Slackware - Debian - FreeBSD - RedHat

Writing this on RH8.0. And oh, the difference.

I started using Unix five years ago with Slackware when I bought my first computer (486, oh yeah) over the Internet (I had been thinking about Win9x but was worried about viruses); moved to Debian after reading CmdrTaco's raves; moved to FreeBSD after getting a job at an ISP that used (uses) FreeBSD pretty much exclusively; and now I've downloaded all five ISOs of RedHat 8.0, and I'm going to do my best to use it exclusively, at least at home.

I'm doing this because I'd like to take the RHCE exam. I've read about it, and it seems like a really good qualification -- I'm particularly taken w/the hands-on exam. As far as job qualifications go, I've got a fair amount of experience (enough to get me a junior position, if I had to look), but no certification; as I want a job as a sysadmin, this seems a bit of a lack. Becoming an RHCE seems the best way to fill that gap.

I must admit, I've forgotten what it's like not to have the packaging system do the thinking for you. One of the big reasons I moved to Debian was for the ease of installing new programs; I was sick to death of downloading a cool program, only to find that it depended on six separate libraries, each of which had four separate dependencies. It's such a thrill to just apt-get install foo or cd /usr/ports/devel/foo && make install distclean and then walk away. Trying to do that sort of thinking again is like...I don't know, forgetting how to walk and having to do the math by hand.

For example, I tried to install IceWM over the last couple of nights, and I couldn't get it to work. It depended on libdb3-1, but using RPMFind and FreshRPMs.net I was only able to find 3.3. Maybe not a show-stopper -- I didn't try forcing the installion and seeing -- but I didn't want to risk it; the current install is about the fourth in as many weeks (don't install Linux after !}fmt FreeBSD after Linux, kids!), and I didn't want to bother w/YARI. I gave up in the end, compiled from source (which, while surely part of The Linux Way doesn't seem to be part of The Reddat Way. Got it installed no problem, but then came the problem of how to start it up.

I went through a fairly default install of RH8.0, including selecting Gnome for a default environment (though installing KDE as well). That meant the default runlevel was 5, and so GDM started up. I found /etc/sysconfig/desktop, but setting DESKTOP to icewm or /usr/local/bin/icewm just didn't work. I gave up -- I was getting sick and tired of a) GNOME not working w/a home directory mounted over NFS (grr) and b) KDE trying to grab URLS whenever I highlighted something and c) both environments slowness (I've got a 450MHz celeron, 384MB ram, and d) both steal too many cycles for my liking) and lack of a terminal screen in easy and close and prominent proximity -- and set runlevel to 3. I rebooted, changed .xinitrc, typed startx and breathed a sign of relief. Cheating, sure, but I'd really like to have a working desktop before the year is out.

So now I get to learn about rpm. And hopefully I can put RHCE after my name (no, not really) within a year or so. That'd be nice.

Original entry.