The Fedora 7 Year Itch

Michael J. Jordan, Linux Online Staff

June 15, 2007

I have been using Fedora (formerly known as Fedora Core) since the first version came out. Following a bad experience with Fedora Core 2, I stuck to the odd numbered versions - invoking the Star Trek movie rule in reverse. I had been running Fedora Core 5 on my main workstation since March of 2006 and I was eager to get the upcoming Fedora 7 (they had now dropped the Core part of the name) up and running. For most Linux enthusiasts, a year is a long time to go without an update. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, the removal of the Core from Fedora resulted in some delays. Fedora 7's release was pushed to the end of May. I had originally intended to wait, but along came Ubuntu Studio, about which I was curious, so I decided to install that instead of the new Fedora. My experience, overall, was good and I have kept it running and I am happy with it. I was still curious about the new Fedora as well, so when it was finally released on May 31, I downloaded the Live-CD-with-KDE version, burned the CD and put it in my 'to-do' basket. I have another machine which is very similar to my own workstation - a three-year-old Pentium IV with 526MB of RAM with an ATI Rage with on board Ethernet and sound. In other words, it's a very common machine that might be found in any home. This past weekend, I decided to install Fedora 7 on it and give it a whirl. Here are some of my observations.

First of all, compared with conditions in 1998, when I first started with Linux, installing any mainstream distribution (and some of the non-mainstream ones as well) is a relatively easy process if you're dealing with fairly common hardware. If you've got bleeding edge or exotic gadgets, then you may run into problems. Some tech pundits point to this as one of the barriers that Linux must break through. I challenge these pundits to install Windows Vista on a machine with new hardware (or with any hardware, for that matter) and then write about their experience. At any rate, here are the steps I had to go through to get Fedora 7 up and running:

Install Process

In my case, I downloaded the Live-CD version that features the KDE as the desktop GUI. I put the CD in the drive and booted up the computer and I was asked to choose among three choices. One of them was to check the CD for errors and then boot. I chose that and after the CD checked out, Fedora booted and was greeted with this sight:

You have full working operating system without installing anything. So if you're still unsure if you want Linux inhabiting your hard drive, then you can give it a try like this. Fedora is, incidentally, one of the last major distributions to offer the Live-CD method. It's standard now on most others. Now, if you do want Linux on your hard drive, either sharing it with Windows or alone (preferably), then all you need to do is click on the 'Install to Hard Drive' icon with the big letter F. After clicking on that icon, you'll first be asked to select your keyboard layout.

Next comes the step that some say separates the 'I think I'll stay with Windows' people from those who want to embark upon their adventure with Linux: partitioning. If you want to keep Windows (as opposed to 'staying' with it) on a separate partition, then you'll have to deal with this step. I find it to be not so hard as everybody makes it out to be.

The next step is to install the Grub boot loader. This is a program that normally sits in your hard drive's master boot record. Again, if you want to use both Windows and Linux, you'll need to configure Grub here to offer you the choice. Since I have Windows XP installed on the first partition of this test computer, I instructed the Grub configuration dialog to use Fedora as the main operating system, by clicking the 'default' option. As you can see from the screenshot below, the 'other' system is my Windows installation.

At this point it was time to configure my network devices. As I mentioned before, the machine has a standard Ethernet chip built in to the motherboard. I debated pulling a wireless card out of another test machine, but that machine was busy at the time. It would have been nice to report on Fedora 7's out of the box handling of this wireless card, but it just wasn't possible. In fact, writing about the network setup in a review is getting more and more difficult. Some people have WiFi, others DHCP, some have Ethernet cards and wires and set up their networks by entering numbers by hand. For this review, I was in this last situation, so it was just a question of putting the right numbers in the right places. Of course, for people using DHCP servers, this will be a lot easier. I also disabled IPv6, since I have heard that providing support for this still scarcely used protocol will cut down on system resource use. Whatever type of network you're setting up, I advise you to keep good notes at this step. As you'll see shortly, you're probably going to end up having to do it all over again.

Next, I configured my timezone. Just a suggestion here. In my experience, it's a good idea to tell the system here not to use UTC time but local time. I have been forced on some recent installs of various distributions to either disable this or keep resetting my clock. Here, I decided not to take a chance.

The final administrative task in the first part of the installation process is to choose the 'root' or system administrator password.

Now you're ready to let the installation of the system files to begin.

I just want to point out again that this review is based on installation from the Live CD KDE version, so that you're not going to get a choice at this point as to what specific packages you install. You're going to get the same ones available to you when you've booted the CD to try it out. For me personally, this isn't a big problem. You can install missing programs later via the 'yum' package management system. For now, I just let the system install the packages from the CD.

Finally, when the packages were all installed, I got a message of congratulations. But I didn't get anything else. There were no clues about what was to come next. I have been installing Linux distributions for almost a decade, and I must say this lack of direction left me a little confused. I knew there were still things to be done and I was used to getting a message to that effect. There was none here and I don't think it would have taken the developers much to add a simple dialog telling you about what was to come and asking you to reboot. I took the initiative and logged out, rebooted and hoped for the best.

next: Fedora 7 - The Adventure Continues