Well, I have to say I’ve never been a fan of Red Hat linux, but their new version 8 (V8) seems to finally be what the “Linux People” have been claiming about earlier distros for years—an easy to install operating system that works as advertised.

Earlier this week I installed RHLV8 on an old Dell (PentiumIII 450/256MB RAM), and it was nothing more than shoving CDs into the drive, selecting packages, and rebooting. I was duly impressed. Even more important, the application I wish to use, Radiance, compiled on the first try, with no modifications to the makefile required. Now, that is even more impressive than the easy OS install.

I have an extremely poor track record for getting Linux up and running and getting Radiance to compile, but I am slowly moving toward using Radiance in a production capacity at my job, so it’s time to get over that learning curve. My PowerBook, and particularly OSX have been instrumental in getting a working Radiance system together for my learning pleasure. But I can’t exactly leave my laptop running all night to do lighting simulations, and besides I can buy a lot more CPU cycles for my dollar with an Athlon box to chew on these Radiance calculations. So it was time to finally get a Linux box up and running.

In the past, I had tried RHL but had problems compiling Radiance. My friend Georg Mischler suggested I try SuSE Linux, which was a good deal easier to install, but soon after I got that distro up and running a fire in my apartment building destroyed that computer. A couple of years went by, and OSX came out, and well the rest is history. I always knew I’d have to return to Linux; for some reason I picked up Red Hat’s new distro, on a whim. Again, I can’t believe how easy it was to install, and I’m thrilled that Radiance compiled without a hitch.

It remains to be seen if my experience will be as pleasant on newer hardware, but I hope to find that out soon enough.