Redhat 9 review

Hola,
I finally got around to installing Redhat Linux 9 so I could better help people who have questions... Let me say first I'm impressed.

I usually dog Redhat for being too windows'ish but I think they've hit a nice middle point. I haven't tried SuSE or the latest Mandrake release but I'd think I'd be hard pressed to be more excited about a large vendor finally paying attention to the Desktop crowd.

Installation was a breeze. In former versions of Redhat the install was the bane of existance because no one knew what exactly they needed to install. Redhat has done a nice job of dicing things up into "server", "desktop", "workstation" and other possible uses. They also have a good idea about how newb's want to partiton (let the installer do it for them!) very nice addition.

The default package set seems to be useful and include all the apps that most users would use, although its still lacking native Java support and Flash ect in the browser, but those are small things that can be dealt with rather easily.

I also like the new use of the "up2date" tool, it shows a small icon in the sexy bluecurve desktop when updates are available (slick!)... while I'd never pay for errata updates for an OS (call me spoiled) I can see some good use of this tool in the enterprise market.

So all in all I give Redhat 9 a thumbs up, it won't make me move away from Slackware Linux www.slackware.com as my default Linux install, it certainly bears a good reason to get your parents, kids whoever into the Linux scene without too much hassle...