Chapter 2: Installing Fedora

Overview

In This Chapter

• Quick installation

• Detailed installation instructions

• Special installation procedures

• Special installation topics

• Troubleshooting installation

A simplified installation procedure is one of the best reasons for using a Linux distribution such as Fedora Core or RHEL. In many cases, for a computer dedicated to using Fedora, you can just pop in the DVD or CD (that come with this book), choose from several preset configurations, and be up and running with Linux in less than an hour .

If you want to share your computer with both Linux and Microsoft Windows, Fedora offers several ways to go about doing that. A live CD, based on Fedora, is included on a CD with this book, and will help prepare your computer before installation. If your computer doesn't have a DVD or CD drive, network and hard disk installs are available. To preconfigure Fedora to install on multiple, similar computers, you can use the kickstart installation.

In the past few releases of Fedora Core, the project has made some great improvements to the installation process. Most notably, a new feature in anaconda (the Fedora installer) lets you install software from multiple online repositories during the initial Fedora install. Although this procedure focuses on installing Fedora Core on a standard PC (i386 32-bit architecture), the Fedora Project also produces installable versions of Fedora for PowerPC (ppc) and 64-bit PC architecture (x68_64). Because the latest Apple Mac computers are based on Intel architecture, Fedora can be installed on those machines as well (see Chapter 26 for information on installing Fedora on a Mac Mini).

Note 

This chapter follows the install procedure for Fedora Core 6, which comes with this book. Because there have been several Fedora releases since the release of RHEL, there are some significant differences between a Fedora and an RHEL 4 install. See the sidebar "Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux" for information on the differences between Fedora 6 and RHEL 4 installs.