Have just upgraded my dual-boot (WindowsVista/Fedora 11) laptop (HP Compaq Presario CQ50). I simply downloaded an upgrade ISO from https://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora . Than burned it to a DVD. Started my Fedora 11 and updated it by calling in the command “yum update”. Restarted the laptop with the DVD in and voilà I had my computer updated. Had some trouble with the household though because I was updating my desktop (WindowsXP/OpenSUSE) and my borrowed other laptop (Fedora 11) at the same time.

It seems there has been some bad press around the internet on how computers create deadly magnetic waves.  It may have been in the old computers (talking of the ones that were as big as a stadium.) or maybe the ones with a CRT screen. But come on! This is even worse than the chinese-eat-babies scare. Laptops and LCD screens barely register on a magnetic spectrum! You get hit by more waves just by watching from your tube-tv.

So on to the business at hand, just how good is Fedora 12? Short answer: It’s great! Long answer: However…

• Users get to play root without knowledge of the root password (big big no no)
• Problem with previously configured nVidia drivers.
• Start up slowed down.

I just couldn’t believe it when I read of it. Fedora 12 suddenly decided to write an operating system like windows by adding a everyone-is-God mode. Pfft! That is why NOT most servers use Linux as their first choice dummy!! They want it secure. They don’t want the internet hill-billies installing any package they could get their hands on!( Note : Anyone who want to disable this “future” just say “pklalockdown –lockdown org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install “  to the console while in root mode.)

So you should install on your computer? Yeah you should it runs faster thanks to GNOME’s closing a few leaks and it is certainly user friendly.

Peace!

Fedora. My first love in linux started with Fedora and now I realized this love was not because of some novelty. It was actually because it is easier to use.(As a developer.) So I simply installed Fedora 11 over Ubuntu 9.04 it worked like a charm tough I had to do couple of tweaks. The first tweak was the adding the recovery hard-disk of Vista to the boot menu. No problem there just a simple grub.conf editing was done as below ;

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,2)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_johnsfedorabox-lv_root
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=3
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title NCTUns (2.6.28.9-nctuns-20090901)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.28.9-nctuns-20090901 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_johnsfe$
initrd /initrd-2.6.28.9-nctuns-20090901.img
title Fedora (2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_johnsfedor$
initrd /initrd-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586.img
title Fedora (2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_johnsfedo$
initrd /initrd-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586.img
title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title Vista-backup
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

See simple right? And then I just had to install the usual suspects such as ; flash-plugin, vlc, eclipse, netbeans, mysql, apache2, php5, nctuns and so on. However the thing with Fedora is that all of this is very easy. So if you have any problems with installing Fedora 11 on a Compaq Presario CQ50 just yell!