Install Fedora

Fedora?

“Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.” – from the Fedora homepage

I’m using this to run jboss 5.1, postgres, mysql and all my other goodies. Why Fedora? No real reason in particular, other than I wanted to have experience working with more than one flavor of linux, since I use CentOS at work. CentOS is more of an enterprise OS, it’s objective being to provide a free version of the higher end Red Hat Enterprise Server, minus a big chunk of the costs. Back to fedora – basically its the experimental-ish, advanced stomping grounds for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat only supports its own branded version of linux, while Fedora is more of a community driven project, with releases churned out every 6 months.

I’m currently using Fedora 11, even though Fedora 12 is already out as I type this. I’m not sure if im going to update anytime soon, as OS upgrades can always be scary and stuff can be expected to break or stop working.

Installing fedora

Setting up Fedora is fairly straight forward. Download it, burn it onto a DVD, stick it into computer you want to install on, and reboot. If you are set up to boot from the disc media, it will run the Fedora installer program thing and give you a few options. I wound up performing a full install and created new hard disk partitions, essentially wiping everything and starting from scratch. You will create a root account password during the setup – remember to write it down for future use, you will be making lots of admin level type of changes in the near future.

Once you are installed, you’ll need to know how to log in as the root user:

[user@bedrock ~]# su -

you will be prompted for the root password, enter it and you’ll be in.

[root@bedrock ~]#

Now you’re ready to start linuxing. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Install mod_jk
2. Set up postgres
3. *nix commands I can’t do without

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