new installation

[mikedelo]

Good evening all!

I have an 4 or 5 year old Dell desktop computer that I am trying to install Fedora on. The installation I have was downloaded from their web site and burned to a CD.

When I am trying to install (from the bootable CD) the computer freezes up. So I would like to try installing using the text based install method.

My question is how do I stop the graphical install starting upon booting and start the text based installation?

Thank you,

Michael, linux's newst user

[reed9]

According to this, enter linux text at the boot prompt.

I don't use Fedora, and that explanation isn't entirely clear, but I assume it means you need to edit the boot line and append that to the end.



So at the above screen you would hit tab.

The bigger question is why is it freezing. How much RAM do you have? Do you know what your graphics card is? I would also try booting after adding nomodeset to the boot line.

[mikedelo]

The bigger question is why is it freezing. How much RAM do you have? Do you know what your graphics card is? I would also try booting after adding nomodeset to the boot line.

Not really to sure about the computer's specs. The previous owner switched to a Mac and I asked if I can take the computer.

If the graphics card wasn't linux friendly, wouldn't my trouble show up at boot up? The computer is a Dell, I would imagine that it is all Dell parts, which would mean a motherboard that includes the sound card, graphics card, etc.

How do I edit the boot line?

[reed9]

You quite likely have an Intel graphics card. There were some major changes to the Intel drivers a bit ago, which ended up causing some serious performance regressions and other problems with Intel cards.

If this is the case, the issue should be resolved in Fedora 12, which will be released soon. Or you can try Ubuntu 9.10 (but not 9.04, which also has the problem).

[mikedelo]

You quite likely have an Intel graphics card. There were some major changes to the Intel drivers a bit ago, which ended up causing some serious performance regressions and other problems with Intel cards.

If this is the case, the issue should be resolved in Fedora 12, which will be released soon. Or you can try Ubuntu 9.10 (but not 9.04, which also has the problem).

I just looked for the release date for Fedora 12, looks like it will be later this month. Which means I will download the new version later on this month. I can wait! I have my hands full with work and college stuff anyway.

For some reason I am very partial to Red Hat. It dates back to when I was in high school and trying to learn Linux. Nine years ago, Linux was a lot tougher and I was a little young. But now, things are much differnt. I was upset to hear that Red Hat abandoned its free OS, but was OK with Fedora. Besides, I like the prepackaged programs it comes with.

Any thoughts?

[reed9]

I would go ahead and try out the Fedora 12 beta and see if it resolves the problem. It should be stable enough for basic use at this point.
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[mikedelo]

Good idea..... but if I install the beta now, what is the procedure like to update to the final release?

[reed9]

It's not difficult to upgrade to the final release once it occurs. Basically, Fedora will send a package down the pipe that will change your repositories to point to the correct place and change the release name. You only have a limited window (a couple of weeks) to do this, before the fedora-release package reverts to pointing to the testing version again though.


Upgrading from pre-release to final - FedoraProject