Fedora:
When you put the Fedora disk into your computer and start you computer up, you will not automatically be brought to the installer, like what happens with Windows. You will have to start the computer up and then go to the boot loader, and choose the drive that you put the cd into to load first. To do this you will need to puch the ESC key or another key a lot until the bootloader appears.
The fist screen that you will see after loading the cd is the operating system options page. It will have options to run from image, run from ram – requires 1GB+, and verify and run image. You will want to choose run from image. The next thing that will happen is that your screen will go black. Then a lot of information will run down your screen, this is just the OS’s way of making sure that everything is there and in check. Depending on how fast your computer is it could take 30 seconds for the black screen to run through or it could take a little bit longer. After the black screen goes away you will be presented with a fedora loading screen. This is similar to the Mac OS X loading screen, and just lets you know that the OS is loading.
If this is a livecd you will be loaded into the main desktop. From there you will have a couple of options. The first is to use the OS like a normal computer, in which you can do everything that you would as if it were installed on your computer. The other option is the click on the install icon on the desktop. Once you click on the installer icon an installer GUI will open for you.
The first screen that you see is a welcome screen, you have options to read the release notes, and click on the next button. Next it asks you to pick what language you want to use for your keyboard. After you choose your language a pop-up window will open, don’t be worried, this is normal. It is informing you that all the data on the current drive will be erased, just click yes. Then click the next button.
Now comes the time when you are choosing what disk or how much space you want to use for OS. I would recommend that you just use the default options, for this as the installer will do most of the work. For Fedora Core the first screen for partitioning you will see a drop down menu that asks you if you want to “remove Linux partitions on selected drive and create a default layout”. The next option is to “use free space and create a default layout”. The last is “create custom layout”. I would choose the either the first one if you have a Linux partition, or the second one if you want to leave your current OS on there, which would probably be a good idea. The hard drive that you are going to be writing to will also be listed. If you only have one hard drive, then this area will be grayed out. Then click next. After clicking next a pop-up will open that will ask you what drive configuration you want. If you choose “remove Linux partitions on selected drive and create a default layout” the pop-up will open and ask you if you want to remove all information from that drive. Just click yes.
The next step is to set up what type of network you have for your internet connection. The screen shows the network devices. These are all the modems or Ethernet cards(NICS) that are in or connected to your computer. If you are not sure what your network device is and there is one listed as “eth0” then put a check mark in that box. It will probably say under IPV4/Netmask: “DHCP”, and under IPV6/Prefix: “Auto”. That is all fine, if you don’t under stand that I will explain it a little. DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Basically it allows your network devices i.e. Ethernet card, to get a dynamic address i.e. IP address, to allow you to get connected to a network i.e. the internet. The opposite of that is a Static IP. This is one that doesn’t ever change. But, back to the topic. Under “Hostname” you should choose “automatically via DHCP” unless you know otherwise. Then click next.
After the network configuration is done you will have to choose what time zone and area of the world you are in. You have two options to do this. The first is to click on one of the dots on the map, while the other one is to choose from a list. Then click next.
Your next step is to enter a root password. This is just in case you need to log in as “root”. Root gives you access to everything in the OS and isn’t recommended unless you are absolutely sure that you know what you are doing. Then click next.
The next screen just says that you are done with the configuration and that you can start to install Fedora Core. It also tells you were you can find a log of what happens during the install, and a file that will allow you to install other options if you find that you need something. Then click next.
This screen starts with formatting the drive for a Linux partition, which is different from a windows partition if that is what you had on it before. Next it starts the install of all the files that are needed. Finally a box comes up that says that it is “performing post installation filesystem changes” this is not a big deal. After that is done, just click next. The last screen just says that you have finished the install. Click on close.
This will kick you back to the livecd and you will want to go through and end the session and restart your computer. There are some other steps that you will have to go through in order to make sure that your set up is correct, but they are all self explanatory.
For a graphical version of this you can go here:
http://howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-fedora-10