Previous versions of Red Hat left much to be desired, but with each successive release this distribution has gotten better. In my opinion, Red Hat 7.3 is now the best distribution available yet - easy to configure, robust, and full featured.

I installed RH 7.3 on my finicky Inspiron 3800 Laptop. Every other time I have installed Linux (or any other operating system) I had to download drivers for the sound card, for the video card, or other peripherals. Not with Red Hat Linux 7.3. It detected and configured my sound card without any intervention. My PCMCIA ethernet card was also automatically configured.

KDE 3.0 is included, and is robust. A slew of new applications are included, allowing you to FAX, scan, edit, run spreadsheets, produce presentations, and just about anything else you could think of - right "out of the box." I also was pleased to see that KDE displays fonts MUCH better than in previous releases.

The only thing lacking in this version (personal version, but included in the Professional version) is Star Office or Open Office (which will allow you to read and write Word document files).

Highly recommended.

I like Redhat a lot and consider it the strongest and most stable linux distribution aimed at the server market.

However for a more co-hesive interface, userfriendly experience and better MS Windows integration I would probably go with Mandrake Linux.

I have been sing Red hat since ver 7.0. I was really looking forward to the KDE 3.0 desktop. Unfortunately Konqueror and Kmail are both unstable in the 3.0 version. Red hat does not like to support KDE and have not put the KDE 3.0.1 upgrades in the up2date nor have they created the rpm's so people can download them. Almost every other distro supports KDE much better.

Red Hat 8 is out, and it is muuuuch better! If you want phone support you need to buy the professional edition; otherwise, you just get email help - which isn't much help. If you are a newbee Windows type of person I would seriously consider Red Hat Professional. Why spend all evening cussing your computer? The only other Linux edition I would consider is Xandros. I haven't tried it yet, but Xandros is the follow on to the old Corel Second Edition of Linux which was a great piece of work.

If you are standalone then you have nothing to worry about. However, if you are on a network and have UNIX machines, there is a really nasty bug with NFS.

Our RH machines actually brought a switched network to its knees.

RedHat as to form said to get the next release.

Each version of RedHat Linux just keeps getting better. I was able to install this Operating System on my old PC without any hassles. Older versions would always require custom configuration, but not this one.

If you just need to surf the Internet, maybe check email once in a while, and need to perform other basic tasks, like write a letter, do your finances, etc, you can do it with Red Hat Linux 7.3.

Highly Recommended!

Almost as easy as Windows. The installation went flawlessly and it's easy to use. Any problems I experiences had nothing to do with Red Hat, but instead the applications available for download and installation. A lot of applications are written for Linux gurus and don't include those nice things like automatically installing shortcuts on the desktop. But I downloaded Yahoo messenger and it worked just like the Windows version, and it even gave me a desktop icon that worked.

Samba to hook into Windows workstations is still a bit clunky to set up, and I would love to see if version 8 takes it a step farther.

Red Hat 7.3 is great! I've used Red Hat since 7.1 and it always improves from the version before. Imagine that, an operating system which progresses. It has everything you need: wordprocessing, audio/mp3 players, dvd players, Netscape, and AOL instant messenger. Linux is infinitely more reliable than windows and faster. If you still need windows, it's no problem duel booting your machine.

There is no way you can have a PC without Windows XP Professional.