Re: Upgrading 7.1

[gary <gstegmiller prodigy net>]

kaktus2 wrote:

> I do not realy agree with you Joshua. But I think that it's a question
> of experiences.
> It's been 1 year and a half I've started with Linux. I tried a few
> distros (Suze, Mandrake) and came to 7.1. I've learnt on it and it's my
> favourite. Then I've tried 7.2beta, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0 but always returned to
> 7.1.
> That makes me say that I would upgrade my main system only if I could
> reproduce the services the same way, or easier than now.
> Linux is not like M$, and doesn't need to be upgraded to latest release
> to try to correct some major malfunction. Bugs are corrected through new
> applications releases, that perfectly fit to you actual system. If you
> want a newer version of an application than the one in the latest rpm
> update, do it by building it.
> I'm fed up with re-installing my system again and again. (like with M$),
> I only do it if I got a major crash (happens sometimes) Automatisation
> (up2date) is a good thing, especialy if you don't know how to do to
> upgrade, but I prefer manual updates, and automatized system restores.
> The next time I will upgrade my 7.1 will be for:
>     - exotic hardware support
>     - the hope soon coming 2.6 kernel
>     - another system architecture
>     - ...
>

I agree 100%. I am running all my machines on 7.1 and 7.0. Last Fall when
Redhat released version 8, I jumped in and tried it on one of my machines
that I don't use. Good thing. In attempting an upgrade from 7.0 to 8.0, it
hosed the entire machine so it wouldn't boot again. Then I did a clean load
with Redhat 8 and that worked, but in my opinion Redhat 8 is a mess. It is
the Windows XP of Linux.

Redhat tried to make it appeal to a larger group and in doing so they lost a
lot of the nice features that the older versions had. I can't recommend
Redhat 8 to any Linux user. Perhaps a Windows user could live with it.

Redhat 8 doesn't have Linuxconf anymore. Redhat replaced it with
Redhat-config modules that lack many of the abilities that Linuxconf had.

Redhat 8 doesn't have Gnorpm anymore. Instead, Redhat put in a Windozy
Add-Remove software thing that can access only the original Redhat CDs. To
install anything you download that isn't on the CDs, you have to resort to
the command line install again.  Worse yet, the Add-Remove software utility
likes to corrupt the RPM database.

Redhat 8 running under Gnome lacks any kind of menu editor so you are stuck
using their default menus for your software unless you can hack into their
XML based menuing system and modify it.

Redhat 8 comes up short in a lot of things that the 7.x versions did so well.

I can't in good faith recommend version 8 to anybody, and from what I hear
about version 9, it hasn't solved the shortcomings of 8.

I agree that it would be a mistake to upgrade. New software means new bugs,
and the 7.x versions have most of the bugs beaten out of them.