[Techtalk] RH8--no gcc??

[Dave North]

> I haven't tried to install RH 8.0 myself, but based on my roommate's
> experience and reports I have seen on local mail lists it appears to be
> crippled from the perspective of the average desktop user.

I've heard this somewhere before.
	Hmm. I have not only tried to install RH8, but succeeded on the
first try with so little effort it made me slightly nostalgic for the good
old days when installing could eat my hard disk.
	It was the cleanest install I can ever remember doing of any linux
distro (though fact is, SuSEmandrakeRedHat all set up so easily now it
just isn't an issue).
	There was no obvious 'crippling' I could see; things worked just
fine. I did note that the install route I took did not put KDE on by
default -- but it's a simple click to do so. I happen to think this is a
good idea, since KDE has become a real pig in the last year, and anyone
with less than one ton of memory and dual processors (okay, I'm
exaggerating a little) might be put off by how long it takes to load, and
how sluggish it is. During the same period, gnome actually seems to have
gotten faster.
	Don't get me wrong. I'm not a redhat fan -- and in fact have
probably cursed it more than any other distro. I don't use it as my main,
either (debian). But they've done a very good job of getting things
arranged and useful, and improved the first impression over the 7.x
series. More things worked more easily than with any other distro I've
loaded. Credit where credit is due.
	Nope, no mp3 player. That requires a small download.
	But let me point out that nothing I tried to do on the system
could not be done -- with Linux, all roads lead to Rome, and it's just a
quesiton of whether you want to start in gaza like me, with debian, or
start in the suburbs with redhat.
	I have found things to like in all the distros, and things to
dislike. But the propagation of the 'crippled' hack at redhat appears to
be a combination of rumor and confusion without any significant basis in
reality -- and comparitively, I think the 'average desktop user' (who is
clearly a windows user) would find the immediate functionality of redhat
to be very valuable indeed.


d