Need help installing Fedora Core + Solaris

[Krilnon]

I want to learn how to use Linux, and Fedora Core seems to be pretty popular. At the same time, I want to install Solaris 10 onto this old machine of mine (still meets requirements).

Now, I want to set it up in a dual boot mode, sort of like you would with Windows+ Linux.

I need some help doing this though, as I haven't tried something like it before.

1. When I try to download the ISO's for Fedora, the server is full. The mirror sites only have 3 ISO's for download, unlike Red Hat's 4. What does this mean?

2. I assume I'll need some sort of driver disk or what not to install Fedora onto a fresh HD, right? How can I go about doing this?

I hear NJS is good at this... but I'm sure others are too. Help?

[λ]

/me points to Ubuntu (http://ubuntulinux.org/) ;)

If you really want to install Fedora then go right ahead - I've no experience with Fedora personally, but all linux distributions are pretty similiar anyway.

1. You can get them off BitTorrent if you want :) http://torrent.linux.duke.edu. Chances are you want heidelberg-binary-i386 (http://torrent.linux.duke.edu/heidelberg-binary-i386.torrent) (Fedora Core 3, pre-compiled for the i386 architecture).
2. If you want to install it onto a fresh, completely blank hard drive then you shouldn't need anything special at all other than the 4 CDs.

[Krilnon]

Well I figured 1 out before I read this post... but I get some error when I try to install... a problem with the formatting the the HD, I think.


Invalid Geometry: 31 physical heads?

[teet]

You shouldn't need anything special to install fedora onto a fresh harddrive...it comes with its own partitioning tools.

Fedora would probably be a good distro to start with. I recently decided to give Ubuntu a shot (heard good things about it) and I absolutely love it. The install process with Ubuntu was pretty darn easy (the partitioning part of it wasn't quite as easy as Fedoras, but I knew what I was doing). Another thing...Ubuntu fits on one CD...fedora is up to 4 now. Essentially that means that Ubuntu is going to only give you what you need and not a whole lot of extra stuff (fedora comes with like 7 word processors...). Anything else that you need can easily be downloaded using apt-get/synaptic. In all, I saved ~1.5 GB of space when I got Ubuntu all set up the way I like it.

I'm not sure what your hdd problem is...perhaps you can try setting up a partition on your hdd with fdisk and then formatting it as FAT32 (this can all be done with a WIN98 bootdisk) and then using fedora/ubuntu's partitioning tools to create new partitions.

-teet

[Krilnon]

I figured out the problem. The drive I moved over from the other older computer wasn't set as a slave. I haven't uninstalled windows yet because I want to unpartition the drive and wipe it first.

Any ideas on how to do that in Windows 98?

[teet]

If you're going to use fedora...

Just use their partition software (it's all part of the install process). Choose to manually partition and then simply delete the WIN98 partition.

Then you'll need to setup your linux partitions. This is how I usually do it.

/boot ..............50 mb formatted as ext3

/ ....................5-15 gb formatted as ext3 (this one really can vary depending on how much software you install)

/Swap .............Twice your ram total (64 mb of RAM = 128 mb of swap space)

/home .............how ever many gigs you have left formatted as ext3 (if you want to dual boot, be sure NOT to fill up your harddrive...leave some space for your other system).

-teet

[Krilnon]

Hm.... so what if I forgot to make /home and /boot partitions?

[λ]

It should work fine - /home and /boot aren't neccessary (I don't use them currently, even though /home is probably a good idea).

[Krilnon]

Heh.... I got it installed. Installing things sucks, though. ( Within Linux)

[teet]

Installing things sucks, though. ( Within Linux)

Yeah, the worst part is getting it all set up. I wouldn't try to use up2date to update your system...use yum instead. Just google "yum fedora core 3" and look for a guide on how to add repositories to get yum functioning correctly. After that, you'll probably be able to install most things using yum...instead of having to

./configure
make
make install (and cross your fingers to hope it works)

you could just do a simple command

yum install xine
yum install xmms-mp3

Check out http://www.linuxquestions.org and look for the "Fedora" section under the distro forums.

-teet

[Krilnon]

I already tried yum but something wasn't installed so I couldn't do it. ( it was like ggc or gcc, or something.... I couldn't find it in Add/Remove programs.