Hello again,

Now I'm trying to install fedora 12 live cd or fedora 12 dvd from windows xp onto a second disk that windows sees from the OS. I was wondering why doesnt fedora have an installer like windows or if there is such a thing? I tried to boot the live cd from startup with only the cd-rom as the boot option and no luck, so I figured the windows install would make my life easier.

Of course there is. I don't know how the Fedora live CDs work, but if you download the regular install DVD, you just boot from it and you get a nice graphical installer. With a live CD you probably get an icon on the desktop that says "Install to hard drive" or something along those lines. Most distributions of Linux, including Fedora, aren't meant to be installed from within Windows.

Maybe you didn't burn the CD properly? You have to burn the ISO image that you downloaded, not a normal CD with one file (the iso image) in the file system. If you look at the contents of the CD while you're in Windows, what do you see?

Nope, used Nero and burned an image, also checked the sha256 checksum used Hashcalc. I was wondering if there was a utility outside of linux that does the install, not linux itself.

Of course I did not expect the dvd or cd to load up in windows although I'm surprised the boot disk didn't work. I dunno.

EDIT: The live cd did boot on my laptop but as soon as I tried any of the 4 options, my computer froze. fuck the live cd.

Well, as I said, I have no experience with live CDs, only normal installation CDs/DVDs. On my laptop (HP ProBook) Fedora 12 installed OK, but then Grub (the boot loader) didn't work. Apparently there are problems with the new version of Grub and some computers. On my main desktop PC I had no problems upgrading from Fedora 11 (using the same DVD) other than a few broken things which were fixed with the first updates. So if you're just experimenting with Linux to see what it looks like, perhaps consider a different distro?

There a free CD burning apps for windows.

http://cdburnerxp.se/

You better get a normal install CD. Live CDs have sometimes problems with detecting the correct settings. But that your CD is booting into windows is strange. This sounds like a problem with this fuckin nero or your bios settings, not with the iso image.

It's not nero's fault, I can assure you that. If you burn an iso in Nero, it just burns the iso. I blame Linus, he's a douchebag.

I'm gonna try using a crossover cable to install debian (net install) on my local machine which has a HDD but no direct internet. Then I'll download the rest of debian on my laptop(with a network wifi).

Are you sure you're using the right architecture?^[1]

shit!

edit: oh no, I checked, I was using the i686 live cd. I have an AMD 64 clawhammer.

Do you have more then 4 gigs of RAM? If not, you can use 686.

You still can, but the system will only see what is addressable in 32-bit address space, which is somewhere around 4GB. That's not even necessarily correct though because PAE, which Linux apparently fully supports, allows up to 36-bits (64GB) on supported processors. The memory isn't as addressable as it would be in a larger address space (they need to do magic to allocate it with the still limited address size), but the system can still make use of some of it. I've never knowingly used PAE, however, and I don't know whether popular distros ship kernels with built in support by default or not.

Debian will make you install a -bigmem kernel to get > 3G ram. actually installing 64G ram in an ia32 system is stupid. The performance is rather abysmal. Basically all of the "LOWMEM" (fast stuff) is filled with page tables for the rest of the memory, so all memory accesses have to go through a large triple (or more) indirect page table. I think the most you want to put in an ia32 system is 16G, if not 8G. After that you start to get serious performance issues.

Linux is the "karma" of OS's. Not only does it take good fortune to run and operate, but it returns the favor to the end user when it doesn't operate and forces them to buy windows 7.

I warn those who use the latest debian kernel: ipv6 is now activated by default, and isn't running as a module anymore.

It lead to some dns problems (just disable ipv6 in firefox) and in any java applet trying to connect throught the network (it's trying to use ipv6 with my ipv4 address, like 22:23:24:25:0:...)

To bypass that when calling a java program, use this:

java -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true myjava.jar

Out of all my use of linux, none of it has come down to luck or fortune, but understanding how the operating system works and actually reading documentation. Something that casual users don't want to do, they just want to click and have things happen.

For the most part, Linux just works for me most of the time. Usually better than Windows. When it doesn't, it's usually a matter of either using unstable software or not reading the documentation and not understanding how it works. If I have time to go through the documentation and make sense of it, I can usually get things working. For things that are more complicated and would require too much time to build an understanding of at the time, I'll just ask Google for half an hour and then give up and move on. It's no different from Windows in that respect. The difference is that the openness of a FOSS platform means that it's usually much easier to find help on a particular problem compared to a proprietary platform where everybody thinks their experience and knowledge is worth a fee.

echo 'alias java="java -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true"' >> ~/.bashrc

Blah blah blah garbage. See, thiy is why Linux can never best Windows. Users should not have to Google anything. They should not have to spend even one minute to get anything to work. It shoud just work (tm).

If it doesn't, the OS has failed. Now, this isnt bad for Linux distributions since they never hope to take a large share of the market...

You know, people do need to Google stuff with Windows as well. The common Joe may not even be able to find the answer, unless he pays.

I don't need to Google for how to get suspend/hibernate to work, and then spend more time trying to hack it into working, unloading USB drivers, etc. Granted that was a year and a half ago, so it may work now. I know Ubuntu Netbook Remix just worked in that regard on my netbook, but then again, its hardware that Dell gives the option of buying with Linux anyway.

There are tree problems with Linux.

1. Drivers.
2. Law.
3. Unstable Software in stable releases.

There's not much anyone can do about the first two as long as there's only a small group of users and the law doesn't change.

But the third one really sucks. If I download a stable release I want a stable release. Things like this give newbies the impression that Linux is an unstable system. This is really bad. Especially if everyone is talking about Linux as a stable system.

That's why I suggest debian stable. Even if it's a bit outdated.

Law?

things like

libdvdcss and
lame

Maybe it's not the same in all countries. But for me the legal status isn't clear. So they aren't shiped with the distributions and I maybe do something illegal when downloading them. But they are important.

I got the fedora 12 live cd to work, it turns out that after a 10 second countdown, the boot process takes like 5 minutes. Now I cant seem to figure out how to partition my external hard drive and configure my wireless network card. Its not an embedded mobo card.

Are you familiar with Linux device files and their naming conventions? What specifically are you getting that you don't understand?

I don't expect to be able to help much with your wireless connection, but if you can be more specific about your problems it would at least give it context. You might want to try searching for related guides. Whenever installing a distribution for the first time, be sure to read the intallation guides on the distribution's Web site. I assume you're attempting a network install with wireless. See if you can find a guide on network installs that supports wireless. I'm not even sure it would be supported (though I don't see why not). If you have one, a wired connection would probably be a lot easier to use, at least until you get up and running.

Well, basically, I tried to install the live disk to my external drive and the error said that it "did not find sufficient space to install". Its NTFS and has nothing on it. I also tried to partition the drive but I'm worried that I might run across my main drive because the options menu for it pulled up both my internal and external drive. What format should I use for fedora. I also want to encrypt my files system.

You need to format it to ext2/3/4. There are some other formats. But ext is the most common.

I'm not sure about the fedora installer. But normaly he will ask you to reduce the size of the ntfs partion and create a new one.

I've had better experience with things Just Working on my laptop with Ubuntu than with Windows. (Mostly why I'm on Ubuntu most of the time.)
** examples from my experience, not mandatory reading **
When I install Ubuntu the computer is fully functional after the installation (with the exception of restricted drivers, which it will automatically scan for and let you know of as soon as it boots for the first time.
When I install Windows I get crappy default drivers and parts of my hardware don't work (it was actually easier to get wifi working on Ubuntu than Vista!).
On Ubuntu installation is Find package in synaptic package manager -> mark for installation -> hit apply -> works!
On Windows installation is Browse google for download -> navigate internet and download -> run installation -> next,next,next,change default settings,next,next,next,next -> maybe it works... but there might be that missing DLL or maybe I don't have the correct version of DirectX installed, or I just might need some version of the .NET framework.
This is especially true for programming related stuff. I couldn't get Allegro 4.9 to work on Windows because it was hell trying to satisfy all the dependencies and getting everything to work. On Ubuntu I just installed everything in the readme with a simple installation of libXYZ-dev, ran CMake (which was also just a simple installation) and voila! (well, make and sudo make install too).

There's a pretty long list of supported formats. ext3 has been the one that I've used most often, but ext4 is supposed to be way better in every way. I'm not sure if ext4 is stable yet, but it seems some distros are shipping it as the default so I say go for it.

When I was trying to decide on a format for my laptop I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4#Delayed_allocation_and_potential_data_loss and thought I should probably stick to ext3. (Pretty sure that wasn't that great of a decision)
Otherwise, check out the features there, it looks pretty sweet.

Well, I successfully installed fedora on my external, now I'm having trouble with the ndiswrapper. For all of you who want to know, fedora live does NOT come with the kernel software needed to invoke make so I can make the ndiswrapper and then install the .inf driver file...

Kernel software? Make isn't kernel software... You could try (as root):

yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' 'Development Libraries'

I got that from here because I'm not sure which package(s) make is in (and even if there is a make package, installing just make would probably be insufficient for your needs). If that doesn't work, you may need to do some more searching to find the right package, but that seems pretty promising.

Also, I wouldn't bother building ndiswrapper myself unless absolutely necessary. Have you tried the software repositories (it seems to me it should be in them)?

If you don't know, that's what yum is for. You can access a GUI wrapper at something like System > Administration > Add/Remove Software (in GNOME) if you prefer GUIs.

Windows 7 fully Just Worked on any machine I've put it on so far. They finally figured out how to make Windows Update work for drivers. On first boot, about all I had was an ethernet driver, then it hopped on and got the rest of my drivers automatically, nVidia drivers and everything.

speak of which, they're like us when they help people.