Red Hat Linux 9

The latest version of this well known Linux distribution.

Red Hat is by some way the largest Linux company, and the oldest. Red Hat Linux had been in development for some 10 years, back to when Linux was in its infancy, but the company has recently announced that it no longer has plans to develop the Red Hat Linux product line, and instead will concentrate on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But for the time being, Red Hat Linux 9 is a hugely popular distribution and will continue to receive updates into 2004.

On installation, the first thing you notice is how professional and polished it is. The install process, while offering flexibility, is one of the easiest to use, and its well-designed aesthetics give you confidence. The first steps are to set up the system language, keyboard and mouse, and then the installer searches your hard drive for existing Red Hat Linux instances that it can update, or allows you to perform a fresh install. For new installations, you're offered the choice of a desktop, workstation or server, in order to tailor the software selection automatically. The rest is straightforward, and our test PC?s monitor and onboard network card were identified and set up. The installation also lets you include extra languages, configure a firewall, and customise the software to install.

On the first boot-up, the good design continues with a wizard to control a few more settings. We were impressed that the time and date could be configured here via the network and set to update at boot-up. The PC's sound card was then identified and configured. Next, the wizard asked to register the system, but this step failed. A visit to the 'Red Hat Network' website showed that an update had to be downloaded and manually installed before the system could be registered or any updates performed. Once done, the update process was simple. Unlike other distributions, automatic updates can only be performed with registered systems. You can only have one system registered free, otherwise you must pay for extra entitlements on the Red Hat Network.

Red Hat is alone here for defaulting to the Gnome desktop over KDE, which is also supplied, but not as well configured. Red Hat has developed its own Bluecurve theme, which includes a custom set of icons and window decorations. The design works well, and gives the distribution a professional and branded feel. Menus are well laid out, and applications are named sensibly.

Many tools for configuring the system are supplied, though there is no central application to perform administration. These cater for everyday activities, such as adding users, as well as more complex things, such as configuring the Samba server. Printers are not automatically set up, but the Print Manager tool was easy to use. Some of the major applications were slightly out of date. Mozilla was at version 1.2.1, while Open Office at 1.0.2. Email is provided for by Ximian Evolution, an application users of Microsoft Outlook will feel comfortable with.

Red Hat Linux is very disappointing on the multimedia desktop front. There?s no MP3 support at all: Red Hat has decided to remove support for legal reasons. There is no video player, so no support for AVIs or DVDs. The Nvidia drivers for our test PC were not available, and had to be downloaded manually. On the web side, Mozilla isn't configured with any plug-ins at all, thus there is no support for Java, Real Player or Flash. Nautilus, the file manager, is fast and stable, and file types are identified, even if few have applications to handle them. Most of the major types are however configured, including images, wav files and archives.

System stability was impressive, we had no crashes at all on our test PC. This has often been the case with Red Hat Linux, since its large user base means more vigorous testing than other packages.

Red Hat Linux is available as a free download or as a boxed set (Standard and Pro editions). The former includes 30 days of web-based support and a 30-day subscription to Red Hat Network. The Pro edition gives you 60 days of support, 60 days with Red Hat Network, a single DVD and extra documentation.

Contact: Red Hat 0800 358 2018
www.redhat.co.uk

System requirements:

• Pentium II 400MHz
• 128MB of Ram
• 2GB hard disk space

RRP £115 (Pro)
£34 (Standard)

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