Summary

This chapter looked at the various steps for installing the Fedora 2 operating system.

We began by noting that the installation process requires various pieces of background information about the hardware and network configuration of the computer, and we compiled two checklists of information. The Fedora 2 installation is easier if you prepare these checklists before you start the installation.

After choosing the native language of the installation, the first important choice you make in the installation itself is the installation type. We chose the Personal Desktop installation type for this chapter, although there are four installation types offered by the installation process.

The installation continues with configuration of the keyboard and mouse and searches for existing installations, offering you the opportunity to upgrade an existing installation if it finds one. The next choice relates to disk partitioningthe organization of your hard disk into logical partitions. If you feel comfortable with this, you can configure your own partitions; otherwise , you can allow the installation process to do it for you (as this chapter demonstrated).

After choosing the default boot loaderthe software that is used to boot the operating systemwe moved on to network configuration options. In single machine situations, its enough to use the default network configuration, but in situations where you plan to connect to a local area network (LAN) it helps to know whether to choose the default setup (which configures the machine to use a DHCP server), or insert specific static details of the IP address, subnet mask, and so on. Of course, you dont have to get these right the first timeif youre not sure or if you get them wrong, you can reconfigure them using the dialog boxes any time after the installation is complete.

The next decision relates to the firewall options available for the desktopagain, we decided to go ahead with the default standard firewall for this installation. After setting the time zone, selecting a password for the root user , and adding any additional software you choose to add at this stage, the process of collecting information is complete and the installation can proceed.

After the software installation, we did the sensible thing by creating a boot disk (just in case we have problems with the boot loader). Finally, we set up the X-server to give us the desktops GUI, and reboot the machine, and this completed the initial installation of the Red Hat operating system.

On the first boot of the new installation, Red Hat asks you to create a non-administrative user account, check the date and the time on the computer, and ( optionally ) register with the Red Hat Update agent; and it gives you yet another chance to install software and documentation. When this is complete, you can log on to the machine and begin your work.

The next chapter looks at how to use the freshly installed desktop. It covers important concepts such as the file hierarchy and devices, which will help you to work effectively in Linux. It looks at various components of the desktop and how to customize them, and explains how to check the hardware configuration of the machine and how to manage and control processes in the system.