Fedora is OS of Choice
Friday May 30, 2008
It has been a month since my last post where I lamented my angst over using the windows operating system. My problems were minimized a few weeks ago when I switched my machines to the Fedora 9. It is the latest release of the Redhat sponsored Fedora project and by far the easiest version to date. I have on machine that will dual boot into Windows Xp and Fedora 9. The machine is a desktop so the easiest way I have found to accomplish this feat is to assign each operating system to it's own hard drive. I have 40G allotted to Fedora and a 20G drive hosting Windows Xp.
NewEgg saves the Day
My first attempt at the install was to download the 6 CD's required for the i386 install. This worked flawlessly for my notebook running the x86_64 architecture on a Compaq Presario r3370us. It has an AMD Athlon 64 processor running 1.2G ram. For my desktop with the 1G 32 bit Athlon processor the 2nd disc on the CD download continuously failed to install. This was corrected by purchasing a lG brand DVD burner from NewEgg.com and replacing the CD-RW drive. I picked the up the oem drive for $25 US and shipping charges. It was on my porch within two days.
Linux is Good
Long story short, I am using Linux as my primary OS, with Windows reserved for web site testing on the IE browsers. This is necessary as long as Internet Explorer continues to be non standards compliant. In other words it will be a few years. My computing experience is much more enjoyable using Linux. I still have a lot to learn about the Linux OS but welcome the challenge.