Obviously, this install is on a laptop.
- Install went well but shortly after, I found that it hung in the GUI (GNOME and KDE) after being up for a few minutes. It didn't matter if I launched an app or just left it alone.
- RH Support recommended an anaconda patch that seemed to fix this hanging problem.
- Problem came back so I tried an install without the new Journalling system(ext3). No difference.
- Tried another install with ext3 and it hung in a login loop when I logged out of the GUI.
- Rebooted and ran fsck manually on it.
- On reboot (remove power and battery...again) the whole filesystem was corrupted. Directories that held boot scripts were now ASCII and binary "files" (booted through the rescue CD to find this as it could not even load the kernel).
- Did another install and it added services I did not ask for (mail server, NFS server and some others) which I had to manually remove from the boot scripts after multiple hangs and fsck checks (that took 2 nights). Sendmail would not only just sleep when it couldn't detect a DHCP server, it would freeze the laptop.
- All the while, I could not shut down or reboot. The APM daemon would never turn off my laptop and I had to pull the battery for any of the above to start again.
- RH service just kept telling me to try things that I already informed them that I had tried (sigh).
- All the while, I was subscribed to the RH 7.2 (code name "enigma", how apropos) mailing list and I was appalled at the amount of complaints (in the hundreds). Many subscribers were jumping ship on RH and comparing it to the initial release of Win 95. Personally, Win 95 was a lot better.
- They removed Linuxconf, the global config tool, which we have an extensive module on. The replacement suite of tools are really hard to find.
- There is absolutely no HOWTOs or documentation on the new ext3 journalling filesystem anywhere to be found that I have been able to dig up.
- They also removed my favourite game, xgammon. The nerve!
It seems that RH 7.2 has been rushed to market and the default kernel (an odd number release) probably is unstable too. This is the worse Linux I have come across, ever. I only hope it doesn't become too public or RedHat is in for a beating (they are, after all, the Microsoft of the Linux world).
Compiling under Redhat 7.2
