Fedora - which isos?

[Calum]

there are four CDs! how many do i want? what's on them?
http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/download. ... /i386/iso/

thanks!

[Void Main]

I would guess all 4 *I386* ISOs. You could probably get by without the 4th one if you are careful not to install something that is on it, but then it's much smaller than the others so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. I'm waiting for the final to be released before burning CDs, it won't be long.

[Calum]

but 4 cds? even slackware have started releasing 2 cds, whatever happened to nice compact distros? i'm not going to want anything more than i installed off of my one CD slackware 9.0 installation, so why 4 cds?

i suppose i am just stingy about CDs and bandwidth, it still takes me about 8 hours to download an iso image...

[Linux Frank]

You are moaning about 4 CDs. Just wait until Debian is finally released that is planned for 13 CDs.

It is getting out of hand, and it is actually getting to the point that it might start being cheaper to just buy the OS when it is released. But then we are as much to blame as the Distros. How many times have you said, they should include Mplayer as standard, plugger as standard, or a whole set of programs. It would be nice if they packaged them in a smarter way though.

[Void Main]

I believe when Red Hat 9 was in beta it was also 4 CDs and they they pruned it down to 3 but I could be wrong. You really could probably get by with just one CD if you want to do the very minimal setup but Red Hat comes with a lot of stuff. Usually the less common stuff is on the later CDs so if you look at the list of packages on each one and do a custom install and take care not to select anything that is on disk 3 and 4 then you could get by with just disk 1 and 2.

I actually like all the stuff that RH ships and I use most of it. There are a few packages that they don't include that I wish they did, but only a few. Some distros include more software, some include less. SUSE Pro comes on 5 CDs or 2 DVDs. As Linux Frank stated, Debian is many more than that if you want to download everything.

Of course you could just do a minimal install and apt-get install whatever you want after the minimal install, or you can do a network install (ftp, nfs, http, etc) by either using just the first CD, or even just a couple of boot floppies, then you only have a couple of meg to download. I can download an ISO in less than 2 hours so I usually just start the download going before going to bed and all CDs are downloaded the next morning.

[Linux Frank]

Of course if you have the bandwidth you could just D/L disk 1, and then apt get the rest.

[Calum]

well i ended up downloading the three big disks, and installing them. now i will have to weed out all the gumph that got installed by default etc, also seems my rpm and apt are a bit flaky what with me using the development tree and so on.
well, it's all good so far despite that, what's running is mostly stable (although not GNOME sadly, although it was fine in slack i thought). fedora, just as good as red hat definitely.

[Void Main]

well i ended up downloading the three big disks, and installing them. now i will have to weed out all the gumph that got installed by default etc,

Don't you do a custom install? I don't believe I've ever done anything other than a custom install. You can select fairly granulary what you want installed.

[agent007]

Of course if you have the bandwidth you could just D/L disk 1, and then apt get the rest.

How can u do an apt-get when the OS is not installed in the first place? or am I missing something?

PS: sorry for bringing up this old thread....haven't been around here lately...

[Void Main]

You can't apt-get without the OS installed, that's what disk 1 is for. :) Install a very minimal OS from disk 1 and then install apt and away you go.

[agent007]

Install a very minimal OS from disk 1 and then install apt and away you go.

But what if it prompts for disk 2 or 3? Is there any specific method for doing a minimal install?

thanks..

[Void Main]

But what if it prompts for disk 2 or 3? Is there any specific method for doing a minimal install?

Well, I can't say what the magic combination is as I haven't actually tried to install Fedora using only the first disk. I might try it this evening just to see one way or the other but I would think if you do a custom install and don't select anything then it should do the absolute minimum. This means no X/Gnome/KDE (which I wouldn't need but others might). It might not be able to be done, I am not sure.

Now, if you wanted to do a minimal install and use apt to do the rest to get away from having to download the CDs I would just do an http or ftp install right off the bat and not download *any* ISOs. You can make boot floppies to do a network install from a server out on the net. Or you could also use CD1 and do a "linux askmethod" at the first boot prompt and do an http/ftp install. Or just download the boot.iso (small ISO image that replaces the floppies):

http://www.informit.com/articles/articl ... 6&seqNum=2

[agent007]

Do report back on the installation Void...Would be interesting to know how it went....

[Void Main]

Ok, fired up VMware and pointed it to the first Fedora ISO as a virtual CD drive. I did a custom text install and unchecked everything. It still installed over 500MB but only required that first CD. And the entire install took 2 minutes and 20 seconds when installing from the ISO. :) I then did:

Code: Select all

# cd /tmp
# wget http://dag.wieers.com/packages/apt/apt-0.5.15cnc6-1.rhfc1.dag.i386.rpm
# rpm -Uvh apt*
# apt-get update


Then just apt-get install away. I would personally still opt for using the mini ISO or boot floppies and doing an http install and getting X and your desktop of choice installed. Then install apt and do an upgrade to bring everything up to date.

[agent007]

2 minutes is very cool! Thanks for confirming Void....