The latest version of Fedora, 12 is about to be released in a week or so, and here is how to install it:
Download the Live CD, or the DVD if you wish to. I downloaded the Live CD, and it weighs in at 653 MB, smaller than most other distros that tend to cram the CD with 690 MB and over. Burn the image onto a CD, and then boot your system off the live CD, and you’ll see this screen:
Figure 1: The initial screen on the Fedora 12 Live CD
Now, if you don’t press any key, you’ll get into the login screen (Figure 3). If you do press a key, you’ll view this boot options screen:
Figure 2: Boot Options Menu
Select the second option to test your live media or the third to test your system’s memory. But most probably, you’d want to check just the media, and then after that select the first option to get into the login screen:
Figure 3: The Login Screen
You can choose your language, and then login as the Live System User. You’ll see the Fedora 12 Live desktop in all its glory:
Figure 4: First Glimpse of Fedora 12 Desktop
Now, start the installation procedure by double clicking the Install to Hard Drive icon on the desktop:
Figure 5: Initializing the procedure
Once you fire up the installer, you get to this screen, click Next to proceed:
Figure 6: Installer: First Screen
In the Keyboard Selection screen, choose the appropriate keyboard for your system. I use the default US International keyboard. There are many languages supported:
Figure 7: Keyboard Selection
Click on Next after selecting your keyboard, and the computer name screen comes up. Let it default to localhost.localdomain if your system is standalone, and if you are on a network, ask your network administrator and change it. If you are installing Fedora 12 on your server, give it the domain name you use for the server.
Figure 8: Choosing your domain name: Default for standalone PC
Click on Next and on the next screen, choose your time zone. It is set by default to New York, USA. Hover over the map to locate your time zone:
Figure 9: Choosing your time zone
Remember to uncheck the System clock uses UTC if it is not set that way, else you may see a discrepancy in time by the cutoff between your timezone and GMT. Your selected time zone should appear below the map:
Figure 10: Make sure your time zone is selected and displayed below the map
The next step is to choose a root password. This is a main part of securing your system, so make sure the password is atleast 12 characters long. And use a password with alphabets in both cases and numerals. It is good practice to have a strong password, especially for the root user:
Figure 11: Create a strong password for the root user
The next screen is the disk partitioning. If you are going to dual boot, choose to Use Free Space. This option works well for a fresh installation too:
Figure 12: Use Free Space for a Dual Boot. It works for a fresh install too.
The installer will ask if you want to write the changes in partitioning to disk. Click on Write changes to disk:
Figure 13: Apply the changes in partitioning
The installer will now copy the Live CD image onto the hard disk, and this might take from 40 seconds to 3 minutes:
Figure 14: Copying the image to hard disk
The installer will also install the boot loader. If you have another OS installed, it’ll autodetect it and setup the bootloader. I’m installing this on a fresh Virtual Hard Disk, so I didn’t need that:
Figure 15: Configuring the boot loader
Now, the installer has done its job, and you can either continue using the Live CD, or setup the installed system after exiting the installer:
Figure 16: Installation Completed!
We’re halfway through the install, the harder parts are over though. Now, exit the Live CD:
Figure 17: Quitting the Live CD
After this, restart the system:
Figure 18: Restart the system
Remove the Live CD when it pops out, or while rebooting the system. Once the system restarts with the Live CD inserted, however, you can also choose to Boot from local drive in Figure 2.
The post installation activity starts now, with the welcome screen:
Figure 19: Post Installation: First Steps
Click on Next to view the License Information. Click on Next to accept it:
Figure 20: License Screen
Now, the user creation screen comes up, where you create the non-root user. Don’t use the same password as the root user(allowed, but never recommended) and use a strong password here too:
Figure 21: User Creation
In the next step, set the date and time. You can choose to synchronize it with the NTP(Network Time Protocol) server pool, or set it manually too:
Figure 22: Setting Date and Time
The next step asks you if you want to upload your hardware profile. This is actually a good thing to do, since if your install fails for some reason, the profile can be used to locate the error, or any bugs unique to your profile can be fixed:
Figure 23: Send your hardware profile
After you click Next for the final time, you’ll enter the login screen:
Figure 24: Destination Desktop! The Login Screen
That’s all there is to the installation process. Once you get into the desktop, you can install more packages for the applications that you use.
Note: This install was done over a Virtual Machine using KVM assigned 512MB memory on Fedora 12 RC3. The installation process worked the same way on my desktop, when I installed it alongside a previous install of Fedora 11. The final release is due on November 17, but I doubt there will be any change in the installation process. It’ll just work the same way.
