Redhat Linux 6 Review (11-15-1999)

Review by sysadmin

Before I start this review I have to say that I am the system administrator here at SpinnNet and I've installed Linux more times than I can count so if I skip some things that a new user might need to know, that's why.

Redhat Linux is the most popular distribution in North America. Redhat is also the only Linux company to go public as of the date of this writing. Being the biggest and seemingly most commerical of the distributions, Redhat Linux (or just Redhat) is also the most controversial. But all the controversy and fighting over Redhat in the Linux community doesn't take away from the fact that Redhat 6 is a great distribution. I'm running a couple of work computers that have to be up all the time on it and both my home computers run Redhat. Installing Redhat 6 is pretty easy if you have the manuals, which is why I really recommend buying Redhat 6 in stores instead of getting it from a friend or downloading it. The manuals it comes with are pretty nice. The book Redhat Linux 6 Unleashed is a good idea to get, especially if you don't get the Redhat manuals. The hardest part is repartitioning your harddrive, but if you buy the distribution out of the box the manuals go over the process for you. The disk partitioning tool that Redhat 6 uses, Disk Druid, is not really that intuitive to use unless you have the manuals to help you out. It will detect if you have Windows partitions on your drive but it doesn't have any facility to protect your Windows data so be aware that if you only have 1 giant partition with Windows on it (your My Computer only shows an A: drive, a C: drive and your CD-ROM drive) and you delete it to split the drive up for Linux, you'll lose everything on the other partition. What I would suggest if you aren't sure you're going to keep Linux or you don't have a good disk partitioning tool like Partition Magic (which is a great product by the way), buy a second hardrive to put Linux on. Harddrives are pretty cheap nowadays and even you don't keep Linux, you'll have a new drive to use.

Once you get your drive partitioned up, the Redhat 6 installation is pretty straight forward. You can choose between Workstation, Server, and Custom installation that each install different packages and format your drive differently. The server install is supposed to be for running a web server or something like that where the computer needs very little in the way of user programs because there will be very few users on the system. The workstation install is probably what you'll choose for your everyday Linux use. I've only ever chosen the Custom install because it lets you have the most flexibility in what you want on the machine. If you don't want to specifiy exactly what programs get installed on your system and you want to use it for normal everyday activities, you'll probably choose Workstation.

I've had really good luck with Redhat 6 detecting and installing all my hardware correctly, even my video card. It will even start XWindows near the end of the install so you can make sure it's working correctly. Redhat 6 suffers from the same problems as most other distributions when it comes to hardware though, it probably won't detect your modem or soundcard during the installation. To get the modem working, you'll probably need to go through the isapnptools package. Sound cards are taken care of with the sndconfig program.

Redhat 6 uses GNOME as the default desktop environment instead of KDE and it uses Enlightenment as the default window manager. It comes with Netscape Navigator for web browsing and email as well as all of the various text editors Linux users use and an MP3 player, X11Amp (which is now called XMMS). GNOME comes with a ton of useful things like a calendar, a Personal Information Manger that I use a lot and various other games, utilities, etc. The only problem with Redhat 6 right now is that because it's somewhat old for a Linux distribution, it doesn't come with any of the new word processors / office suits such as WordPerfect, ApplixWare, or StarOffice. Redhat 6.1 takes care of those issues I believe. WordPerfect is free and it installed with no problems on my Redhat 6 machines though if you want to download it. Redhat uses the RPM format for installing new software which makes it very easy to install new stuff. RPMs are the reason that I haven't upgraded to Redhat 6.1, they make it very easy to install the newer software as long as you want to download the stuff.

If you're interested in Linux and can get Redhat 6 with the books, I would strongly recommend it. It's getting old for a distro so it doesn't come with the newest hottest stuff but it's worked very well for me. Like I said above, RPMs make it very easy to install new software for Redhat 6 so that's not too much of an issue for me. I haven't personally installed Redhat 6.1 but it comes with a lot of the newer software, as well as letting you choose between using GNOME and KDE for your desktop environment so if you see it instead of 6 in the stores, check that one out instead. And if you do check out 6.1, please write a review of it for us!

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