After testing out Mandrake, I decided to give Red Hat Linux 8.0 a spin.

Red Hat Linux is, from what I have observed, the more popular of the Linux distributions. It seems to be geared more towards being a server OS although it makes a decent desktop OS as well.

Recently there had been quite a bit of talk about the changes Red Hat made to their desktop. Mostly, from what I could tell,  it was about how they slightly modified their GNOME (default) and the optional KDE desktops to look and behave more alike. (These screen shots cover only the default GNOME desktop). For the most part these seem to be minor things like using the Red Hat logo for the "start" button and rearranging the program menu.

For these screen shots I performed a clean install selecting all of the defaults.

The file manager used by this desktop is an application called Nautilus. By default it browses in a single window and can display icons as either regular icons or as a list.

The panel at the bottom of the screen has common application icons, a window list, and a clock on the desktop panel, as well as a workspace switcher for selecting which virtual desktop you want to work in. Like most other desktops these days it also has a "start" menu.

Disappointingly unlike KDE there is no visual indicator when a program is loading.

Red Hat's menu seems to organize the items to give easier access to advanced configuration and administrative utilities.

The Red Hat window management is fairly typical and also includes a window shade feature.

Items can be placed on the desktop, however the desktop right-click context menu does not include options to create objects other than folders.

An annoying thing I noticed is that while CDs appear right on the desktop there is no immediately obvious way to access the floppy disk drive (Standard PC disk drive). To access the floppy I had to insert the disk then right-click on the desktop, select disks, and then select floppy. This placed the floppy icon on the desktop however it failed to check to see if I had removed the disk or inserted a new one. To recognize a new disk I had to right click and "eject" the disk it thought it had, then go through the steps of re-adding the disk again.

The GNOME desktop is theamable, although only a few themes are included. Buttons and other widgets or controls can be given different appearances while continuing to work the same. Open Office draws its own widgets giving them their own appearance and feel. Mozilla also draws its own widgets rather than use native ones but it does respect the theme at least in appearance.

This shows the typical Save As box. Also shown is an application with the funny name of "Mr. Project" (Obviously a spoof of MS Project)

While using Red Hat Linux, I noticed a big flashing exclamation point on the panel, this is the Red Hat network alert notification tool that checks for system updates. I hate to say it but It looks like this tool needs to update itself as the instructions telling you what button to click do not match the actual button names.

Here are a number of advanced configuration utilities you will find on the panel menu.

Red Hat by default installs Open Office 1.0 and places icons for it on the GNOME panel.

It also includes Mozilla, the best web browser on the planet, and Ximian Evolution, an Outlook-like e-mail program.

Red Hat seems to include many more screen savers by default than Mandrake did.

Finally, I found this rather interesting. This add/remove program greatly simplifies loading and removing the packages included with Red Hat Linux.