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System Software - the Upgrade to RedHat 6.0
email to RedHat

Here's the message that I sent to RedHat:

I recently attended the LinuxWorld conference, and picked up a RedHat
Linux 6.0 disc.  I proceeded to install it and upgrade from RedHat 5.0
to 6.0, and, much to my dismay, I found that I had actually downgraded
my system significantly:

1) The middle mouse button (which was used for copy and paste) no longer
does so. I re-entered the mouse fix suggested on your web pages:

        if [ -n "$MOUSETYPE" ]; then
                daemon gpm -R -t $MOUSETYPE
        else
                daemon gpm -R
        fi

and it still doesn't work.

2) StarOffice 5.0, which used to work on RedHat 5.0, no longer works at
all.
It simply says, after rattling the hard disk for about ten seconds:

    Aborted

I can't reinstall it, since glibc-2.0.7 is no longer available.

3) kppp, which would connect reliably to my ISP, no longer connects on
the first try; according to the output, it gets a "SIGHUP" immediately
upon the first connect. Oh yes -- it tells me to turn on debugging, but
it only gets set for that execution, thus locking the barn door after
the horse has been stolen.  I'd love to set the debug flag permanently
for every execution of kppp, but, of course, there's no clue as to which
configuration file I need to change.  And no, I don't have the time to
load the source and read it and figure it out for myself.  I doubt that
many "ordinary" users do, either.

4) My CD-ROM burner, which used to work just great on RedHat 5.0, now
gives the following Kernel panic. I'd love to pass this along to the
SCSI module maintainer, but my "maintainers" FAQ appears not to be
present on RedHat 6.0, or at least not in any place that I can easily
find.

============================================
aha152x: trying software interrupt, ok.
scsi0: Adaptec 152x SCSI driver; $Revision: 1.7$
scsi: 1 host.
   Vendor: SONY    Model: CD-R    CDU 926S  Rev: 1.1e
   Type: WORM                               ANSI SCSI Revision: 02
Detected scsi CDROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0
lun=0,
aha152x no disconnected command for that lun
QUEUE STATUS:
issue_SC:
current_SC:
none
disconnected_SC:
0xc0f9fe00: target=4; lun=1; cmd=(Test Unit Ready 20 00 00 00 00
); residual-256; buffers=0; phase |disconnected|send_ident|; in other
(MESSAGE IN
); phaseend; next=0x00000000
waiting; SCSIEQ (); SCSISIG (MESSAGE IN); INTSTAT(lo); SSTAT (SELDI
PHASECHO R
EQINIT ); SSTAT (SELDI ); SXFRCTL0 (CH1 ); SIGNAL (B51I REQI );
SELID(90), SSTA
TZ (SEMPTY ); SFCNT (0); SCSICNT (0), OFFCNT(0), SSTATY (); DMACNTRL0
(16 BIT PIO
 READ ); DMASTAT (DFIFOEMP )
enabled interrupts (ENSELDI )
kernel panic; aha152x panic
In swapper task - not syncing
=====================================

I'm going to switch to SuSE and see if I can get it to work any better;
as far as I am concerned, moving to RedHat 6.0 has been a tremendous
waste of time and effort on my part.

Better luck with RedHat 7.0.

Some extra information for any Linux gurus who are reading this and may have some advice to give: when I start KDE, my text window has this message:

Warning: /dev/gpmdata unable to get status of mouse fd (Invalid argument)

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