Red Hat 8.0 Released

Red Hat recently released version 8.0. We have tested this version of Red Hat and suggest that our readers avoid it for several reasons, but the most important reason is the fact that Red Hat x.0 releases are historically buggy and difficult to work with.

This is true with version 8.0. We have installed it and found several problems with the world of LAMP including:

• the version of CGI.pm released in 8.0 is not compatible with the version of mod_perl used
• in the mod_perl chapter, we install Apache::Request - doing this in Red Hat 8.0 is non-trivial
• installing Embperl is non-trivial since there are several modules that are missing from Red Hat 8.0
• installing HTML::Mason is non-trivial since there are several modules that are missing from Red Hat 8.0

As a result, we suggest to our readers that they stick with Red Hat version 7.3 and patiently wait for version 8.1. Red Hat versions x.1 are historically more solid than versions x.0. You might be able to purchase version 7.3 from Red Hat (1.888.REDHAT1) or you can download it from the Red Hat ftp server or from one of Red Hat's mirror sites.

Some of us hard-core Linux geeks may really want to use verison 8.0. If so, look here to see how we made it all work. This is not for the newbie!