best site for Linux software?

[Kent Borg]

On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 04:50:20PM -0700, linux lover wrote:
> i am running rh7.1 now and want to upgrade!  which is the best way
> to copy the entire release down and then install or install from
> which site?  also which site is best for the upgrade?

Unless you are in some strange part of the world where you have lots
of internet bandwidth and an ability to burn CDs but no snail service,
I wouldn't try to download the whole thing.

I bought an official Red Hat 7.2 at Microcenter because it was handy,
I don't mind supporting Redhat, and I like adding to Microcenter's
sales statistics of Linux.

To save some money go to cheapbytes.com and they can sell exact copies
of the Red Hat Linux CDs (but not the 3rd party stuff) for, well,
cheap.  Or find someone with CDs and make a copy.  Downloading all
that stuff is a pain, you will want a bootable CD for rescue purposes,
and your CD blanks aren't quite free...

You also might want to wait a bit for RH 7.3 (there is already a beta
out and I haven't heard howls of complaint, so it must be decent).
7.2 is pretty nice, but the update RPMs are already over 500 MB, and
you want the updates to fix security bugs.  (I think it was a
bufferflow bug in a common library that caused so much software to
need recompiling.)

As for doing the update, I did an update on my notebook from 7.0 to
7.2 and it went pretty smoothly.  For every configuration file they
want to change that they spot you have changed, they leave both your
version and their version for you to mess with.


A note on updated 7.2: The ill-documented "LogWatch" that 7.2 includes
defaults to mailing a log summary to root every day, and it just got a
security update, but also got a functional update too.  It is now a
decent summary who has logged in from what IP address and how many
times.  It also lists (but doesn't sumarize) IP addresses that failed
to connect because I have them in a xinetd no_access list to prevent
at least some spam.  Already useful and it looks like it will get more
so.


-kb