Redhat 6.2 Coming Soon

Although absent from the main Redhat FTP, Linux Redhat 6.2 files are beginning to surface on mirror FTP sites, and should be available for download within the next few hours. The first 6.2 betas have been known to have many bugs, but Redhat claims most of these have been fixed.

Redhat is one of the few Linux distributions to release a public beta test before releasing the final product. The new version will feature USB suport, as well as multi-monitor desktop capabilities.

The new version, suprisingly, will not include XFree86 4.0. According to a Redhat developer, it doesn't compile at all on sparc, doesn't have all the drivers 3.3.x used to have, doesn't have a working configuration tool yet (besides XFree86), and other bugs prevent the release from being adequately stable. It is, however, available for experimental purposes.

Some new features in the latest version include:

• USB support
  

• Networking packages (telnet, ftp, etc.) split up in client and server packages
  

• Kerberos authentication things, gnupg and Netscape 128-bit included (now that the export restrictions are gone...)
  

• Software RAID optimized for Pentium III (optional)
  

• sysctl program that takes care of /proc/sys settings
  

• More secure default installation (fewer running daemons)
  

• Compressed MAN pages
  

• New xinitrc layout (xinitrc.d) for better maintainability
  

• New font installations are recognized automatically
  

• ISDN support
  

• Autodetects and supports up to 4 GB RAM
  

• Beowulf added, piranha extended
  

• vim preconfigured to support syntax highlighting and other features
  

• Colorized ls used by default
  

• Termcaps fixed up to be more consistent
  

• New packages: Mesa, sawmill, anacron, docbook, joystick, rpmlint, stylesheets
  

• Better internationalization support (16-bit display support; Netscape now displays French, Spanish, German and Japanese)
  

• Updated base packages to latest versions (excluding unstable versions)
  

• More than 100 new packages in powertools; among others abiword, SDL, glxMesa, nasm, postfix, powertweak

For more information, visit Redhat or download it from SourceForge now.