Red Hat Gives Away Fedora Core

If youve ever installed Red Hat 8 or 9, then Fedora will seem very familiar. The process is essentially the same, using Red Hats Anaconda installer. We opted to throw in everything, including the kitchen sink. So our install was probably a little bit longer than most peoples; it ran about 45 minutes or so. We installed it on a box that also had Windows 2000 on it, and the dual boot worked nicely for us, with Grub as the boot loader.

We had no problems with installation. All we had to do was insert the CDs when prompted, click through a few screens of basic information, and the installation pretty much took care of itself. Our network card, monitor, video card, etc. were all found and properly installed. The only manual chore was to create our user ID and password.

We rank Fedoras install program among the best for desktop Linux distros (no surprise there, since it comes from Red Hat). We would feel comfortable giving a copy of Fedora to anyone who has installed Windows 2000 or XP, as its pretty similar in terms of the expertise required to install it.

After you boot up (theres a nice GUI boot screen in Fedora), you can change the login screen from the default Red Hat Bluetooth screen to Happy Gnome, Circles or Happy Gnome (with user browser). Were Gnome people, so we promptly ditched Red Hats Bluecurve theme and went with Happy Gnome (hey, whats not to love about a theme with a name like that?).

Desktops

KDE and Gnome are both included (although each has the usual Red Hat customizations; love em or hate em, theyre there). We opted for Gnome, as always, and for the Crux desktop theme. It just feels more Gnome-like to us than the Bluecurve one. Aside from a quick once-over, we didnt bother much with KDE; its a fine desktop, but just not our cup of tea.

Page Three: Add/Remove Applications Burps