Fedora Linux

[mutahir]

Hello All,

Any suggestions on installing Fedora Linux? is it good, i have downloaded it and its on cd's.

is it possible to dual boot it with xp?

any neccessary tips or suggestions, thanks

Regards

Mutahir

[prathapml]

It is good enough to be used by someone who knows to use it. If it was having crippling problems, it would never make it out of the doors of a Commercial linux distro maker.

It's easy enough to install, just boot from CD1. It's possible to dual-boot it with winxp, just do the below steps:

1. Choose to make an independant primary partition (within the first 8.4 GB of your HD - in order to have it bootable) of approx. 512 MB.

2. Set that partition's mount point as "/boot".

3. Do the rest of the partitioning as you like.

4. At the 'boot-loader configuration' screen, tell it to install GRUB on your /boot partition (and *NOT* on your MBR - bcos a windows reinstall would overwrite the MBR).

5. Complete the installation, then use any partitioning tool (or the Fedora's CD1 'rescue' environment itself) to set active the primary partition that corresponds to your "/boot".

It's not really any more difficult to setup than XP - if only you had setup XP from scratch, you'd know that. Factor in the point that Linux is basically meant to be used in server environments, and its ease-of-use is simply unbeatable (we're not gonna talk about mid-range windows server 2k/2k3 here, 'coz linux/unix operate at far superior situations of complexity).

Asking if Fedora is good is naughty, because it can lead to flaming between fanboys - so let's leave it with the statement that each Linux Distribution is targeted for specific usage purposes - you can experiment and see which suits you/which you like. Nor do we want a Windows-Versus-Linux debate here.

One suggestion I could possibly make with an unbiased mind:

Use Fedora Core 2 if you could - the older (Core 1) version is known to be a bit bloated/flaky as compared to idealistic requirements. Also, Core 1 is not very different from RHL9 (its predecessor) - so why bother with older ones when a stable/well-featured version is present? Core 2 is freely downloadable as well : home.

[jayroller]

Be careful with Fedora Core 2 - under certain circumstances, the installer (Anaconda) makes changes to the hard drive geometry which can lead to Windows XP - in a dual boot, same drive scenario - NOT BOOTING. No data is lost, but it can be rather arsey to sort out.

Have a look at this at redhat.com, and this at oreillynet.com, before diving straight in.

If you pass the HDD parameters to the installer then Anaconda won't make any changes, so you should be ok, but IMHO I'd go for FC1 - stable, dual boots nicely, and a good all round linux desktop.

[prathapml]

Be careful with Fedora Core 2 - under certain circumstances, the installer (Anaconda) makes changes to the hard drive ..............

As a matter of fact, the same problem exists in FC1 as well - FC2 is less problematic on the whole, including the anaconda installer.

[newdles]

Actually, data can be lossed really quick. It doesn't "lose" it but it does make it unavaillable without some fixes.

Go here - http://pcpitstop.ibforums.com/index.php?showforum=7

Read the two pinned topics related to the issue. It will explain what to do and the fix if you fail to read the warning.