F8
Pre-Installation Tasks
There are several tasks that need to be
performed before installing Fedora 8. This includes:
Download and
Burn the Fedora 8 DVD or Live Spins
As
of Fedora 7, downloading the Fedora CDs is no longer available. For
those of you apt to complain, this has been years in the making, as
installation discs for software have evolved from: single
floppies to multiple floppies to single CDs to multiple CDs to single
DVDs, etc. Therefore, if you do not own a CD/DVD burner, it is
time to either drop $100 bucks and buy one, or go borrow one from a
neighbor.
Assuming that you have a 32-bit computer, download the 32-bit Fedora DVD ISO image and burn
it to a DVD from your nearest mirror
site. You
are looking for:
Alternatively, you
can use the Fedora
bittorrent
to burn the DVD ISO bittorrent image once you download it (Fedora-8-dvd-i386.torrent). Better yet, if significant time has passed since
the release date for Fedora 8 (May 31, 2007) you
can use Fedora
Re-Spins to download an updated version of Fedora 8 with
updated packages using the Fedora
Re-Spins bittorrent. If you need information about bittorrent,
see:
Once you download
the DVD ISO image (and before you burn it to a DVD!),
it is wise to verify the checksums to the file(s). The checksum
information is found at:
Now days, sha1sum
is used, opposed to md5sum,
due to a weakness in the MD5 hash function. If you need background
information about sha1sum, or if you need to download the sha1sum program for either Windows or
Linux, see:
If the checksums to
not match the values given in the SHA1SUM
file, there is an error in the download, and you will have to download
the file(s) once again. Complain about it now, but it will save
you a lot more time compared to burning a faulty DVD and
trying to
install Fedora 8 later.
If you need help burning the
DVD ISO image, and are using Linux, I suggest gnomebaker.
And if you are using Fedora, it's in the repository, so you
can use yum
to download it.
Partition your
Hard Drive
Partitioning your hard drive is necessary to make room for F8
— there are a number of ways to do this.
You can partition
your hard drive with partition
creation/editing tools (such as gparted or qtparted)
on the Knoppix Live CD available at www.knoppix.org, or
by using the same tools with the System Rescue CD available at www.sysresccd.org. Alternatively,
gparted
offers a Live CD at gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org. I
use the commercial product PartitionMagic
8.0.1, which used to be made by PowerQuest before it was
bought out by Microsoft-owned Symantec,
...who killed the product line (of course). If you need insight into
the
number of partitions required, and their sizes and types, I
strongly suggest that you read my Partition
Sizes page.
Determine Dual
Boot Options
Determining whether or not you want to dual boot will affect
how
your hard drive is partitioned. I feel that dual booting is an
important enough topic that I have written a separate web page about
it as well. See the Dual
Boot Options page for details.
1. Pre-Installation
Tasks
1.1 Partition
Sizes
1.2 Dual Boot Options
