Re: A few questions about Fedora

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Endre Szabo wrote:

> I'm an absolute Linux novice with no experience with this OS. Now I'm
> looking for a suitable distribution.

I'd suggest that you start with a Live CD/DVD of *any* distro, so that
you can:

 . Get a feel for Linux
 . Determine how well Linux works with your hardware
 . Decide if a *full* or *minimal* install suits your hardware better
 . Browse that distro's packages, to see what's available

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

Highlights:

tomsrtbt - "The most GNU/Linux on 1 floppy disk."
http://www.toms.net/rb

SLAX - "fast and beautiful ... fits on a 3.14in CD-ROM". Based on
Slackware, "The original Linux distribution". Also has a fantastic
modules system that you can use to customise your own LiveCD.
http://www.slax.org

Knoppix DVD - The Mother of all Live distros ... and one of the most
complete, with probably the best hardware detection available.
http://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/DVD

GeeXbox - Think "Windows Media Centre Edition" for Linux ... only better.
http://www.geexbox.org

SUSE 10.1 Live DVD - Polished, user friendly and very popular distro.
http://tinyurl.com/jomww (opensuse.org)

Ubuntu - A rising star in the distro world. *The* hot distro.
http://www.ubuntu.com

BLAG Linux And GNU - FC5 based Live and installable distro. Was
previously listed as one of only 5 Linux distros in the world to be
endorsed by the Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation.
However, its listing has been deleted recently, for some reason.
ftp://ftp.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/linux/50000/en/iso/

> I've got a P3 800Mhz 256MB RAM 10GB HDD machine. I intend to make
> database gui apps with MySql, Python and the wxPython toolkit with
> Boa RAD tool and also web developement. So many of above will run
> simultaneously.

For a 800MHz system, I'd have to recommend Gentoo and a minimal desktop
like fluxbox. FC5 will run on this system fine, however with only 10GBs
to play with, you'll be struggling, and KDE in particular will slow the
system down to a grind.

I did a (nobase) extreme minimal kickstart install of FC5 on a MiniITX
VIA 533MHz system quite recently, and it works OK, but I think
ultimately I'll end up putting Gentoo on it, or even configuring a LFS
system.

> I've got a few questions:
>
> 1. Is Fedora suitable for me? Used with KDE and all above will it
> have the necessary speed and stability on my machine?

Stability and SELinux security et al, yes. Speed - OK, but not great.

> 2. Where can I find a list of apps wich come with FC5?

Browse the various directories at:
http://mirror.linux.duke.edu/pub/fedora/linux/

> 3. Can I install new softs or update existing ones without internet
> connection -- ie. from cd?

Periodically there are "respin" editions of FC, which you could use to
do yum localinstall's or set uo the disc as a yum "repo".
http://torrent.fedoraunity.org/official-torrents

If you don't want to download the updates, some "cheaplinux" type
vendors offer Distro and Update discs for sale. The best distro (and
everything else Linux) vendor I've ever found was
"EverythingLinux.com.au" now abreviated to www.elx.com.au , and yes
they're Australian.

> 4. Can I install from tarballs (tar.gz) or only from rpm?

Either, but of course RPM is *highly* recommended. I installed Google
Earth just yesterday using their installer script rather than RPM (an
RPM is not currently available AFAIK, although there *is* a Gentoo
"emerge" package already !!!).

> 5. Will softs not intented especially for fedora but for "generally
> Linux" work?

Some do, some don't. Depends on shared dependencies. The only way to
find out is to try them and see.

-
K.


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