Redhat Linux 9.0 on HP Omnibook XE4500 laptops

Last updated: 6th Apr 2003.

Background

This is just a quick look at installing RedHat 9.0 on this particular laptop. For more detailed information about installing RedHat on the XE4500 (including Kernel rebuilding Modem driver installation, and shrinking the MS-Windows partition for dual-booting), please see my other XE4500 web page: Redhat Linux 8.0 on HP Omnibook XE4500 laptops. Most of that material applies to RedHat 9 too.

So what's new?

Not much: the bloat remains. I installed RedHat 9.0 on a test disk and whilst it seemed OK, there weren't any obvious major differences from 8.0. So I'm not sure I can be bothered to upgrade my live RH 8.0 boxen to 9.0. I'm fast losing faith in RedHat anyway: I prefer FreeBSD for servers (less bloat + simpler sysadmin), so I may try FreeBSD as a client OS too (just never really bothered running X on it so far, as it seemed a bit like wearing socks with sandals). So what follows certainly isn't a review of RH 9.0, just a quick spin round the block...

XFree86 has been updated from 4.2.0 to 4.3.0, but that still doesn't fix the screen flickering on the XE4500 laptop (ATI Radeon Mobility M6). So when you start X windows you may have to type CTRL/ALT/F1...CTRL/ALT/F7 a few times to clear the flickering.

The RedHat kernel still doesn't include NTFS filesystem support, so all those people who have to dual-boot Windows NT/2000/XP and Linux will still have to build custom kernels - see my other web pages for hints. It amazes me how a product as bloated as RedHat 9.0 fails to include such a basic feature by default. However, the NTFS support in Linux is read-only anyway, so a better approach to dual-booting may be to run FAT on your Windows partitions (although NTFS is generally regarded as more solid than FAT).

Booting the RedHat 9.0 CDROM

They still haven't fixed the installer bug introduced in RH 8.0, so the keyboard locks up early on during installation. To fix this, boot the RedHat 9.0 CDROM, then type the following command to start the installer:

linux nousb

Flicking screen during installation?

If the screen flickers when the graphical installer starts, you can fix this by typing CTRL/ALT/F1 CTRL/ALT/F7 a few times (this switches between graphical and text modes).

Dual-Head (TFT+CRT) support

Marcus Ahlfors wrote to say he has this working with RedHat 9.0 on his XE4500, which has a 15" screen. That is, he can plug in a Sony CRT monitor, and extend his desktop so that it covers both the built-in screen and the Sony screen. He says it's a little slow, but he doesn't see any flickering. His XF86Config file is here.

Conclusions

If you're an open-source newbie looking to try a user-friendly distro with plenty of ready-made GUI apps, then RedHat 9.0 is probably a reasonable choice.
If you've already got RedHat 8.0 running fairly well then perhaps you might as well wait for RedHat 10.0 rather than bother upgrading this time.
The more seasoned sysadmin may prefer to go for FreeBSD, as system configuration seems rather simpler (you just edit the odd file in /etc rather than hunting all over the place or using X-windows applets). It's no coincidence that the FreeBSD distro is smaller than that of RedHat, even with full source! Less is more... Your mileage may vary.

- Martin Johnson (6 Apr 2003)

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