Previewing RHEL 7: testing the beta!

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If there is one single thing that should serve as the take-away from the RHEL7 beta testing, it is this – “Everyone needs to re-learn some things”!

Here are some screenshots that illustrate the point:

1. The installer screen looks sparse and not graphical at all.

RHEL 7 Beta installer first screen

RHEL 7 Beta installer first screen

2. Even the media check is now in a console-style appearance (not curses/n-curses appearance)

RHEL 7 Beta installer media check

RHEL 7 Beta installer media check

3. Language selection may be confusing for some. Select with mouse or type the language you need. No testing, though.

RHEL7 Beta installer language selection

RHEL7 Beta installer language selection

4. This is Beta software. Red Hat would like you to resist the urge to deploy it in production use. Fair warning.

RHEL7 Beta installer warning

RHEL7 Beta installer warning

5. We now have a summary style. Individual items may be re-visited.

RHEL7 Beta installer summary screen

RHEL7 Beta installer summary screen

6. Some tasks are run in parallel to installation. Remember Ubuntu, anyone?

RHEL7 Beta installer parallel tasks

RHEL7 Beta installer parallel tasks

7. First boot screen – we are now in kernel 3.x. Finally!

RHEL7 Beta boot

RHEL7 Beta boot

8. Login screen. same old same old

RHEL7 Beta login

RHEL7 Beta login

9. Notice that init got replaced with systemd? This one feature will make most system administrators go back to the class room to understand how they can leverage the Systemd utilities to create their custom scripts/run-level links.

RHEL7 Beta new init

RHEL7 Beta new init

CURIOUS to know the changes in RHEL7? Why not read the release notes?

Here are some of the interesting ones:

  • GRUB 2
  • The default file system for an Anaconda-based installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 Beta is now XFS, which replaces the Fourth Extended Filesystem (ext4) used by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The ext4 and Btrfs (B-Tree) file systems can be used as alternatives to XFS
  • The nmcli tool is introduced to allow users and scripts to interact with NetworkManager
  • Networking Teaming has been introduced as an alternative to bonding for link aggregation. It is designed to be easy to maintain, debug and extended. For the user it offers performance and flexibility improvements and should be evaluated for all new installations
  • Journal (versatile logging functionality)
  • GNOME 3
  • KDE 4.10
  • MariaDB 5.5