Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

Things to Consider Before You Begin Installation

You can install Fedora by

✓

Booting with the DVD-ROM included in this book and choosing Install or Upgrade an Existing System from the initial menu.

✓

Booting with the Fedora installation CD, which is CD number 1, if you downloaded the CD images yourself. Go to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ and click the Torrents link, look for Fedora Core 7 Final, and the entry with a description similar to “Fedora Core 7 binary CD iso images for i386” or the one for x86_64, if you have a 64-bit computer. Alternatively, you can order them from a third-party vendor such as http://shop.cheapbytes.com/.

To begin the installation from the DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, you may first need to change your system to start, or boot, from a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM — many systems today are configured to do this already, so you may not need to make any changes. In Chapter 2, I cover how to configure a computer to boot from these devices.

I concentrate on Fedora 7 in this book for two main reasons:

✓	Fedora 7 is included on the DVD with this book.
✓	Covering the installation of every Linux distribution in existence would make this book into a set of encyclopedias.

Also, I assume that you want to install a desktop. There are plenty of books out there that focus on servers, so my goal is that Linux For Dummies focuses entirely on those who want to use Linux as their actual desktop machine — in addition to a few cool “desktop support” functions you’ll find throughout the book, such ...