[nylug-talk] need to refer client for Red Hat help / OLPH project

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 00:01 -0400, JH Earthlink wrote:
> I have two items I'd like some feedback on.  First, I've got a
> brand-new client, who has a dual-booting (very old) computer with
> Windows 98 and some version of Red Hat on it.  Best guess on the RH is
> some version between 7 and 9.  If anyone can tell me how to find a
> version number in RH, that would help - I looked, and it wasn't
> obvious.  

Virtually all Debian and Fedora** community based distributions have
a /etc/*-release file that has a single line with this information.

  $ cat /etc/*-release

[ **NOTE:  By "Fedora," I use the Red Hat trademarked reference to all
its community releases (which is more than just distros, long, legal
story), including Red Hat Linux 4.0 - Red Hat Linux 9 (13 releases) plus
Fedora Core 1 - 6 (6 releases), as well as Fedora 7+ (2 releases).  Most
Red Hat users consider Red Hat Linux 4.0 to be the first "modern" Red
Hat/Fedora release. ]

The Fedora Legacy Project shut down after July 2006 and updates for Red
Hat Linux (RHEL) 7.3 and RHL 9 were ended then.  I highly recommend
anyone still maintaining RHL 7.3 systems to migrate Red Hat Enterprise
Linux (RHEL) 2.1 (community rebuilt as CentOS 2), which is based on it
(and should have minimal issues in doing so), and correspondingly, RHEL
3 (community rebuild at CentOS 3), or consider a more recent
distribution.  All Fedora based distros provide compat packages that
provide major ABI/API compatibility back five (5) "Enterprise"**
versions now, so you may be able to upgrade and still see older software
work.**

[ **NOTE:  RHL6E (EGCS 1.1.2/GCC 2.91.66), RHEL2.1 (GCC 2.96/3.0), RHEL
3 (GCC 3.2 w/some 3.3 backports, notably for LSB), RHEL 4 (GCC 3.4),
RHEL 5 (GCC 4.1 w/some 4.2 backports). ]

> But he's having browser issues in RH, and I'm not familiar with RH at
> all.

No Fedora Core release prior to 6 is actively maintained, not even by
Fedora Legacy anymore.  The Fedora team figures it's more worthwhile
just to maintain newer releases longer.  And, frankly, the Fedora team
enjoys CentOS being around for people who really want long-term.

So, subsequently, any community release prior to Fedora Core 6 is a
"non-option" from my viewpoint when it comes to Internet connectivity.
Alternatively, select RHEL (or CentOS).  Again, if he is running Red Hat
Linux 7.x or 9, consider RHEL (or CentOS) versions 2.1 (CentOS 2) or 3,
respectively.

> I looked at the Firefox rpms, but not knowing his RH version I wasn't
> sure which were the right ones.

Most Firefox releases are built rather generically for GLibC 2 aka
"LibC6" systems, with any objects typically against ANSI C++ of GCC 2.96
+.  I.e., it will typically run on anything RHL 7 (RHEL 2.1) or higher.

Although just using the browser that came with the distro is best,
assuming the distro is actively maintained, of course.

> And an Opera rpm I downloaded wouldn't unpack.

Details on "wouldn't unpack"?

> The winner is Puppy Linux 2.15CE (Community Edition) - it's got a nice
> assortment of programs and more for d/l.
> Available at: http://www.puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1 

I typically just build Gentoo when it's embedded, but that's just me.

Puppy clearly takes the "Slackware approach" which is a good move.  I
used Slackware and NetBSD until Daniel created the BSD ports approach on
steroids in Gentoo.


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution