Why Pay for a Free OS? Why Not!
Written: Jul 01 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: fast, powerful OS packaged with friendly interface; easy installation
Cons: documentation slim; customer support anorexic
The Bottom Line: Great OS packaged with easy-to-use interface. Customer support at or below industry standard, which is typically abysmal.
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| scmrak's Full Review: Red Hat RED HAT LINUX 9 PERSONAL (RHF0120US) |
The license plates of New Hampshire bear that state's motto; a phrase with currency among aficionados of the UNIX operating system: Live Free or Die. OK, few devotees of an operating system are likely to give up their lives for the right to control their disks and structure their file system as they choose (and most of those use Macs, I suspect), but the word "free" has a different meaning under these circumstances anyway. You see, the UNIX operating system is meant to be "open source," meaning costing nothing. The downside of being free, though, is that there's also no network of eager technicians, hunched over their keyboards with headsets at the ready, to answer your frantic 3AM phone plea for support.
In reality you could, I suppose, find all the pieces-parts needed to build and install a UNIX system on a computer on your own. I don't doubt that there are people out there who've done just that - hardy souls who in another generation constructed home hi-fi systems from Heathkit sets and build airplanes in their garages. For us mere mortals, however, a handful of software companies have cropped up to package a selection of free software, put a wrapper around it, and provide installations scripts and documentation. The best-known of these is RedHat, purveyor of a low-cost Linux that's now on version number 9.
Being a UNIX fan (and having a need to run an esoteric piece of software unavailable for Windows) I installed a copy of Linux on my laptop. I set the system up as dual-boot, partitioning the 40-gB disk drive into a 20-gB DOS partition (Windows XP) and a 20-gB partition running RedHat Linux 9. Here's what I got for my $40 (there really is no such thing as a free lunch), here's what I didn't, and here's the tale of my installation.
What Comes with RedHat 9
If you're unfamiliar with UNIX, let me first suggest that you pick up a copy of an introduction to the OS - I'm partial to O'Reilly's Learning the Unix Operating System for a starter; once you've read that you may want to move on to UNIX in a Nutshell from the same publisher.
The UNIX operating system is only the engine that runs your computer. To be of use to all but the most tool-headed among us, you'll also need a window management system, graphical user interface, not to mention all the "little" things that go into making your computer do your bidding, such as printer controls. That's not to mention software for web browsing, office "production" tasks, and - of course - games. You get all that: the XFree86 window manager, the GNOME graphical user interface, and CUPS print-service control, among many others.
Since everything in the package is nominally free, you'll not find a copy of MS Office or Claris Works bundled with the OS. Instead, you get free applications from OpenOffice.org, including spreadsheet, word-processing, and presentation software that import to and export directly from Microsoft applications. Copies of the Mozilla web browser and Evolution email software are included; as is multimedia support, an interface for digital cameras, support for PDA synch, security applications, and the Apache web server v. 2.0. At a more basic level, programming support is also included - the Python language, GNU Emacs, the gnu c compiler gcc, and Perl.
There's also included a fairly large selection of games, most of which I haven't inspected. All, though, are open source versions of familiar games, including such basics as solitaire (about 100 different versions), Minesweeper, and Tetris; plus several online games.
A core feature, designed to make life easier for most users, is the RedHat Package Manager (RPM). This application is designed to simplify installation and removal of packages, much in the same way that the Add/Remove programs function works in the Windows world.
Installation
Having never even attempted to install my own user interface before, I had some trepidation. The install process, however, went off only a single hitch - thanks mainly to a point-and-click installation interface. The single hitch was in partitioning the disk drive: the process is vaguely documented and requires some advance knowledge of how UNIX file systems are constructed. The process basically entailed "blowing away" the D:\ drive on the Windows side and re-defining it as a UNIX filesystem, complete with boot, root, and swap partitions.
Once you've sucked it up and partitioned the drive - if you make a mistake here, you have to delete and redefine all partitions - most of the rest of the next hour or so consists of shuffling CDs and occasionally clicking on radio buttons to decide which software to install and which to omit. For a dual-boot system like mine, you get to set up the boot loader - which OS is default, etc. You also need to define your hardware and peripherals, although the install software did a good job of recognizing such items as fixed and non-fixed drives, video and sound cards, mice, ethernet and PCMCIA cards, and the like on my system. A wrinkle that will be new to most PC/Mac users is the concept of root user, which grants system privileges to that user (you should never log on as root by default, since that gives you unbridled power to screw things up).
As I said, install proceeded smoothly. The 120-page installation guide answered any questions I had during the process.
After Install
Rumor has it that Linux-based systems run rings around the commercially available operating systems - and you won't get any argument from me. I haven't benchmarked anything, though, so that's a value judgment instead of a statement of fact.
So far, the OS has proven stable, although I haven't pushed it exceedingly hard yet. The applications, for all that they're "free," are relatively powerful - on a par with, say, Microsoft applications of about seven or eight years ago - and easy to use. Their internal documentation is quite sparse, mainly (I guess) because it's much more fun to write code than documentation. Most applications act about the same as what we're used to (how different can the basics of a browser be, for instance), and require little advanced documentation.
The provided documentation CD is not much more than a basic primer of UNIX except for documentation of features unique to RedHat (especially RPM). An important exception is security documentation, since many users have opted to use Linux to drive a web server; hence inclusion of an open-source server, Apache, in the installation. Another shortcoming I noticed is that the documentation doesn't seem to have been updated much - mention of Windows systems, for instance, deals with Win95 and Win98, but not with Windows XP (this in documents that bear a copyright date of 2003).
For users like myself, a key feature is the ability to get into the "guts" of the operating system, acting on the terminal level instead of always working within software applications. I can use terminal windows for file management and light programming, just as I have in UNIX systems for over a decade. Although one can work entirely within the GUI environment (just as if on a Windows machine or Mac), one can also operate at a more basic level - personally, I like that.
What if there Are Problems?
There are two reasons why people opt to pay for something they can get for free: the first is that "all your ducks are in a row" at install time, rather than having half a hundred applications and uncompiled pieces of source code scattered across your kitchen table. RedHat's install - everything - comes on three CDs, and everything gets installed in a simple graphical process. That alone makes it worth forty bucks or so for a licensed copy.
The second reason is that RedHat supports its users. In theory. My experience is less encouraging. Every license gets free installation support (above and beyond the manual and CD-ROM documents), and each license is also entitled to thirty days of free online support. Note that there is no mention of telephone support - it's available only during installation.
During your thirty days, you address your question to the RedHat online site, then wait until a technician picks up the request and replies; a process RedHat says takes four hours or less. I found, however, that my single request took two days for a technician to acknowledge, and then s/he didn't do anything. After five days, I figured out the solution on my own and cancelled the request for support. I didn't bother to tell them the solution, either.
Several UseNet newsgroups offer support to RedHat users, though that support is sometimes of questionable veracity and more often than not, surly. Thin-skinned newbies are herewith forewarned.
Overall
Hey, it's UNIX - which means that many of us wouldn't even think of going there. But if you're looking for a fast, versatile operating system and want access to a broad spectrum of applications that won't crush your checking account like a bug, this is definitely the way to go.
Overall I'm pleased with RedHat Linux 9 - its stability, ease of installation, and the applications included with the OS are all positives for me. On the negative side, I find that RedHat's documentation could use a little expansion, and their customer support also needs some tuning. Five stars for the OS and applications, three stars for the support and documentation - that averages out to four stars.
Notes: Installed on Sony FR130 laptop (1.8 gHz AMD chip, 256 mB RAM). Requires 5 GB of disk space for complete installation; not recommended for less than Pentium-class chip (200 mHz or faster). Purchase of "Professional" version at about twice the price gives you more support than the personal version.
Recommended:
Yes
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