Quick Installation

It can be a little intimidating to see a thick chapter on installation. But the truth is, if you have a little bit of experience with computers and a computer with common hardware, you can probably install Fedora or RHEL pretty easily. The procedure in this section will get you going quickly if you have:

• Media - The Fedora installation DVD or live/install CD that come with this book. (Because the live/install CD only contains enough software to start a network install, you must have an Internet connection to install from that CD.)

• PC - A Pentium-class PC (at least 200 MHz for text mode; 400 MHz Pentium II for GUI) with a built-in, bootable DVD or CD drive, at least 64MB of RAM (for text mode) or 192MB of RAM (for GUI mode; although 256MB is the recommended minimum).

• Disk Space - With no pre-set install types in Fedora Core 6, essentially every installation is a custom installation. Therefore, depending on which packages you choose to install, the disk space you need can range from about 600MB (for a minimal server with no GUI install) to 7GB (to install all packages). I would recommend from 2GB to 3GB minimum if you are installing a desktop system. (The Fedora Project recommends at least 5 percent of additional free space, plus any disk space you require for user data.)

For this quick procedure, you must either be dedicating your entire hard disk to Linux, have a preconfigured Linux partition, or have sufficient free space on your hard disk outside any existing Windows partition.

Caution 

If you are not dedicating your whole hard disk to Fedora and you don't understand partitioning, skip to the following "Detailed Installation Instructions" section in this chapter. That section describes choices for having both Linux and Windows on the same computer.

Here's how you get started:

1. Insert the Fedora (Fedora Core 6) installation DVD or CD #1 into your computer's drive.

2. Reboot your computer.

3. When you see the installation screen (with a boot: prompt at the bottom), do one of the following, depending on your media:

   • For the DVD, press Enter to begin the installation.

   • For the install/live CD, type linux askmethod and press Enter. (Then refer to the "Installing from Other Media" section later in this chapter for information on completing a network install.)

During installation, you are asked questions about your computer hardware and the network connections. After you have completed each answer, click Next. The following list describes the information you will need to enter. (If you need help, all of these topics are explained later in this chapter.)

• Media Check - Optionally check the DVD or CD to be sure it is not damaged or corrupted.

• Language Selection - Choose the language used during the install (you can add other languages later).

• Keyboard Configuration - Choose your keyboard type.

• Install or Upgrade - If you have an earlier version of Fedora installed, you can choose Upgrade to upgrade your system without losing data files. Otherwise, you can continue with a new installation.

• Disk Partitioning Setup - Choose to remove Linux partitions, all partitions, or no partitions (and use existing free space) to have space to install Fedora. Because repartitioning can result in lost data, I recommend that you refer to descriptions on repartitioning your hard disk later in this chapter.

• Boot Loader Configuration - Add the GRUB boot manager to control the boot process. (GRUB is described later in this chapter.) With multiple operating systems on the computer, select which one to boot by default.

• Network Configuration - Set up your LAN connection (not dial-up). You can simply choose to get addresses using DHCP, or you can manually enter your computer's IP address, netmask , hostname, default gateway, and DNS servers. You can also indicate whether to activate your network when Linux boots.

• Time Zone Selection - Identify the time zone in which you are located. Uncheck the System Clock uses UTC box if you are booting multiple operating systems from this machine, since most operating systems expect the BIOS clock to match local time.

• Set Root Password - Add the root user account password.

• Choose Software - Choose from several preset installation classes, such as Office and Productivity (for laptop, home, or desktop use), Software Development (desktop plus software development), or Web Server (file, print, Web, and other server software). I suggest you also select Customize now so that you can see exactly which packages you have selected (and add others if you want to).

• Installation Categories - Select each category that appears to see which groups of software packages are installed. Then select the Optional packages button to add or subtract packages from each group .

• About to Install - To this point, you can quit the install process without having written anything to disk. When you select Next, the disk is formatted (as you chose) and selected packages are installed.

Note 

After answering the questions, the actual installation of packages takes between 20 and 60 minutes, depending on the number of packages and the speed of the computer hardware. For a network install, the time can be much longer for a slow Internet connection.

When installation is done, remove the Fedora DVD or CD and click Exit to reboot your computer. Linux should boot by default. After Linux boots for the first time, the Fedora Setup Agent runs to let you read the license agreement, set system date and time, configure your display, add a user account, configure your sound card, and install additional CDs. On subsequent reboots, you will see a login prompt. You can log in and begin using your Linux system.

If you need more information than this procedure provides, go to the detailed installation instructions just ahead.