RedHat 8
- November 08, 2002
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I got RedHat 8 last night for the heck of it. Several weeks back, I bought an old PC off of the local newspaper for about $60. It had Windoze 95 on it at first, and a friend helped me put Windows 98 on it. I only needed it to view the Web pages I was working on in a Windoze environment to make sure they looked decent. The PC was old enough to choke a bit on graphics, and it wouldn’t draw pictures very well at all. I had banding in places even at 16 bit color!
A friend of mine had bought RedHat 8 a few days ago and was gushing about it. He’s been a Windoze user for so long, he had never really tried Linux or OS X. He really likes OS X, but doesn’t have a Mac to run it. So he bought RedHat to tinker with and see if he liked. Well he does… a lot. So I decided I’d install it on my old dog PC and see how it went.
I couldn’t get my PC to boot off of the CD. So my friend came over and showed me how to getinto the BIOS to change some settings. One reason I HATE PCs. Once we got that out of the way, everything else went smoothly. I must admit it was MUCH easier than I thought it’d be to install. It had an easy-to-use installer app and I had it installed and running with the KDE GUI in just over an hour (my PC has a 200 mHz Pentium MMX). The interface is MUCH more polished than I remember from older versions I’ve tinkered with. It looks cleaner than Windoze 98 and has no color banding, anywhere.
My friend had been having trouble getting RedHat to connect to his Windoze network. He had tried pinging and telneting, but could never get it to work. After I had installed RedHat, I connected to my Mac within a few minutes. And my Mac can connect to my PC no problem as well. He was pissed! HAHA! After grumbling about how stupid Windoze was for a while, he decided he would go home and reinstall RedHat again to see if he can connect.
All in all, I am very pleased with RedHat 8. If you’re thinking about trying Linux out, it’s definitely worth a look.