Hi, Let me start by saying that I generally find The RedHat distributions more than adequate in every way. However there seems to be a number of difficulties with the 6.1 distribution (ie. the downloadable iso-image) which makes RedHat a poor choise for first time users (which I am not). 1. I tried to install on a highend Pentium (or lowend Pentium II). The installation failed to initialize X, and continued in the oldfashion way (Matrox G200). This is strange since there was no problem detecting the graphicscard later on in the installation. After the installation I was a bit baffled by the fact that I wasn't prompted for LiLo (!?!). And sure enough: When the machine rebooted after installation - it booted Windows 2. I moved on and tried to install on a brandnew PentiumIII. I inserted the CD - and it too failed to initialize X (Matrox G200 as well). BUT! instead of continuing in textmode it crashed big time and informed me (politely) that I should reboot the machine (This seems more like Windows than Linux) 3. This time I tried on a Pentium II 300MHz with an OEM Matrox G100. This installer behaved nicely this time (allthough it skipped detection of the networkadapter - I like the graphical installer by the way). BUT! After installation the network adapter still wasn't detected (I have heard rumours about a new hardware detection system in 6.1). Furthermore: eventhough I chose dansih keyboard during the installation, the settings were some UK/US-keyboard. I corrected this but a firsttime user most certainly won't be able to do that. There were some other things that was kind of strange but the only one I remember is that I wasn't able to run sndconfig (unless I ran setup). I didn't go further into to this. But now I wonder is this intentionally or have you forgotten to setup the PATH-variable??? If you need more detailed information on some of the hardware mentioned above, simply drop me a line - I'll be glad to comply. Keep up the good work Best Regards Thomas Wentzel
What kind of installation were you performing in 1) below? If you were performing a Workstation or Server installation, you will not be prompted for lilo config, but I would not think that it would boot Windows. We have heard reports of bad things happening when the install failed to start the Xserver. What kind of network adapter was in the machine which was not detected? I am assumming that you were performing a cdrom installation, in which case you should have gotten the Network Config screen, and you should have been able to either enter static IP information or configure the device to use dhcp. ------- Additional Comments From 10/21/99 15:35 ------- I chose "Custom" installation in all three cases! The network adapter is a 3COM adapter (3c589 I believe) and Yes I did a CDROM installation
ISA devices are no auto-probed by the system, so this might explain why you did not get prompted for networking information. The new hardware detection code is indeed in this release, but again, ISA devices are not handled. The problem with the keyboard is fixed in the latest RawHide, as are significant improvements in the handling of video cards and what happens should the system need to fallback to TUI install.