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System Software - the Upgrade to RedHat 6.0

I picked up a copy of the RedHat 6.0 Linux distribution at LinuxWorld a couple of weeks ago, and installed it.

The good news is that the install went very quickly, and I was able to do it without repartitioning the disk. This meant that I didn't have to restore all my personal files from the backup copy after the install was done.

Now, the bad news: it was a big step backwards. Although I have not changed anything in my hardware configuration:

  1. A patch to make the middle mouse button function correctly in the graphic environment no longer works.
  2. StarOffice 5.0 no longer works, and I can't reinstall it, because a particular system library is no longer available.
  3. The program which lets me connect to the Internet no longer works reliably; 90% of the time it disconnects immediately after logon, but does work correctly the second time.
  4. My CD-ROM writer no longer works; it causes a kernel panic
Here's a copy of the email I sent to RedHat, with all technical details. (After you read it you'll see how incredibly unforgiving and mean-spirited I truly am. That is, if you haven't figured that out already by reading my previous commentaries.)

I am going to buy the latest copy of the SuSE distribution and see if it fixes any of these problems.

Addendum of 16 Sep 1999:
I did install SuSE 6.2 -- not only did it not fix any of the problems, it gave me even further problems. (If you're not a hard-core techie, don't worry about the rest of this paragraph.) I asked its installer tool, YaST, to create a partition named "/opt". It did so, and generated a /etc/fstab file that equated /dev/hda3 to the mount point /opt. Unfortunately, it made a symbolic link from /opt to /usr/opt. Thus, when I tried to install StarOffice, instead of putting all the files on the /dev/hda3, it put them on /dev/hda6 (where /usr resides)... but there wasn't enough room there.

So, it looks like I'm back to either RedHat or Linux Mandrake for the time being.

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