I went through almost every possible thread related to this topic but I somehow still find myself a bit confused so I am sorry for starting a new thread.

1st. of all I am completely a newbie when you say linux & I am very good with windows & hardware ( as I work for desktop tech. support ). I have a lot of releases or flavors ( not quite sure if thats the correct term ) like fedora, ubuntu, xbuntu & kubuntu.

I am very desparate to get this fedora core 5 to be installed in my pc in a dual boot mode. Allright now here is what I have & done till now..

I have the ISO burned nicely on 6 disc's.
The PC is self built..

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 3000+
RAM : DDR 400 : 512Mb
Motherboard : Asus A8N VM CSM
Current OS : Windows XP Pro with SP2 ( sick of it being vulnerable without curtains )
HDD : Seagate SATA 160 gb @ 7200 rpm
Optical drive : Asus DVD RAM-RW
GPU : XFX Nvidia 6500 256 mb

I had a partition in windows ( f:\ ) of 40 gig which was almost empty so I went into disk management & deleted it so that I can install FC 5 in it.

I tried installing fedora after putting my optical drive as primary boot in BIOS & it started installing however it wants to do a fresh install like foramating the complete HDD which I cant as I have a lotta stuff in windows which I cant loose.

I tried going through the posts about this & it talks about grub & such things which I cant understand as Its completely new for me...Please it would be helpfull & kind if some 1 can gimme lucid steps I really wanna do this & feel the power of open source.

I think that you are getting a little ahead of yourself on this.

You have several flavors of Linux iso images, I assume from your description, downloaded and possiblly burned to disks. You have some fine distros (flavors) including Ubuntu, which may be a little more user friendly for new users to try first. But let's look at what you have.

Question #1 - First of all, think about what you want to do with Linux. What specific tasks do you expect to do. You are new to Linux and Fedora may or may not be the right choice for you. Your expected tasks will help you decide from the array of fine distros out there. So, what do you want to do, in term of tasks?

Question #2 - why Fedora Core 5 rather than 6, which is newer and may support your hardware better?

Question #3 - what other hardware is in your system, say printers...etc? Do you use a wired cable internet connection, or plan to use wireless?

You have an Athlon 64 system, so, did you download the CD images for an Athlon system? They should have been named something like FC-5-x86_64-disc1.iso..etc. If you downloaded the i386 images, that will also work, but not optimize your procerssor's power fully.

In terms of partitioning. Did you delete a partition at the end of the hard drive? And you did leave it unpartitioned, correct?

I assume that you got stuck at the partitioning screen? I new installation is what you need to do, but you have to tell Fedora how you want to use the hard drive. See the partitioning page here.

If this is the case, if you have free space on the drive that you want to have Fedora use, then you would pick Use free space on selected drives and create default layout. You only mention having one hard drive in your system, so I assume this is the case. If you are installing Fedora on a second hard drive, let us know, as there are some other points to consider before installing Fedora.

I am not trying to discourage you in this process, just have you make informed decisions before you take the plunge. Better to have a plan than try to overcome problems from the start and get frustrated.

The best way to install Fedora, is to read the documentation. You will get a lot of useful information to guide you through the process. See the documentation for Fedora Core 5 here. this should answer a lot of questions that you may have.

Another excellent article is Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes.

hey sorry I am a bit late as I had formatted my PC. Good news : I got the dual boot with the grub it waits for like 3 seconds & if I don't make a selection it goes to boot with fedora.

I only have 1 HDD that I have mentioned Seagate baracuda 160gb, 7200rpm, 8mb cache.

Sorry dan I have Dial up & no cable or DSL so i can't download such large chunk of ISO's. Sadly in india high speed internet is not easily availale. Yeah the distro that I have are the 64bit ones not the i386.

This is what I did :

First I had to format with windows as I had created all partition to be dynamic so I cud'nt set them back to primary, extended or logical.

While installing windows I selected just a space of 30 gig & left the entire 120gd blank & unformatted. After installing windows I went in diskmgmt.msc & made three logical drives of 30gb each so altogether I had 120gig In which 1 primary with windows & rest in an extended partition as logical drives ( 30 * 3 = 90 ). I still had 30gigs of empty space that I could configure later as required.

Note : I did not format any of these partitions I just created them.

Now while installing fedora I went for a manual configuration & selected one of the extended drives that I created in windows to install fedora as \ ( root I guess ) & I told it to format with ext 3 ( i guess that was the file system - I am damn bad with linux told ya ) & I made a \swap partition of 1024mb as I got to know from some sites that I need to create one with twice the size of the RAM.

Now the issue :

I am unable to get my modem ( dial up ) installed.
My Mobo has high defination sound but I cant get the sound properly. It plays mucic from only one speaker in my 2.1 & the other one makes a tweaking sound like beeping monotone speaker.
I cant get any of my DVD's to play.

And I have some couple of media players for linux but I cant install them I guess you have some different way of installing applications in linux.

Actually I am getting these distros on DVD's free with some IT magazines here in india.. Do you say its better for me to install ubuntu.

I don't have any printers or scanners. I basically use computer for internet & playing games although I know It doesn't sound like much of a gaming rig but thats what I could afford & I am quite happy as it lemme' plays all latest games without any hassle. Since Its direct X 9 C shader version III enabled.

I found this particular distro do you think its better to get this If yes than I'll download this at my office or shall I go with ubuntu as FC 5 is unable to get my sound & video drivers as well as modem.

http://www.lixsystems.net/lix/product_fi...N_InstallCD.htm

please check my post in the thread.

thx a lot.

First of all, good work on installing Fedora!

I remember another user with this sound chipset, and yes, it is a known problem. See the partial post here.

Different Asus motherboard, but the same audio chipset.

What exact make and model modem is this? realize. many are "softmodems" with contollerless chipsets that rely on the motherboard chip to do the work. They are made for Windows only and can be a bear to get working in Linux.

When you get comfortable with the setup, you can change the timeout in Grub to delay longer before booting an OS.

I saw your link for the Linux flavor of Fedora. The nice thing about this, is that it has all the drivers for video and audio. You may want to try this.

Ubuntu is a little more newbie friendly than Fedora, which can take a little more work to get just right.

I mentioned Fedora Core 6, as it is the latest and more likely to support your hardware.

If you do use Ubuntu, then make sure that it is also the latest version, to support your motherboard's hardware better.

If you go with Fedora, I would try the specialized version that you provided the link for, since it has most of the drivers that you would need.

The modem, we will have to wait and see what you have, as I assume that you already tried configuing it from within Fedora?

Hi there Eagle here, your problem is common. what you need to do is simply load windows and repartition your HDD so you have two partitions and the load FC 5 on the second partition. Not all that familiar with FC5 but mandriva has a tool too help you reset the free space on your drive just for the dual boot good luck and keep me posted.

Eagle

I think that rockytruelyrox has moved on. This thread is over 4 1/2 months old.