Amazon.com Review:
Nicely polished and with an improved file system, Red Hat Linux 7.2 is the best release to date of the most popular commercial Linux distribution. If you tried an earlier version of Red Hat Linux and found it too rough for you, particularly at installation time, you'll want to give it another try now. This particular version of Red Hat Linux 7.2 is the plain vanilla edition (as opposed to the more capable Professional edition and the various server products), and is best suited for use on a workstation or as a LAN server on a small network. On the other hand, since the kernel is the same as that of the more costly versions, you can install this product and add the capabilities you need by installing additional software downloaded from the Internet. The most substantial innovation present in Red Hat Linux 7.2---which is based on the Linux 2.4.7 kernel--is a new file system called ext3. An improvement on the reliable ext2 file system that's long been standard in Linux, ext3 is a journaling file system. A journaling file system keeps notes on what it's doing with data in the file system--it logs all of its read and write operations. This decreases file system downtime because after a crash, error-checking utilities (like fsck, which must run after an unanticipated shutdown) need not inspect the entire file system--they can look just at those regions that were being manipulated at the time of the problem. This saves enormous amounts of time, particularly on large volumes of 50 GB or more.
By design, ext3 is backward and forward compatible. You can take an ext2 volume (a volume used to store accumulated data, say) that was created under an old version of Linux (Red Hat or otherwise), and mount it as an ext3 volume under Red Hat Linux 7.2 and enjoy the protection of journaling. Conversely, you can take a volume that was created as ext3 and remount it with no problems (though also with no journaling) as an ext2 volume. By switching to ext3, you gain a valuable new feature and give up none of the reliability of ext2. It alone is worth the upgrade if you run a large file system or if you require especially high availability and can't tolerate long fsck cycles.
Another substantial improvement reflected in this version: GRUB, an improved boot loader that replaces the old standard, LILO. (Both bits of software follow the Unix tradition of naming utilities with goofy acronyms: LILO is LInux LOader, while GRUB is GRand Unified Bootloader.) GRUB serves the same purpose as utilities like System Commander, which allow you to select at boot time from among several installed operating systems. Unlike LILO, GRUB allows you to choose to boot pretty much any installed operating system, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS/2, and any version of Microsoft Windows. It's a handy utility to have on a workstation, though you can opt for LILO if you prefer.
Other improvements have more to do with increased hardware support--many more network interface cards and printers are recognized--and general refinements in the user interface (this release uses GNOME 1.4 and KDE 2.2.1). A handful of new utilities make life easier for users and administrators, chief among them the Nautilus file manager. Nautilus does a decent job of displaying local and remote files intuitively--it makes it easy to manage the contents of an FTP site, for one thing. Another graphical tool makes it easier to manage user privileges. As has always been the case with Red Hat Linux, version 7.2 ships with a load of goodies that includes the Mozilla 0.9.2 browser, the Apache 1.3.20 Web server, and the StarOffice 5.2 office productivity suite. Anything else you want, you can easily download and install. Software installation is particularly easy thanks to the long-popular Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) file format for distributables, which this operating system naturally supports.
True enough, you can download Red Hat Linux 7.2 in its entirety from Red Hat's corporate site, and if you have a high-speed connection to the Internet the time required for downloading may not be too forbidding (the download--if you get just the two CD-ROM images required to install the operating system with no frills--is about 1.3 GB). But if you buy the boxed product, you get the installation CD-ROMs, the complete source code, a lot of documentation, and a slew of ancillary software. Plus, you get 30 days of online (not telephone) technical support--enough to get you through any installation hassles.
Red Hat Linux 7.2 represents a significant improvement over its predecessors. The ext3 file system improves system reliability, and a lot of minor refinements increase the product's quality of "fit and finish." It's a worthwhile upgrade, and a better way than ever to get into Linux for the first time. --David Wall
