On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 01:35:50PM +1000, James Buchanan wrote:
> Does anyone have RedHat 7.2, and is it any good?

Yes and yes. Of course, my definition of good is different from yours
based on the rant that follows.

> I have been sorely
> disappointed with the two previous Red Hats, becuz they shipped with
> intermediate versions of GCC, my most important tool. Having an officially
> unsupported GCC is bad news for me, since when trying to compile Mach, GRUB,
> etc, they state the versions of GCC that came with those two previous
> RedHats were not supported.

You can always grab an older gcc and build that. 

> I tried to get my old RedHat 6.2 installed again, and got the drivers for my
> nVidia GeForce2 MX400 video card, but I couldn't get XFree86 4.0.1 or better
> in the version of RPM packages that RedHat 6.2 supported. I tried installing
> the later RPM, but the old RPM couldn't install it! Sheesh, what a joke.

The upgrade path for rpm and then using newer version rpms is well
documented. rpm-3.0.6 supported both formats of rpms, as does 4.0.2,
from memory. Hardly a joke.

I have no idea about getting later X versions running on Red Hat 6.x,
since it's been a long time since I used it.

> Anyways, does anyone know if 7.2 comes with the proper latest or recent
> version of GCC, i.e. 2.95.x and not 2.96.x?

Red Hat 7.2 comes with gcc-2.96-98, which is hardly unexpected, since
they will not break binary compatibility across the 7.x releases. It's
the same reason they still ship Python 1.5.2, for example, as default,
rather than a 2.x release (although they now include the latter as
well).

Your assumption that Red Hat's gcc with all their patches in the latest
incarnation is worse than the "official" 2.95 may be flawed (imho it
is). But if you don't feel comfortable with the patched version, then go
with the older stuff.

> And, can anyone tell me where I can get an XFree86 > 4.0.1 in RPM or tar gz,
> and if RPM, that can be installed with an RPM that has a major version
> number < 3?

As mentioned above, update to rpm-3.0.6 and you're fine. The "major
version number < 3" is a bit of a misleading error message, but this is
essentially a solved problem. Search for that phrase on Google or, in
particular, look in the archives of the rpm mailing list (from about the
middle of last year) for more information.

> Apart from XFree86 and my video card drivers, what other things do I need to
> install for X on my workstation? Is there a gigantic RPM that has all the
> Gnome or KDE things ready to go? Plus all the libraries they need, etc?

No, since not everybody will want the same things and the whole lot is
HUGE. There is a list of the packages needed for GNOME on www.gnome.org
and probably a similar one for KDE on www.kde.org. The RPMS are
similarly names. Alternatively, you could use the Ximian services for
getting rpms of some GNOME packages.

For reference, Red Hat 7.2 comes with GNOME 1.4 and KDE 2.2.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
I've got a mind like a... a... what's that thing called?

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