I installed Red Hat 8.0.94 (8.1 Beta) just now. So far it looks OK. The install is very slick. I like it better than Windows' installer. First time I've ever said that. Really. (NT doesn't count)
It has a fairly new kernel (2.4.20-2.48), that's nice. It has KDE 3.1 and gcc 3.2.1. OpenOffice and all that is also included.
The /etc/sudoers file has more examples in it that previous releases. They give you a sample line which shows how to give all regular users on localhost only shutdown privileges, for example. That's welcome. Way better than giving everyone ALL:ALL.
The slocate database will now by default only show you files for which you have read permissions. Used to be you could see anything with 'locate'. This is good.
They don't ask you to create a non-root account during the install. I think that is simply a beta-only deal though (I've never installed a recent Red Hat beta, so I wouldn't know).
My GeForce4 Ti4200 and Compaq P110 were detected during install. I haven't installed and tested nVidia's 3D drivers yet. I suspect they'll work fine. nVidia is pretty good about that.
The desktop is way smoother than 8.0. I mean, it's sparse. Naturally, I was given GNOME when I started X (I never use a graphical login; I owned a Voodoo card for too many years to fall into that habit). It had nearly nothing on the desktop or taskbar. I switched to KDE and Kandalf's tips showed up, but it looked pretty much the same otherwise. KDE had a pager and a couple more icons, that's about it. Have a look.
When you hit alt+F2 to get the "Run command" dialog, you also get options to shutdown, reboot, etc, right from there. I'm logged in as root, so that may be why. I don't think I've ever logged in as root and then run X on my other Red Hat 8 boxes, so if those options are there then nothing has changed.
Konqueror is looking fine. Real fine. I might even start using it. I need to try out the kio_fish remote file management feature yet (you can ssh from within Konq to some other machine and get to files as if they were local; this works with any KDE app). Konsole crashes when you try to start a new term window. Bug report time.
I didn't try Mozilla but I will soon.
You don't have to register to get up2date working. Seems like it's got an account that doesn't require any authentication. This may be for beta purposes. It said I have no updates, but sendmail version 8.12.7-7 is installed, and it's the one with the holes. Version 8.12.8 is available on Red Hat's web site (and via up2date), but up2date must not allow updates from "previous" releases, and they probably don't make errata packages for beta releases.
Sendmail is running. It's enabled as a service by default. I guess they figure that if you want to install it, you want to run it. Whatever. I would have hoped they'd figure this out by now. The installer ought to have a post-configuration dialog which presents a list of all the daemons you installed and gives you the option to start them at boot. I might file a bug report on that one.
I had to stop sendmail, pcmcia and apmd. I also changed all these to not start at my runlevel. What's odd is that I explicitly installed Apache (it's version 2.0.40-20; Red Hat 8.0 comes with version 2.0.40-11 so they've done some work to it) yet it's not listed in my initscripts. You'd think this would be there.
FINALLY! KDE has all the xscreensaver options GNOME has. It's about time. I've been jonesing for xjack at work. Although I'll probably go back to 'Virtual Machine' like I always do. I love that screensaver. Spheremonics is one I hadn't seen. It's cool looking. 'Course there's always BSOD. Or Bouboule. Swarm. The classics. Heh heh.
I somehow missed installing GKrellM. I dpn't know if it was included in the package list or not. XMMS is. It just doesn't have an MP3 plugin. GKrellM was included. I just installed it. I must have missed it the first time around.
The up2date applet is gone. It just disappeared, heh heh.
I have to say that the coolest part is the integrated kio_fish stuff. From within Konqueror, or Quanta, or any other KDE app, you can just use 'fish://hostname/path/to/files/' and suddenly you're ssh'ed on over to the other machine looking at stuff. You can drag and drop a file (I just copied 864 MB of ISO images, including a directory creation, without even having to think about it), edit a file in place, whatever. This is a feature I don't think I'll be able ot live without once I start using it. I may even have to install kio_fish at work.
I have to say that I was ready to quit Red Hat. But it's looking pretty nice.