used MDK), I'm not going back, really.

And for servers...well, that's a different and long story.

Switching to Fedora ? Have you heard about new threading model ? If you are not really into computers, wait at least 1 year.

Hmm, interesting. I would eventually like to try Gentoo, but I have not been running my own Linux systems long enough to be completely comfortable in my ability configure a system using the command line only, and as far as I am aware, Gentoo doesnt have any graphical configuration utils.

I have considered Suse, however I would like to try another free distro before I pay for one.

What is this new threading model you are talking about. I know that in Kernel 2.6 the posix thread api is natively supported, is that what you are referring to? What is happening in a year? I am right into computing and hardware/software architecture so would love to know what you are referring to! :)

Thanks for your info

NPTL completes the new thread model together with kernel 2.6 new features, but you can get lots of binary incompatibilities with actual linux software. That's why I'll wait for a year (for letting software makers upgrade their products).

But kernel 2.6 needs NPTL for the model to really take place. I run kernel 2.6 with "classic" libraries (MDK 9.1), and I get the limitations of the old model despite I run 2.6. In exchange, all software runs ok (there's no NPTL). So, you need the kernel plus the libraries.

I'll only consider changing if you really have the need to:
I.e., I NEED to update my RH7.3 development server to RH9 or AS3 because I have more than 15 BEA WebLogic servers running at the same time (10 developers), and each forking 40 or 50 java thread processes ...it gets unmanageable.

In one year (that's an approach ..maybe less !) I guess kernel 2.6 will be ubiquous and NPTL will be the proven standard.

Now, RedHat9 ships with kernel 2.4 and NPTL .... I think that makes it a "snapshot distribution" (go for everything or don't go).

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtar...888557,00.html

http://people.redhat.com/drepper/nptl-design.pdf

I disagree with not using RH. I've been using RH myself for many years. I will admit I was never very happy with it as a desktop OS until RH9. I've been running RH9 as my day to day everyday machine for a few months now and I'm very happy with it. With daily usage and daily playing 3D games like Unreal Tournament and URT2003 and RTCW it ran steady for 80 days straight...only reason it got rebooted because I only left my server running when I went to California on vacation. Since I've gotten back it's been running very strong.

On the KDE/Gnome thing I can't really say because I use neither. As soon as install was done I installed Fluxbox and have been running it since.

Eitherway...as was said above...give it a try and don't rely on what others say. You're either going to love it or hate it. I've ran many distros and I love it.