Installing Fedora 8: First Impressions
The installation process when installing Fedora 8 is delightful. I can’t possibly put it any other way. Fedora 8 asks all the information it will need for the installation right up front. I’ve tried various Debian and Ubuntu installations before, and in both cases I needed to stay put as it went through the install process to tell it the network name, fill out passwords, and username. And whatever other things it asks along the way before it can proceed.
Fedora 8 Gets the Installer Right!
It’s always irritated me that the install process in Debian and Ubuntu gets broken up into pieces. I can step away from the computer, but that means the install process gets put on hold until I navigate through the next set of prompts.
Fedora 8 installs just like an Operating System should install. The installer boots up and asks for your name, username, password, and partitioning scheme right from the get go. I was thrilled when I realized that as F8 was installing, all I had to do was sit back and take a nap. That was it. Once I gave the go ahead, Fedora 8 sailed right straight through to the finish.
Fedora 8 install was fast! I think the entire process was only about 1/2 hour. I installed the Fedora 8 KDE version of the program. I have to give Fedora 8 ten stars out of 5 for ease of installation. No doubt in my mind. It was the easiest Operating System to install that I have ever done.
Fedora 8: The Good News Ends with the Installer
Soon as the computer rebooted, Fedora 8 KDE started to lose its lustre. I’m supposed to have an installation of Debian Lenny and Kubuntu on the hard drive as well. It should be a triple boot setup, but F8 behaved as the only installed OS!
The GRUB bootloader didn’t show anything installed on my machine other than Fedora 8. I’ll have to look into whether this is a common problem or if it’s just the crappy 9 year old Compaq PC that I tried running it on. Either way, I am certain that on my system, Fedora 8 did not seem to want to allow other OSs.
Now, to be fair, during the install, there was some sort of “advanced” option when configuring GRUB. But I just went through that on the default settings, because I’m still a Linux Beginner. On the other hand, Debian and Ubuntu both always recognized the other partitions when I installed them.
Yum is a slow Package Manager
Again, I have to mark down Fedora 8 on the package manager. Yum was significantly slower than Apt at retrieving updates, and new packages to install. I would say it took about twice as long for the installs and updates to take place once I was booted into KDE with the main installation completed.
No Final Word Yet on Fedora 8
Unfortunately, Fedora 8 is just too much of a strain on my dying PC to keep fiddling with it for now. I’m getting a new machine that will drag my PC kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. A 733mhz Pentium III from 1998 just isn’t cutting it. Neither is the whopping 256 RAM. Someday in the not too distant future I will give Fedora 8 another go around, and this time I will be able to start to learn Redhat Linux, which is something I really would like to do.
For now, I am able to sum up my F8 experience thusly:
- Installing is a breeze. All OSs should be this easy to install.
- Doesn’t seem to want other OSs on the HDD. I suggest installing first, then Install other OS to see how it works then. Like doing a dual boot with Windows, where Windows is installed first.
- Yum is slow.
