Red Hat Linux OS for Intel hardware.Taking a lesson from competing commercial versions of Linux, Red Hat included everything but the kitchen sink in this distribution–5 GB of software on 10 CDs including GNOME 1.2 and the prerelease version of KDE 2. The installer correctly identifies Windows 9x installations and configures your machine automatically for
Red Hat Linux OS for Intel hardware.Taking a lesson from competing commercial versions of Linux, Red Hat included everything but the kitchen sink in this distribution–5 GB of software on 10 CDs including GNOME 1.2 and the prerelease version of KDE 2. The installer correctly identifies Windows 9x installations and configures your machine automatically for dual boot.
The default interface remains GNOME, but running on the new Sawfish windows manager. However, KDE is also well configured right down to desktop icons for your drives. You can switch between desktops using the SwitchDesk utility.
Ease-of-use features include better Internet support for nontechnical users and more hardware detection. You get the excellent Sun StarOffice 5.2 productivity suite, version 4 of the RPM package manager, and version 4.0.1 of the X server with support for more accelerated graphic cards–ideal for the four included Loki games. A test version of kernel 2.4 is supplied for experimenting, but USB support for keyboards and mice has been added to the existing kernel.
In practice, Red Hat 7 Deluxe can be installed as a server or workstation, but the installation manual assumes a workstation. There’s also an upgrade option, which renames and preserves your configuration files (provided the installation was RPM based) as well as providing a log of changes. It works well.
There have been complaints about Red Hat 7 on the Net, but our experience of both a new installation (which correctly detected all the hardware) and an upgrade from Red Hat 6.1 proved solid. Red Hat 7 is altogether slicker and requires less knowledge of Linux than previous releases. –Steve Patient
