Hi John,
I purchased RedHat Linux 8.0 from Office Depot. The list price was 39.95 + 8.25% Texas Sale tax. This particular version did not come with many apps that were standard in Redhat 7.3. However, I am very pleased with the improvement made to the GUI and the quality of the graphics. I can alway grab the missing functionality off the web whenever I want.
The install of Redhat 8.0 went smoothly. I did a complete reinstall and selected all packages. The install consisted of inserting three CDs into the CDROM and letting the install script copy and configure everything. At the end, I was told that the install was successful. I rebooted and the system came right up into a beautiful GUI desktop.
I then had to configure my Logitech mouse so the mouse wheel worked. I reviewed the network setting and everything seemed OK. I then set up the services I wanted to run such as httpd with tux which runs apache 2.xx web server. I also selected the postgres server which run postgres 7.2.2. I configured postgres (e.g. postgres password, pg_hba.conf and postgres.conf after which I was able to use psql commands to connect to postgres using the template1 database.
Next I set up smaba using the swat service. Once I had it going, I could go to my windows NT 4.0 server, and with explorer, copy files from the RedHat Linux 7.3 mail/web server to my new RedHat Linux 8.0 Desktop computer. The first thing I copied was httpd.conf, but apache 2.0 would not use it as it was configured for apache 1.3 and there have been some changes. So I restored the httpd.conf that came with RedHat 8.0, and configured it manually, while looking at the httpd.conf for apache 1.3 which was in a second window on the desktop. Then I when to the NT 4.0 and copies my web site into the new desktop. After setting permissions I was able to run my new destop as a web server under Apache 2.0 using localhost as the URL. All perl and php script work perfectly. I was able to administer postgres 7.2.2 using phpPgAdmin via the web server using localhost.
Next I set up printing for the new desktop using a shared HP LaserJet 5P printer hanging off a NT 4.0 computer. I set it up as a samba printer. I printed a test page and it worked.
I have a cable modem and the Mozilla web browser was working after the initial boot of the system giving me access to all my web sites. However, I read the info from the Redhat Linux Personal edition box, and it does not come standard with multimedia support. I did a quick search of google and came up with the following link:
http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/videoapps.htmlI had my printer going so I printed out the installation instructions and installed all the packages. I now have a MPalyer on Linux just like under windows XP. The installation was fairly painless. The site provides an app called apt-get that automates the installation. For example, after installing the apt-get program, I could type in my command window "apt-get install mplayer mplayer-gui mplayer-skin-default" and the apt-get program installed all mplayer skins automatically.
I tried to bring up pgaccess but nothing happened. I did a search of the disk a could not find it, so it appears this does not come with the personal addition of RedHat 8.0. I grabbed it off the web, installed it, and had it going in about 15 minutes.
Also, I grabbed webmin and installed it to aid in administering the system.
All in all my RedHat Linux 8.0 system is really shaping up. As time goes by I will continue to build it. I'm thinking of copying the Redhat Linux image onto a hard drive and then over-writing my RedHat Linux 7.3 with it. First I will need to get all my 7.3 postgres databases transferred over to the RedHat Linux 8.0 system and configure sendmail, etc. After everything is working on Redhat Linux 8.0, I could switch drives out and restore the image backup to the Redhat Linux 7.3 partition. This could create a problem with the update agent, as I'm only entitled to one update agent license per version of RedHat, but this might work.
Finally, I copied my RedHat Linux 8.0 image to a second IDE hard drive used exclusive as an instant Recovery backup.
P.S.
The RPM package manager is called gnorph-auth under RedHat Linux 7.3. I havn't tested whether this is part of RedHat Linux 8.0 personal, but I will later. Also, I'm still looking for the file manager, something simular to explorer under windows.
