Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 16:02:16 -0500 (EST)
From: redhat-watch-list-admin@redhat.com
To: redhat-watch-list@redhat.com
Subject: Announcing a beta release of Red Hat Linux: “Fisher”
Announcing...
Red Hat Linux "Fisher"
(a beta release)
Red Hat, Inc. presents a beta release of Red Hat Linux for your
hacking pleasure. First, the regular drill:
This is a beta release of Red Hat Linux. It is not intended for
mission critical applications. It`s not even intended for
non-mission critical applications. Important data should not be
entrusted to Fisher, as it may eat it and make loud belching
noises.
Significant changes have been made since the last version of Red
Hat Linux, including a shift to a 2.4-based kernel. We need your
help to find and report bugs. You can enter bug reports for any
problems you might find by using bugzilla at:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/
PLEASE SEARCH FOR EXISTING BUG REPORTS BEFORE YOU ENTER A NEW
REPORT!
Patches are always appreciated, so include them if you can.
As in Red Hat Linux 7, this beta is large enough that the binary
packages have been split between two ISO images. The installation
program handles reading packages from multiple CDs.
* Where can I get this release?
Fisher can be downloaded from our public FTP site at:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher
With the support of volunteers ftp site administrators, Fisher
is available from several mirrors. The following sites have
complete copies of Fisher, so please use a mirror close to you:
Indiana, USA:
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/redhat/beta/fisher
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/redhat/beta/fisher
Minnesota, USA:
ftp://ftp.mn-linux.org/linux/redhat/beta/fisher
Buffalo, New York, USA:
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/mirror/Linux/redhat/beta/fisher
Pennsylvania, USA:
http://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/redhat/beta/fisher
ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/redhat/beta/fisher
rsync://carroll.cac.psu.edu/redhat-beta/fisher
Australia:
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher
http://www.planetmirror.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher
Please also see our official mirror list:
http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html
as more of the mirror sites may have picked up the beta by the
time you read this.
* What's new in this beta?
General system improvements:
o Itanium(tm) architecture support is included
o Installer has many improvements and fixes, including basic
firewall configuration
o Workstation installs are network-secure (services are off by
default)
o Japanese support fully integrated
o Graphical kickstart configuration program included
Core system components:
o kernel 2.4.0 + many fixes
o glibc 2.2.1
o XFree86 4.0.2
o XFree86 3.3.6 X servers included for maximum hardware
compatibility
o KDE 2.1 beta release snapshot
o GNOME libs 1.2.8, core 1.2.4
o GCC 2.96-RH
Expanded hardware support:
o Improved USB
o IDE UltraDMA 66/100
o IEEE1394 (FireWire(tm))
o ATM networking
o WiFI wireless ethernet cards
o ESS Maestro3 and newer Crystal audio
System service changes:
o New network-transparent configuration subsystem
o Configuration tools for BIND, Apache, and printing
A sampling of package upgrades:
o GIMP 1.2.1
o Tcl/Tk 8.3.2
o BIND 9.1.0
o Pine 4.32
o Vim 6.0 prerelease
o XMMS 1.2.4
A sampling of Package additions:
o OGG/Vorbis audio encoder/decoder
o Mozilla
* Status of Red Hat Network:
rhn_register, the registration client for Red Hat Network, is
included, but registrations for the beta will not be accepted.
However, up2date will be fully functional in anonymous mode, and
we encourage people to make use of this functionality. We will be
attempting to synchronize our fixes with Update Agent on a nightly
basis, so if you report a problem and it gets fixed, you can get a
new version of that particular package on the following day.
* Major known issues:
o PCMCIA support is touch-and-go; upgrading computers reliant on
PCMCIA may not work at all.
o Systems that include both floppy and IDE ZIP devices will fail
to install; a fixed boot disk has been made available to correct
this problem:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher/en/updates/images/fisher-upddsk1.img
A README file describing how to use the update is also in that
directory.
o Minimal installs do not support NFS out of the box. Install
the portmap package afterwards if you require this
functionality.
o Partitionless installs and upgrades are not currently
working.
o Applications using dlopen() to load threaded libraries (such
as kdm) may crash with the i686 version of glibc. Additionally, the
i686 version of glibc only supports 2.4-based kernels.
If you are experiencing problems such as the one described
above, or need to run a 2.2-based kernel, install the i386 version
of glibc by running:
rpm -Uvh –force glibc-2.2.1-3.i386.rpm
o X and KDE have known failures on Itanium.
Enjoy!
The Linux OS Development and QA Teams Red Hat, Inc.
-- Preston Brown Linux OS Development Red Hat, Inc. pbrown@redhat.com