"We're entering the season of a new round of Linux
releases, plus initial or new versions of applications that have
already been represented in one way or another in the Linux sphere.
There is a substantial and growing Linux installed base, not just
in server space but on the desktop.
Linux has not just arrived, but it arrived a little while ago.
For a year or more, installing Linux has been no more difficult
than installing the alternatives. Hardware support is very good --
excellent, considering the low level of direct vendor support.
There are still some vendors to be avoided, but contempt for the
customer is what drove many of us from Microsoft's fold to begin
with, so we mustn't be too surprised to learn that Microsoft has no
monopoly on that characteristic.
Red Hat 7.2, if the "Enigma" beta is any indication, will be the
best ever from them, which comes as no surprise -- Red Hat has
always kicked one hell of a .2 release. Those of you still on 6.2
boxen, it'll be safe to enter the water once again. The new default
file system, ext3, is a fine way for users to dip their toes into
the idea of a journaling file system, particularly in that you can
upgrade to it without having to rejigger everything on your drive,
a drawback to other journaling systems when you're not doing a
clean install.
I very much look forward to SuSE 7.3, which I hope to have in
time to write about next week. I am given to understand that some
of the people at SuSE took a few of my complaints about 7.2 to
heart and has made an already very good installation routine even
better -- and reduced the necessity of using YaST and YaST2 for all
configuration, though one will still be able to do so. I know
little else about the new SuSE, and I plan to do two installs: One
an upgrade of my current machine and one a from-scratch install on
the lab rat, employing their default ReiserFS."
