Red Hat Linux was once a pretty widespread Linux distribution.
Then it forked into two pretty widespread Linux distributions, called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) [L1 ] and Fedora Core (now called Fedora Linux) [L2 ]. Both distributions are entirely open-source.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Fedora Linux
Problems with older versions of Red Hat Linux
LV 2007 Oct 01
I have a question for Redhat Linux admins.
Does Redhat have a package that would provide a batteries included type environment?
Yes, I know about ActiveTcl. From a burecratic point of view, installing things from RedHat packaging hopefully would result in less paperwork, etc.
KJN The number of Tcl-related packages in RHEL is limited (see list above). Fedora has a better selection, but most of these are from the old "Fedora Extras" repository, and might not be provided on installation media. An RPM called "tcl-batteries-included" that requires all the available Tcl packages as dependencies would be useful, but AFAIK no such thing exists - you would need to write your own and submit it to the Fedora project.
LV Redhat announced this week (June 1, 2006) that the beta open source site https://www.108.redhat.com/ was now accessible. They compared it to MSDN by Microsoft.
Alas, when I used their search facility on June 1, 2006, there were no references to tcl returned by the search engine.
Discussion of old versions of Red Hat Linux
Jeff Hobbs warned in the Tcl chatroom on 2003-05-20: "for reference for anyone else here, RH9 sucks, and sucks especially for what they did to Tk on it. Do not use the RH9 default Tcl/Tk install."
What exactly did they do to it? - davidw
JE RH9 patches the tcl core code to use 32-bit Tcl_UniChars (the default is 16 bit). This breaks the stubs table guarantee; as a result, Tcl extensions built on another Linux distro (including earlier RH releases) won't work on RH9. Plus, they're still distributing Tcl 8.3.5, which is way out of date. There are probably some other problems as well.
Good alternatives are Debian, Suse, and Mandrake.
KPV I heard from one of my users that RH was also very bad with Perl, clinging onto 1.5 way too long.
Is there any mysterious reason why RedHat does not use Tcl8.4, but still distributes Tcl8.3 (in RedHat 9)? It is the only reason why I distribute my Tcl programs as Tcl8.3 versions. Suse has used Tcl8.4 for a long time. Do not tell me about stable versions. Suse is also stable with Tcl8.4.
It seems that Suse supports Tcl better than RedHat. Suse 8.2 distribution has a special package managment point (Tcl-Development) and has also Visual tcl and SpecTcl as RPM packages.
LES: I have tried 12 distros and found RedHat the best all-around. BUT: I use RedHat 7.3, considered the best by many RH fans, AND I never tried SUSE.
TV I've used RedHat 6.0-2 or so long ago, which was cool, it ran tcl as a cgi under apache, and did most unix stuff, so I was satisfied with it serving images. More recently I used redhat 8 and now I regularly let 9 run, which works fine, rpm's, tcl/tk 8.4.1 works fine enough, though I wouldn't let a average computer user install it. As a unix replacement, at least it is serious, I like running wmaker, with kde and gnome panels/utils on various screen pages, which is fun. The kernel I used offeres audio support, but for (mixed) multiple channels, some special constuct must be run, which may be fast, but that is sort of crappy to use, in the past it broke down, but I guess using the right deamons and processes and making sure nothing runs double or has wrong permissions, it runs. I tried the ccrma patched kernels for millisecond range sound delay, which would be great for building sound apps, but they fail me thus far, the hardware detection somehow seems to go wrong on the machine I can try it on. I had to let the nvidia driver from that company recompile the kernal, which worked fine, and now 3D is blazing, it seems, which may noit be all too rh dependent. The installer works, and probably unattended makes things start up without much care, but a lot of things are not integrated clearly with either kde or gnome based installer and maintenance tools, and the redhat ones, which at times are fine, are often not trivial to find for me though. Without prior unix knowledge, lots of things I woulnd't have been able to do. Then again, having it start up and run a supplied shell and the compiler and such is worth it. Compared to suse (a bit older version a few years ago) and caldera I'd say it probably would still get my preference, suse probably being a bit nicer, though I'd have to do a lot of recapping to know for sure, it still has probably the most professional feel to it. I myself didn't try debian, ever.
Recently, I found redhat linux will be discontinued next year, which sort of surprised me, I alreadt knew there is a new, experimental, developper supported package called fedora, and the enterprice version, which are commercial, will continue I understand, which I never tried out. The current download wasn't that easy to find, the site directs you most clearly to a cheap version, not the free download. By regularly filling in a questionaire, you can for free stay subscribed to redhat net, where automatic updates can be gotten, bug fixes and 'security updates', search for and download rpm's. Versions don't mix, which can be annoying, and I can't say I feel free with rpm's, but the redhat ones do work.
Tcl I could use easily enough, though indeed the standard version is probably old, and indeed getting it installed and running easily wasn't a breeze. You must know what /usr/local/bin is and then some, and it's just not so handy from the sources, but it works fine with some work, thus far.