Re: RedHat 6.1 so far.

[Bruce Smith <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I wanted to share my inital experiences with RedHat 6.1.  I've installed it on two computers:  A 486dx, and a Pentuim 200.  Here's what I've experienced so far.
> 
> On the 486, the install process looked pretty crappy (as usual).  They did move all of the installation questions (Where to mount stuff, what to put into lilo, etc.) to the beginning of the install process, so once the install starts, you can walk away and not have to come back and answer a bunch more questions.  The install didn't look much different, with one BIG exception.  They took the fdisk option out of the disk partitioning stage of the install process!  Now we only have the option of using redhat's Disk Druid crap.  IMO this is a very bad move for redhat.  I liked the robust commandline feel of the old fdisk.
> 
> On the Pentium 200, I was very impressed to see a GUI install program replacing the old ansi style program I was used to.  I guess Redhat detected my video card and decided that my PC could handle it's GUI Interface.  The install went pretty much the way most do. It was very similar to the Caldara install program (except you can't play tetris while everything is being copied over).
> 
> One other problem I saw right off the bat (I just installed it last night so I haven't explored it much further) was that inside the windowmaker window manager, all of the program icons were missing inside of the program menu.  It looks like redhat's quality control didn't catch that particular bit.
> 
> Has anyone else had any experiences with this new update?

I've installed it on about 6 different computers, all with
different hardware.

All of the 6 have video cards supported by Linux/XFree86.
Of the 6, the install had problems sensing the video card
correctly on TWO PC's, and the display came up unreadable.
One is a S3Virge chipset, and the other is my laptop. 
The work around is to type "text" at the "boot:" prompt and 
fall back to the old install program.  

It does not always setup X windows correctly during the 
install, and I had to run "Xconfigurator" afterwards to set
my XF86Config correctly.  (even the text based install!)

They also skimmed down the text based install program by
removing fdisk and removing package descriptions from the
"select individual package" menu.  (was F1 key)

I also ran across some minor bugs, and one other major bug
where the install kept crashing (GUI and text both), on a 
system where I had previously installed RH 6.0 and Mandrake.
This is a test system and I was going to reformat the existing
Linux partition(s), but it never got far enough to ask what
partitions I wanted to format.  It finally ran after I 
repartitioned the disk with RH 6.1  (deleted and recreated the
existing Linux partitions).  Weird.  I am NOT impressed!

On the bright side, an "Update" from RH 6.0 seems to work okay.
And it seems to run okay after it's installed

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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