Customer Reviews

Red Hat Linux 7.3 Professional

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a primarily Win oriented user, I have tried almost all the RedHat, Mandrake & Debian distros and other OSs as well (God bless BeOS). RH 7.3 is the one for me. Though I was not all that impressed by RedHat 6.x, or even 7.0, 7.3 is the easiest to install and configure. I have tried this distro on several units, from 100Mhz 486DXs to Gateway Jabil Celeron processors and some high end P4 units. Installed equally well on all with 0 bumps. Plays nice with Win partitions and networks, though make sure you add the Win partition during setup or you will have problems adding the Win partition later. Networking is quite straight forward and simple, it is relatively easy to add it to a Win network and share files, though the SWAT tool for SAMBA is a royal pain if it does not work right out of the chute. Some systems, identical installs, it worked great, others, it was a bomb, had to config the smb.conf by hand. Don't let it intimidate you though, very well documented and mostly common sense. RedHats support is great too, as well as the user groups there. I got very quick replies to posted questions.

RH 7.3 includes more useful and entertaining packages than the other distros, and though the sheer volume (I installed 2,500) of programs can be overwhelming, but once you sort through it, WAY COOL!

As for ease of use, RH 7.3 I like the choices of KDE, Gnome, TWMM, Sawfish & etc. A few RH 7.3 utilities however, will not run under anything but Gnome. Took a while to figure this out (network conf, update agent), Gnome is RH 7.3's default. By contrast, 8.0 with bluecurve is not for those who want to do it 'their way'.

RH 7.3 is a viable alternative to Windows, complete with Office programs and many other equivalents included.For those who like to tinker, it is tinkerers heaven! My 8 year old promptly told me it is his Linux box and said I could have back the Win98 one.
He has found a lot of cool utilities and programs while exploring, and though he has had some bumps, not even a very enterprising 8 yearold could crash it

The bottom line is, if you just want to do a default install of the OS and have a usable, enjoyable cool system or if you want to customize it to the max, RH 7.3 will accomodate you. The professional version is more than you need if you are 'just a user', but if you want the full impact and ultimate experience, it is just right. I set up a webserver, mailserver, firewall, DSL gateway & etc 'out of the box'.

RH is finally getting closer to the end-user. Integration is seamless and the installer id getting better. Nice documentation, i do not really use X but my fellow collegues who do not like dealing with a CLI just loved KDE3.
I was used to SuSe (still run it) but RH 7.3 gained some very good points
to be recommended if you want to build a server

Outstanding alternative to Microsoft Windows. I use it for a web server and office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, etc).

Linux itself is obviously extremely solid, but there are many, many choices in distributions these days. Classically Red Hat has been considered more of a server distribution, but that's no longer the case. Red Hat 7.3 makes an extremely stable desktop platform. It may not have every bell and whistle that Mandrake or others have, but what's there works very well. If you're running Red Hat on any of your servers, then you should at least give it a try on the desktop. You'll probably be happily surprised.