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1 • RHEL 8 - sounds like a big fail (by Andy Prough on 2019-05-27 00:48:22 GMT from United States)
The issue that really jumps out at me, aside from Gnome Software simply not working at all, is that RHEL did not even bother to document dnf correctly. Clearly, if RedHat is not even going to document its package manager accurately, they are not going after new users at all. They are only trying to work with users who are already used to all the various workarounds one has to use in order to get RHEL to do any work.
Kind of a sad state of affairs. You would think that after being bought by IBM there would be some effort by them to put out a high quality product this time.
2 • Documentation (by Jesse on 2019-05-27 01:02:34 GMT from Canada)
@1: I agree, that the big thing which kept jumping out at me was the lack of good documentation. With good documentation I wouldn't have been wondering why the first installer was demanding a repository URL (or would have known what the URL was), with proper documentation I wouldn't have wondered why Wayland sessions were not available when they were said to be the default in the release notes, documentation should have mentioned the Cockpit socket unit had to be enabled for the service to start on demand rather than having me hunt around for why Cockpit wasn't starting. Some of this documentation exists, but it wasn't always easy to find. I can put up with a lot of problems if they are clearly documented with errata or workarounds.
3 • RHEL 8 (by Pumpino on 2019-05-27 01:12:50 GMT from Netherlands)
I wonder if you can use the RHEL 7 or Fedora RPMs for RPM Fusion and EPEL.
There's no excuse for the software issues you experienced. I've been unable to upgrade from Fedora 29 to Fedora 30, as every time I do, Fedora isn't added to grub. There are various fixes posted, but none have worked. We shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to have basic functions work.
4 • Firewall (by Dawid on 2019-05-27 03:04:27 GMT from Germany)
I use standard setting of the distro
5 • BlackArch Linux2019.06.1 (by Bobbie Sellers on 2019-05-27 04:05:41 GMT from United States)
If you visit the site you will find in addition to the mentioned iso files a 30 GB ova file.
Why does it need so much space? I assume rejection of compression for some reason(s).
bliss
6 • RHEL GNOME persistence dragging project down (by Simon Morgan on 2019-05-27 04:49:19 GMT from South Africa)
Why does Redhat continue to use a primary DE that is unsuitable for this type of purpose. In an enterprise environment users need a basic DE that at least offers conventional functionality without customisation and unofficial modding. Hearing about software centre issues is just the tip of the iceberg. This is becoming a joke.
7 • RedHat (by Alburgheiro on 2019-05-27 05:13:49 GMT from Russia)
RHEL is no longer the flagship product of RedHat (which now belongs to IBM) in the same way that Windows is no longer Microsoft's flagship product. I believe that the main source of revenue for both corporations comes from their cloud services.
8 • firewalls (by nanome on 2019-05-27 05:41:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
@4: In my experience, few distros install and enable any kind of firewall by default. I find this very disturbing: they could at least provide simple [g]ufw protection before the network is activated during install.
Having said that, I know people who rely on the firewall provided by their modem/router, even though these are often not documented.
9 • RHEL review, compared to openSUSE. (by gregzeng on 2019-05-27 07:38:38 GMT from United Kingdom)
Interesting to compare the open versus closed management systems. RHEL (reviews this week in DW) is the closed source copyright holder to the RPM package manager. So other RPM operating systems have great trouble with these packages. Fedora is excepted, because it is the open source version of closed source RHEL. Similarly openSUSE is the open source version to SUSE. All four of these operating systems need to deal with RPM bugs with the dependencies. The chairman of openSUSE is heavily "grilled" by four Linux journalists in the link: "Destination Linux EP122" - Richard Brown of openSUSE, Published on May 23, 2019 by "Destination Linux". (85:07 minutes)
He admits to RPM operating systems having unreliable repositories: 46:30 The openSUSE repositories are lacking, because the RPM dependencies are so (bad, clumsy, ungainly?). 48:23 Flatpak, snap ... Are just re-inventing ... nightmares ... "; explaining why he like appimage (no dependency hell).
This might explain why the Debian package manager is preferred by most creators of Linux operating systems. The review in this week's Distrowatch seems to support this RHEL fault & bugs.
10 • Incorrect concepts (by Charlie on 2019-05-27 08:02:45 GMT from Hong Kong)
@9
RHEL is NOT close source, neither SUSE.
Linux is licensed under GPL which ALL derivatives must be released under GPL as well. If RHEL is close source, how come there are RHEL clones like CentOS?
No free version available does not mean it's close source, ask Richard Stallman, the person who advocates free software the most, would give you the same answer.
Red Hat is NOT the copyright holder of RPM, same as Linux, RPM is an open source software released under GPL. It is originally developed by Red Hat but now it is contributed by the whole community. To reduce Red Hat's influence and color, RPM's full name is even changed from Redhat Package Manager to RPM Package Manager.
"The fault and bugs" appeared in the review, I believe, is a specific case in RHEL 8 because I'm happy with openSUSE and zypper, which use RPM and do not have such kind of issue.
Learn some facts before giving strong personal views.
11 • The review (by Charlie on 2019-05-27 08:12:46 GMT from Hong Kong)
I'm not sure the review can reflect the feature of RHEL.
Install codecs and Firefox extensions are concerns of desktop users and hobbyists, but I don't think users of RHEL care about that.
Most RHEL users are enterprises and developers, and they need RHEL for providing a stable base for development or running a easy-to-setup and easy-to-maintain server. I can't see such things in the review except going through the GNOME UI which the UX should be the same across all distros.
BTW RPM Fusion can provide codecs to RHEL just like Fedora and yes, it's well known only among Red Hat/Fedora users but I don't think it's hard to find out.
And one more thing, RHEL now provides free update to developers without support, as long as your system is not for production. Get a free copy of RHEL through developer program should be easier than the author to struggle with the try and download UI in Red Hat website.
12 • RHEL on the desktop (by Microlinux on 2019-05-27 09:16:17 GMT from France)
Even if I do use the RHEL clone CentOS on the desktop (with KDE and lots of third-party stuff), one should not forget that it is not targeted at desktop. I even suspect Red Hat to default to GNOME (an unusable desktop environment) to dissuade folks to use it in graphical mode.
13 • hbcdwin10 (by pavelbuidan on 2019-05-27 10:08:10 GMT from Romania)
off topic, this is my updated and customized Hiren's Boot CD Windows 10. yadi.sk/d/mnky3FnR_pl2Lg .maybe it's worth sharing here the download link...
14 • RHEL 8... (by MintyMan on 2019-05-27 11:02:09 GMT from Netherlands)
Although I haven't used RHEL since the earlier 2000's, I did run Fedora and Fedora-based distro's a couple of times. And compared with other distro's it was always a struggle to let it run smoothly. Not on one computer, but on multiple machines.
The curious thing here is that it wasn't only an "adventure" to run Fedora, I also tried distro's based on Fedora. I always had problems with it. It was always slow on updates, I regularly got a kernel panic, swap partition problems when installed in a dualboot setting. And on top of that it had troubles with translations in my own language (Dutch). I decided to never choose any Fedora/RHEL-based distro anymore because of the poor experiences with it. I replaced Fedora 29 Xfce (which was very slow) with Manjaro 18.0.4 Xfce, and guess what? It runs like a charm! Curious, isn't it?
My experience is that Debian- and Arch based distro's always run smoothly on all of my hardware, I rarely encounter problems or issues. Why do I have such different experiences with Fedora/RHEL-based distro's?
15 • using firewall (by MikeOh Shark on 2019-05-27 11:22:50 GMT from Austria)
I use iptables and ip6 tables behind my router. It's rare that I actually take my laptop with me to other locations but I keep my rules up to date so I'm ready when I need to go outside of the router rules.
Also, I have one port open on the router to enable me to run a personal https server when I want to exchange large files with family in remote locations. My rule drops all connections on the server port. When I start the server, I allow the connections until the need is complete. Then I reenable the rule and drop incoming packets again.
It's good to practice with firewall rules when the router rules have your back in case something is missed. Belt and suspenders.
16 • firewall (by dogma on 2019-05-27 14:03:47 GMT from United States)
I definitely use a firewall, as trusting a router manufacturer unnecessarily would be crazy.
17 • Antergos dies. (by mandatory on 2019-05-27 14:16:58 GMT from United States)
No more Antergos? Well, that sucks.
What are we supposed to do for a plain, vanilla Arch install now? (Inb4: Manjaro? * laughter * . . . ) No.
Install "the Arch way"? (Serious * laughter *. Get out.)
18 • Firewall and stuff (by Friar Tux on 2019-05-27 14:40:54 GMT from Canada)
Maybe it's my age, not sure, but my policy has always been, "Do not put on the Internet (or your computer) what you would not shout out in an auditorium full of gossips." I just checked and, nope, firewall is disabled. That's fine. I keep nothing on this laptop that is personal. I use my laptop for just about everything. It is my library (books), newspaper, magazine, technical journal, recipe box, encyclopedia, writer's tool (stories, poems, article, etc.), graphic artist's tool (painting, drawing, 'needle-work' - yup, you read that right), and much, much more. I usually spend about 8 -10 hours a day on it. This has helped to declutter/downsize the amount of stuff I would have had to cram into my, now, small apartment (780 sq. ft.).
Re:- RHEL/Fedora... unfortunately, this was my first sojourn into Linux. It had me run right back to Mama Windows. It wasn't until I discovered, and played with, Mandrake (3.1) that I realized Linux's potential. (I realized then that there were more than a few distros out there.) Since then I've played with hundreds of distros. RHEL/Fedora, and derivatives, still don't play nice, today, but with all the other distros out there, who cares.
19 • Arch (by RJA on 2019-05-27 15:33:19 GMT from United States)
"Install "the Arch way"? (Serious * laughter *. Get out.)" @17 I do agree at least somewhat! Because 9 years ago, when I tried Arch, my Arch mirror experience was extremely poor. :(
20 • @9 .deb vs .rpm popularity (developer wise) (by Titus_Groan on 2019-05-27 21:08:07 GMT from New Zealand)
regarding the popularity of .deb vs .rpm distributions. A better reason would probably be that .rpm distros tend to be self contained. This means the distro is maintaining their own mirrors and distribution completely. This takes a lot of effort and resources. As opposed to Debian offspring with perhaps the exception of Ubuntu.
Take linuxmint, to run linuxmint you need: a very small linuxmint only repo and at least one mirror. a very large Ubuntu set of repos and their mirror network.
or LMDE a very small Linuxmint only repo and at least one mirror. a very large Debian set of repos and their mirror network. yet they market themselves as an independent distro, based on the small linuxmint repo..
Take PClinuxOS you have a large set of PCLinuxOS repos and at least one mirror. they market themselves as an independent distro.
If all of the Debian offspring had to maintain all their Distributions packages and cut apron strings to mum (Debian) or dad (Ubuntu) how many really would survive?
21 • Firewall? (by UZ64 on 2019-05-27 21:28:16 GMT from United States)
Only when using Windows, where the firewall is already basically set up by default and I don't trust the underlying operating system to begin with, I will leave it on. That OS tends to nag you for every single little "security" feature you turn off anyway, so why bother? Might as well just let it have its way so it leaves me alone; after all, it was programmed to believe that it knows best, I don't even bother fighting with it anymore these days.
This is even more true when using my laptop, if I ever connect it to a Wi-Fi network that is not under my control (especially unsecured, "public" hotspots)--but in this case, I would normally just play it safe anyway and connect using whatever Linux distro or other OS I have installed at the time. In this case, I see less of a need for a software firewall running on the local machine; other systems don't typically come with a firewall pre-configured, and I don't see a need personally to go out of my way to set one up. It's just more time wasted to have the system chew through more resources for no real benefit.
But that's under normal, "typical" circumstances I usually encounter these days; there is practically *always* a firewall protecting the local network and the machines connected to it from the outside Internet. In the case that this was not true, then yes--no matter what the OS, I would most definitely run a firewall at all times; even if the system is not set up as a server and does not have any unnecessary ports opened up, just as a safety precaution. The most I would give it is maybe 15-20 minutes unprotected (if Linux or BSD), but Windows I wouldn't even trust enough with a direct connection to the Internet even with its own firewall to give it that.
22 • Firewall - a Gothic Horror Story (by nanome on 2019-05-27 22:54:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Twenty years ago, while playing with one of the early Redhat linux distros, I noticed strange activity from a mystery root user that wasn't me. I pulled the plug [dialup net and power], and found that I had interupted a hacker installing a Root Kit which was designed to be invisible [it replaced many of the commands that would reveal its existence]. In those days, a computer running Linux [or even better Unix] was likely a corporate treasure trove [mine was not]. Redhat had not installed a Firewall!
I quickly learned about simple iptables Firewall rules, and have since not been affected by malware. These days I use a more effective Firewall adapted from the contributions of Amaril Dojr. As I have total control of the init process [sinit+busybox scripts], I can ensure that the Firewall is enabled before connecting to the internet.
However, there is a problem. Most Linux distros are entirely unprotected [no Firewall] during installation. Only after a Firewall package such as ufw can be installed and enabled is there any degree of protection. Whilst the period in which a computer can be attacked may be only minutes, fast broadband permits much damage to be done. In the days when distros arrived on a shiny CD, there was time to install and enable a Firewall while the computer was offline.
I wonder how many distros are likewise unprotected during installation? Maybe router/modems offer this initial protective barrier.
23 • RHEL 8 review (by RJA on 2019-05-27 23:39:58 GMT from United States)
"One curious aspect of running RHEL 8 I found was boot times varied a lot. Sometimes the distribution started up and shutdown very quickly, starting faster than most other distributions I have tried recently, getting to the login screen in well under 20 seconds. Other times it could take nearly two minutes to start. "
Woah Jesse, that reminds me of Windows, (like post-XP) for RAM usage, if that's wired memory! Same with the random boot hangs. :(
24 • RPM (by César on 2019-05-27 23:40:52 GMT from Chile)
Hello!
RPM vs DEB...DEB vs RPM. The great holy war begins again!!!
Why so many problem with RPM distros?
For example, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS are excellent distros. Even in Slackware you can download, transform and install RPM packages if you want with "no problema". If you use the repos for you RPM distro (EPEL, RPM Fusion, Livna), no dependency hell.
Saludos desde Santiago de Chile.
25 • Antergos, Arch (by Archibald on 2019-05-28 00:52:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
@17 -Archman (Seriously.)
Can't say I'll miss Antergos. Trying to install it made "the Arch way" seem easy. That Cnchi thing was less of an installer and more of an implement of mental torture.
26 • Finest Arch Installers (by David on 2019-05-28 01:57:39 GMT from United States)
@17 - You may want to evaluate the most bulletproof Arch installer I have used to load up five boxes, four older Intel CPU's, including an eleven-year old Core 2 Duo E-8400, and one ten-year old AMD Phenom II quad-core - the Anarchy Linux installer. You'll get a 99.9% pure Arch installation, with no 3rd party repo's, as the principal maintainer removed his proprietary repo in the most recent very small ISO release. Very sweet, easy & stable Arch installer, which I don't understand why it's not more widely known and appreciated.
There's also the Zen Installer, but that ISO installs two extra repo's, none of which I want personally, but YMMV.
Archlabs is pretty good as well, and then there is the vastly underrated SwagArch XFCE ISO(in my opinion), but I haven't tested the newest Budgie-based ISO, which I have no personal interest in.
And then there's Artix, which just recently released a MATE-based ISO, if you want to try a systemd-free distro, I haven't tested that one yet, so I can provide no pertinent first-hand commentary on it.
Try them out - you may like one or all of them.
27 • Rpm vs deb distros (by Peter on 2019-05-28 06:49:01 GMT from Australia)
I have run openSUSE (as my main desktop OS) since 2007 and it was the first distro to offer delta rpms. That feature, amongst many others, make this rpm-based distro better-engineered than any deb-based one, IMO. RH also incorporated delta rpms in Fedora and RHEL a few years after.
Furthermore, the Yast2 Software Package Manager, IMHO, is also far superior to any graphical package manager found in Debian or Ubuntu derived distros. Last time I played around with Centos 7.x, there was hardly any graphical package manager worth mentioning.
Be that as it may, not everyone needs to use delta packages and installing normal full-size ones can be much faster (if one has a good internet connection). I did need delta packages as I have been using paid interned connections with limited data plans (lately mostly on mbb).
28 • graphical package manager (by Tim on 2019-05-28 09:00:56 GMT from United States)
I have to admit I'm at the point in life where I don't see any need for any graphical package manager. I guess they'd be helpful for someone new to Linux to find software they like, and maybe the rest of us should browse through one every five years or so to see if we've missed something.
But I just have a command saved in a text file that starts "sudo apt-get install... and then lists all the software I like. Install a new distro? Copy and paste that, let it run.
If I ever need the computer to do something it isn't currently doing I do a bit of research on what's out there, find the name of the new package, and install it. If it's worth keeping it gets added to the text file. That's about it.
29 • RPM packages (by Stevem on 2019-05-28 17:42:24 GMT from Switzerland)
@9
Totally wrong claims, all of them. Please listen carefully to the chairman of OpenSuse before posting such crap.
Thank you.
30 • RHEL and the Linux desktop market (by Ankleface Wroughtlandmire on 2019-05-28 18:20:26 GMT from Ecuador)
What kind of enterprise workstation user could get their job done without at least occasionally viewing MP4 and other proprietary video files? Especially in an expensive commercial distro I would expect it to ship with legal proprietary codecs out of the box, or at the very least include an easy way to buy and install them from a third party. It's obvious that Redhat is not even trying with its desktop offerings anymore. Which is a shame, because that will cement the dominant position of Windows on corporate workstations, and the subsequent trickle-down effect on regular users' personal computers and the lack of commercial software for the Linux desktop.
31 • Bugs in RHEL 8 (by Dxvid on 2019-05-28 22:15:56 GMT from Sweden)
I'm astonished by RHEL having root on SSH on by default, and by the amount of bugs and problems in RHEL 8! It's supposed to be the "most stable Linux distro", but version 8 seems on par with small community distros. Obviously they would have needed to spend another couple of months doing testing and bugfixing before release.
The company I work at now has RHEL as the only allowed Linux distro, supposedly due to "security reasons" but I doubt the security is higher than the other major distros (SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu) if they ship RHEL 8 with root login in ssh on by default.
To RHEL's defence though the test is about workstation but most users will have RedHat run as a text only server and would only experience a few of the bugs/problems. They probably put all effort into making the command-line server mode stable and most likely put little effort in the other modes where they make less profit. Using this distro as a workstation or using video codecs is probably not very common, but still a buggy release like this can damage the brand name so they should be careful before releasing stuff that isn't sufficiently tested.
I wonder if the new owners have tried to stress them to make a new release before it was ready?
32 • finding service ports (by Dxvid on 2019-05-28 23:05:31 GMT from Sweden)
Another way of finding service ports if you use the most common Linux distros (SUSE, RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu): IPv4: ss -nlp4 IPv6: ss -nlp6
This will show the services listening on various addresses and ports on your server/computer.
As a bonus, this one is also quite useful if you want to know how many people will get angry at you when rebooting a server:
ss -s
It shows the amount of connections to the server, if there's a few thousand connected at the moment you might want to wait until it's night or early morning and fewer are using it. Normally a reboot can be done in 30s, but sometimes a lot of database stuff needs to be written on disk or a file system maintenance slows start-up down, or a bug in an update makes it impossible to reboot requiring fixing or rollback, or a cache takes minutes/hours to be populated with relevant data to speed up a server to normal speed. So in order to avoid making many people angry it can be good to either make a graph of server usage or use "ss -s" while logged in to see how many are connected.
(There's also special kernels made for high availability on busy servers in at least SUSE, Ubuntu and Oracle Linux requiring no reboot, but that's another chapter...)
33 • RPM distros & 'gut feelings' (by M.Z. on 2019-05-29 01:09:56 GMT from United States)
@10 & @ 29
Some people just like to spout the 'truthiness' that they feel in their gut, regardless of facts. It doesn't matter how much a commercially profitable distro gives back to upstream, some people will just hate them because [insert excuse here]. Of curse the truth is that commercially successful distros that act responsibly do a lot for the Linux community & making a fair profit was always supposed to be an option in free & open software.
@14
I've had a few issues with Fedora myself over the years. I've only ever really tied to make it work seriously a couple of times or so & they all ended up with some significant snag after an upgrade. I think it may be related to the cutting edge nature that Fedora targets.
On the other hand, I've had excellent luck with Mageia for years & use is as an alternate/companion to Linux Mint on all my systems. As an added bonus, the two different Linux family dsitros offer a reasonably good chance of having hardware support the other may lack.
@27
"...Yast2 Software Package Manager, IMHO, is also far superior..."
Ironic, the Yast thing was a big turn off for me. it felt so convoluted & poorly designed from a usability perspective. Not at all what I consider user friendly & package management on it made me want Synaptic. I think that the control centre in Mageia & PCLinuxOS hits a decent middle ground between Yast & less powerful options. Although those could also be a bit more clear & user friendly, I think they are almost perfect for a moderately technical user & quite powerful/useful as well.
34 • YaST (by Charlie on 2019-05-29 01:27:07 GMT from Hong Kong)
@33
YaST is actually powerful instead of user friendly. That may be a problem for new Linux users, but once you know what it can do, you can unleash the full power of this tool.
35 • RHEL ssh root (by Andy Figueroa on 2019-05-29 01:46:54 GMT from United States)
"I'm astonished by RHEL having root on SSH on by default." Which is upstream default on the open ssh server. :-(
36 • RHEL - What a POS! (by Paul M on 2019-05-29 04:03:00 GMT from Canada)
Shame on Red Hat for putting out such a piece of junk product! I can't believe that Jesse ran into all these problems with RHEL 8.0! It is near unbelievable that a product that costs a MINIMUM $299 for a year of support (RHEL Linux Workstation) does not even function at a bare minimum level.
IMHO, the devs at Red Hat should be lined up & smacked in the face, ala The Three Stooges, for putting out this pile of crap!
But, I suppose it's a good thing that Red Hat gets to wear egg all over their face... Maybe someday soon, their enterprise customers will do the smart thing: hire a team of Debian gurus to install/set up a fully functioning Debian network environment, then keep a couple of those guys on payroll full-time to keep the system up & running properly... and, voila... they would have a fully functioning, secure Linux OS! And these large enterprise clients could go this route for A LOT less money than buying RHEL support contracts!
37 • RHEL support (by Titus_Groan on 2019-05-29 05:11:52 GMT from New Zealand)
@ 36.
well, it a numbers game.
when the accountants determine that paying several full time employees will cost them less over a period (5 years) than the support costs, then yep, they will change in a heartbeat, or even faster.
you also need to take into account downtime to changeover to the "new system", downtime is lost money, never to be recovered. then you have user inertia, " this isn't how we did it before", taking up those "couple of guys" time, full time, showing users how "we do it this way, now". for a hint what it is like, try changing a Windows user who doesn't want to, over to Linux : wheres my internet? will be the first complaint.
this list goes on...
38 • Red Hat/Debian (by Vermilion Vermicelli on 2019-05-29 08:07:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
@36 -"Maybe someday soon, their enterprise customers will do the smart thing: hire a team of Debian gurus to install/set up a fully functioning Debian network environment, then keep a couple of those guys on payroll full-time to keep the system up & running properly.. . and, voila... they would have a fully functioning, secure Linux OS!"
Ahem!......Sorry! As I was going to type my reply, I could swear I saw a pig fly by my window.
39 • RHEL vs Windows, @50 (by Fred W. on 2019-05-29 08:36:39 GMT from United States)
"Redhat is not even trying with its desktop offerings anymore. Which is a shame, because that will cement the dominant position of Windows on corporate workstations,"
I don't know about that. The fall Windows 10 upgrade (1809) can be charitably called a sh*t sandwich. It was held back, and just the last two months is it being offered to all users. I just upgraded the newest one (1903) and had to dismember any system with more than one HD, remove any external drives, dongles and such, and copy the installer to "C" drive. Otherwise a no-go. Now my VMs don't work, among other things. The forums are alive with complaints. So what do enterprise users do? They do nothing. They wait to upgrade until after all the wailing and gnashing of teeth has died down, and most bugs have been squashed. I'm sure pretty much the same goes for Red Hat. RHEL 7 is still good for a few years.
40 • #39 Windows 1903 (by vern on 2019-05-29 15:51:49 GMT from United States)
"I just upgraded the newest one (1903) and had to dismember any system with more than one HD, remove any external drives, dongles and such, and copy the installer to "C" drive. Otherwise a no-go."
I noticed that myself. It took 30min of checking updates and in the end said USB and such can't be plugged in. Looking at the report it stated that MS is aware of the problem and is working a solution.
Regarding Red Hat. I can't recall ever installing that OS. Centos was good enough.
41 • Yast (by Friar Tux on 2019-05-29 17:30:45 GMT from Canada)
Re: the Yast package manager. I have stopped playing with/testing any distro using the Yast package manager. So far, every distro I've tried, Yast has CONSISTENTLY, without fail, quit or frozen while trying to install some software. And I mean consistently. Not sure why some of you think it's powerful. Synaptic Package Manager is powerful. Yast doesn't work.
42 • S**t happens (by whoCares on 2019-05-29 20:27:29 GMT from United Kingdom)
@39 & @40
Installed Win10 on 2 desktops and 4 laptops from USB without any issues. Desktops had 2 HDs and one of the laptops 3.
The issue is described on MS support site: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4500988/windows-update-hold-for-windows-10
As you can see, it‘s actually a precaution feature if the system lose the track of devices.
Not good but s**t happens. It‘s still better than RHEL and SUSE issues.
One day RHEL didn’t start any more. Partition dissapeard from fstab.
SUSE updater brought the message: xy updates ready for install; contiuned install and never ever came further then the GRUB/choice of recovery points ... but it couldn‘t recover.
One has to inform himself before one starts, one has to know what one‘s doing and one has to be prepared that something sometimes can go wrong.
43 • RHEL in the wild (by Linux Enthusiast on 2019-05-29 21:20:22 GMT from United States)
IMO, this is a result of RHEL not being targeted for the "wild" and/or public consumption like most other distros. RHEL workstation works well in a corporate environment where enterprise admins can push policies to your workstation and make it do back flips upon request. But no one should be surprised with Jesse's review. RHEL workstations excel in a corporate, limited environment where control can be applied.
44 • @42, "Feature precaution" as a euphemism for "Oops, we screwed up!" (by Fred W. on 2019-05-29 21:54:36 GMT from United States)
Just because you have no issue does not mean there isn't one. I'm sure many have used RHEL without it disappearing from fstab, I'll take your word that yours did, as you say.
From your link: "To work around this issue, remove all external media, such as USB devices, SD cards and UFS cards, from your computer and restart installation of the Windows 10, version 1903 feature update. The update should then proceed normally. If you are using a installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) created by a tool to install Windows 10, copy the files on the installation media to your local drive, and then start the installation from the local drive"
This "precaution feature" was issued due to complaints, AKA feedback, from insiders. (I am one of those, on different rings.)
I had no issues with 1809 on my systems or those I installed for others, but that does not mean it was not pulled back after release due to the disappearing data bug and many other problems. Perhaps this "feature precaution" comes about because MS learned not to ignore the feedback form insiders as they did in 1809.
45 • Windows and Linux, yes, I still have hope for RedHat as well (by RJA on 2019-05-29 22:58:16 GMT from United States)
@39, Your issue with Windows, reminds me of XP. I found that Vista and later don't require me to disconnect my card reader.
The XP installer, requires me to disconnect the card reader and if I don't, the XP text mode installer will assign a higher letter in the alphabet to the primary master HDD and refuse to let me assign it to drive letter C!
Now on to Linux, despite the report I got about RedHat, I'm still see hope for the future. Especially with the Windows Update issues...
46 • RPM, openSuse (by Kim on 2019-05-29 23:55:05 GMT from Austria)
No issues on openSuse with RPM whatsoever. But I never got the idea behind the necessity to have either DEB or RPM. Probably much too late to merge them ...
47 • @45 Re: XP and card readers (by Rev_Don on 2019-05-30 02:53:55 GMT from United States)
I never had any issues with XP and card readers. Never once in hundreds of installs did it not allow the primary master hard drive to be assigned drive letter C: with a card reader connected. In fact I've never heard of anyone having that issue.
48 • Red Hat, the world's most profitable Linux company...? (by OstroL on 2019-05-30 08:28:42 GMT from Poland)
"Red Hat, the world's most profitable Linux company, " starts the review...
Well, is it? It is now an IBM company, which might someday sell it or drop it. Somewhere in 2004, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo. Why? Because it was losing money!
The interesting part of that matter was that Lenovo hired the same management that IBM had at that time, and with Lenovo's ingenuity, it is one of the top PC companies in the world.But, IBM hiring the same management of Red Hat doesn't/won't do the trick -- don't have Lenovo's ingenuity. So, with IBM, this Red Hat would stop being the "most profitable company" and die away, or someone like Lenovo have to buy it. Would anyone buy it is the question...
49 • Happy Birthday Distrowatch! (by Bob on 2019-05-31 02:40:38 GMT from United States)
"Yes, it was exactly 18 years ago, on 31 May 2001, that DistroWatch was first published."
Full article here: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=8321
50 • red hat (by manticore on 2019-05-31 21:03:43 GMT from United States)
@48, Yes Red Hat is the most profitable linux company. They were the most profitable linux company before the IBM acquisition, and they have led all linux companies in this area for many years. They are the first two billion dollar company in the open source world, and they achieved that distinction as an independent company with their own linux distribution built from scratch. Nobody really knows what the acquisition will bring, but you can rest assured that Red Hat would be just fine if IBM sold or dropped them, similar to how the SUSE folks are still around despite what happened to them in the past.
51 • More 'Gut Feelings" etc. (by M.Z. on 2019-06-02 21:20:58 GMT from United States)
@50
It seems perfectly obvious that a company with $3.4 billion in 2018 revenue & an estimated sale price of $34 billion is the worlds most profitable open source/Linux company, but then gut feelings get in the way. It's sort of a clash of world views & gut feelings vs reality. There are plenty of interesting & insightful questions about 'what now' after the IBM buy out, but too often we get silliness instead.
Q: Is it open source? A: Of course, just check the license!
Q: Is it a big company? A: Of course, just check the revenue number and the company sale price!
Better Q1: What are the odds of continued stable growth & profit from the new IBM open source division after the merger over the next 5-10 years? & how about after that?
Better Q2: What will change in the relationship between Red Hat & the open source community over the next 5-10 years? & how about after that?
A 1&2: ???
@34
Yes, there are things you can do with is if you find it useful. I don't think I do, but then I suppose that's like the level of configuration options in KDE vs Gnome. I like both KDE & the happy middle ground of Cinnamon, while Gnome doesn't cut it. Similarly, the basic system level control options in most distros are a little lacking & Mageia MCC hits the sweet spot, while YaST seems to be by & for IT people & not particularly useful to me personally.
Number of Comments: 51
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| • Issue 1159 (2026-02-09): Sharing files on a network, isolating processes on Linux, LFS to focus on systemd, openSUSE polishes atomic updates, NetBSD not likely to adopt Rust code, COSMIC roadmap |
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| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
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| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
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| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
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| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
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