stability of RHEL ES 4 (was: RE: trouble installing/running theDomain Name Service Configuration Tool)

[Ed McCorduck]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com 
> [mailto:redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of 
> Sam Folk-Williams
> Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2005 4:50 PM
> To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
> Subject: Re: stability of RHEL ES 4 (was: RE: trouble 
> installing/running theDomain Name Service Configuration Tool)
> 
> 
> This could be any number of things, do you do anything to the 
> system in terms of installing particular applications or 
> loading any kernel modules before you start seeing the 
> panics? 

Thanks for your reply, Sam. I've done a variety of things before the
crashes, from installing programs and updates to simply configuring the
desktop, so it's hard to pinpoint any specific trigger. 


>If you are just running a default installation there 
> should be no stability issues with the OS itself.

I'd like to think that, too, and with 4 being the latest, and presumably
most perfected, release of RHEL ES, one would assume it's the one least
likely to affected by system errors caused by faulty programming or
coding. But I must say, I've been less than impressed with the quality
of Red Hat applications as of late. Maybe it's just been bad experiences
or ignorance on my part, but I don't see it outside the realm of
possibility that RH could have put out a crappy, under-tested version
and let bug reports lead to fixes that never should have been allowed to
happen in the first place. That's why I wanted to elicit other people's
experiences with RHEL ES 4 to see if there were systematic problems. 


>What is 
> your hardware? It might be that there is some piece of 
> incompatible hardware in your system or even a bad disk or 
> something... Can you list your system components if its a 
> custom machine or your brand/model?

I actually haven't had much time to investigate the hardware. I got the
computer secondhand from a surplus at my wife's work. It looks like your
garden variety networked, office PC with nothing too fancy installed on
it, but of course it's just like buying a used car (pre-Carfax) or
having unprotected sex (so I'm told); you can't know for sure the
history or innermost workings of what you're getting in bed with.


Ed McCorduck
Department of English 
State University of New York College at Cortland 
http://mccorduck.cortland.edu 
ICQ: http://mccorduck.cortland.edu/pager 
AIM: EdMcCorduck