Linux - Fedora Core 4/5 Install Guide.

Which Distribution?

My laptop ( an Acer Travelmate 800 ) came with Windows XP Professional installed but I decided to give Linux a try while keeping my Windows on the same computer. This is what is called a dual boot setup, you can basically choose which operating system to start when booting the computer.

There are quite a few Linux distributions available so choosing the one for you can be a bit difficult. A good first place to look is Distrowatch which is basically a site with reviews and news of literally hundreds of different Linux distributions.

I tried Mandriva 10.0 ( formally called Mandrake ) first off but the install didn't go that smoothly which put me off for a while and I also tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu installed really easily as there are very few choices to make during the install process, normally distributions ask which software you want to install which can be a bit confusing to someone completely new to Linux, of course the downside here is that you have no control over the what gets installed. But I would strongly recommend Ubuntu as a first distribution due to it's ease of setup and good hardware recognition.

I finally settled on installing Fedora Core, the latest release of which is Fedora core 5. This is a spin off from Red Hat linux and has a new release every 6 months or so, it's also the testing ground for things that end up in the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As a result it has much more cutting edge features but possibly less than rock solid stability. It's hard to say why I chose Fedora but it just felt better and everything worked perfectly from the start.

In my experience it has been completely reliable and for most home users like myself it will work perfectly. At the end of the day choosing a distribution is a matter of personal choice as the software included will probably be quite similar and you can very easily add more software at a later date using the update systems included with Linux. How the distribution feels to you is probably the best guide and so it's a good idea to try a few first before deciding which one to use, it is free after all so there's no reason not to.

Getting Linux

The easiest way to get hold of Linux is to download the various distribution off the internet. In the case of Fedora Core 4 you will need to download 4 cd's (5 for FC5) or 1 dvd, these downloads are called disk images and they have a .iso file extension. The files can be downloaded from the Fedora download directory, you will probably need the 5 files with names like FC5-i386-disc1.iso, these are for most users with Intel processors.

Note that there are many mirror sites available if you find the Red Hat servers to be slow. Also be aware that each iso file is 688 Mb download so over a slow internet connection this will take a very long time. After downloading and saving these files to your hard disk you need to check the integrity of these files, we don't want to try and install corrupted disks.

To do this we need to calculate something called the SHA1SUM and compare this value to the ones found here from the Fedora download site. To check the SHA1SUM on Windows just follow the directions on this site. After checking the disks you need to burn them onto cd's, make sure you burn them as ISO images otherwise they will not work.

Before Installing - Making Space

The first choice when installing is to decide whether you want to have a dual boot set up or just use Linux. For most people a dual boot is the best way to go unless you are sure you won't need Windows at all. This requires making space on your hard disk for Linux, if you already have an empty partition ( for example in Windows you have a C:\ drive and also a D:\ drive that is empty, or can be made empty ) you can just install Linux there. If not then you will need to make space for the installation.

The easiest way of doing this in my opinion is to download Knoppix Linux and burn this disk image to a cd. This is a live distribution meaning that you boot from the CD and it runs from memory not installing anything onto your hard drive. After getting Knoppix running simply start the program qtparted ( from a terminal type qtparted & or look for the entry in the system menu ) to see a graphical representation of your hard disk. From here it's quite simple to click on the desired partition and right click to resize, this will work on both NTFS and FAT32 partitions.

Note that until you click on the commit button in the menu your changes will not be commited to disk, so if you make a mistake you can just start again and no harm will be done.

I would also recommend creating a new FAT32 partition to share data between Windows and Linux, this is a good idea because although Linux can easily read data from an NTFS partition, writing to one is not recommended as the write support is very experimental, also Windows cannot read Linux filesystems at all. For this reason you should created a FAT32 partition where you can put shared data that can be read and written to by both Windows and Linux. This is also very useful if you want to share a Mozilla Firefox or Thundrbird profile between Windows and Linux, this way your bookmarks, saved passwords and mail files can be easily shared.

The size of each partition is pretty much up to you but I would allow a minumim of 5 Gb for Linux. I started out with a 5 Gb Linux partition but very soon started using Linux all the time and so had to extend the partition so my current 37 Gb disk looks like this.

  1. 12 Gb NTFS Windows partition
  2. 5 Gb FAT32 shared partition
  3. 18.5 Gb ext3 Linux partition

Installing Fedora Core

There are many good guides on the internet for installing Fedora Core 5 so I'll not go over the same information when others have done it better. The Official Fedora Project install guide is a long but very thorough guide and should be read before starting any install.

You could also take a look at Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes or Installing Fedora Core - Part I for thorough descriptions of installing Fedora Core 5 as well as post install steps.

If you just want to see the installer screens (these are Fedora Core 4 but the install for FC 5 is almost the same) you can see the main Anaconda installer screens here.

Below is a very brief summary of the steps involved:

After making space we you are ready to install Fedora, simply boot your computer from the first cd and the Fedora Anaconda installer will start up. This is a graphical installer and I think it's pretty easy to use, just select your language and keyboard preferences to begin with.

At the stage when you are asked where to install Linux just use the "Use free space on disk" option, this will leave Windows alone and just install on the empty space you created in the previous step. You can leave the bootloader option as is unless you want to edit the label for the Windows option or change the default, this way Linux will recognize the Windows partition and on boot you will have the option of booting into either OS.

Deciding which software to set up is a matter of personal choice, on my first installation I chose Workstation, but it's so easy to install new software afterwards that it doesn't make too much difference in my opinion. I personally prefer to have a more minimal set up and install what I need later, this way you won't have loads of unnecessary services starting that you may never use, it's also easier to start what you need then to try and find what you don't need and stop those services.

It's important to note that up until this point nothing has been installed on your computer, if you press crtl+alt+del the install will abort and your computer restart with no harm done. For this reason if you just want to go through the motions to check that you understand the process without doing any harm then you can just try these steps as often as required.

If you continue past this stage the installer will format your hard drive and install Fedora on your system, it took me about 40 minutes but you don't need to be infront of the computer all the time as when you need to change disks it will eject the cd tray and make a loud beep to inform you to install the next disk.

Post Install Checks

After the installation ends you should remove the cd from the computer and let the system reboot. At this point you can change your bios settings to make the computer boot from the hard disk instead of the cd. For the first boot I would check that Windows is still OK, when presented with the GRUB bootloader screen just press any key and from the next screen use the keyboard to select your Windows installation and press enter. On first boot Windows will carry out a disk check if you resized your Windows partition, if all goes well all should work just like before.

Reboot the computer again but this time let the computer boot into Fedora ( if you selected Fedora as the default boot target then after a 5 second delay this will happen automatically ) and you will be presented with the first boot screens. These screen enable you to agree to the license agreement, set the display resolution, set the date and time information, set up your sound card and to add a normal user to your system so you don't have to log in as root. The screens are explained in detail on the Redhat Fedora site here.

After these steps you will be presented with the default gnome desktop and you new Fedora Core 5 system is ready to go.