Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal breaks with earlier Red Hat (and all other) Linux releases with the unification of the Gnome and KDE desktops. In effect, Red Hat has made the two almost indistinguishable in a production environment. This unification is achieved by creating a theme--an add-on look and feel--called Bluecurve, which uses identical icons and other eye candy for similar features in each, and creates similar Gnome and KDE menus. These menus now sport a limited range of well-chosen programs with simple descriptions of what the program does. This is a change from the earlier approach, where users were offered all the browsers (now you just get Mozilla), six text editors, and so on, all with nondescriptive names to confuse new users.
Much of this effort can be bypassed by most new users, as the default is now to install only Gnome 2, but then, Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal is really aimed at businesses looking for a low-cost, reliable production desktop to replace Windows.
Which brings us to OpenOffice.org, the public domain version of StarOffice 5.2, released by Sun and heavily reworked into a fairly decent replacement for Microsoft Office--though currently without an integrated database. OpenOffice.org ditches the old StarOffice desktop (as Sun has done with the commercial StarOffice 6.0), loses some copyrighted modules, and gains open-source replacements. It's on the menu under Office and you can run the components separately.
On the downside, multimedia support for home users is weak, with MP3 support missing (there's a link to the XMMS add-in for it, though), as is any way to burn a CD. Oddly, Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal doesn't include Real's RealOne Player either, which you'll have to download and install yourself if you want it. Again, this might be a deliberate pitch for business acceptance.
Hardware detection is better than ever and networking and Internet setup are as easy as filling in a few dialog boxes. Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal even installs security in the form of a network firewall for Net users. It also handles dual booting with Windows for those who just want to dabble.
Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal comes on three installation CDs, with two source CDs, a documentation CD, and a multimedia and office applications CD. The paper documentation is limited to an installation guide.
Overall, and despite the caveats, this is the most innovative and easiest to understand Linux distribution to appear yet. You really can install it and be using it to write documents, listen to CDs, watch TV or video, and use the Net within minutes of finishing the installation. Impressive, and a great introduction to Linux for new users. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.uk
