So after some reading, and a friend o mine telling me everyday to migrate to debian... I finally decided to do it... the problem is I have some doubts about it...
I have fedora core 1 installed, and it runs great, kernel 2.4 Xfree 4.2 well you already know fedora core install package... and I have 7 debian "woody" cd's to do the installation... one of my doubts is :

What would happen with grub, and the current kernel and Xfree im running with fedora when i install debian over it... ?

Let me try to be more specific ... i want to install debian but keep my current fedora configuration, drivers, kernel, and Xfree running ,but, under debian, cuz i got a gateway solo 1450 finally running smoothly and for what i've read is not easy to run such laptop easily with debian...

Any help would be apreciated

man/google grub as to how to add another linux to the menu.lst, that should be no problems.

As to doubts, i never do anything if i have doubts about it; i use debian sid/sarge because i want to, because is fast, because apt-get is great, not because some friend told me to.

Yup, probably right about that.

I did some reading about debian, and I want to use it... I want to use it because is open source in its natural state, Its completely monopoly free hehe...

Umm im not trying to dual boot... i want to install debian over fedora but without losing the current running kernel, xfree, and driver config im using on fedora.

Fedora and debian are very different in respects to package management and config. Also, I wouldn't use the woody cds, I would use debian-installer (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ ), it will do much of the config automatically. The simplest thing to do would be to backup your files (if /home is on another different partition than /bin and /etc you shouldn't need to do this) and run the install. Debian config files are generally stored in different places than fedora and often have debian-specific settings.

question!

Can I download the debian installer, and use it to install woody, or it just works for sarge installation?

If it only works on Sarge installation, then I must download Sarge right?

"Can I download the debian installer, and use it to install woody,"

no

"or it just works for sarge installation?"

yes

"If it only works on Sarge installation, then I must download Sarge right?"

with the debian installer rc1, you will get sarge and newer kernels.



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Sarge will become stable soon, and will replace woody. Sarge also has much better support for hw and is fairly stable, though I use sid (which I would NOT reccomend unless you have a good reason to, I needed several packages that are only in unstable).

What you are asking is in theory possible, but you would have to installed Fedora in such a way to make it feasible. For example, you created a /boot partition where you kept your Fedora Kernel and when you installed Debian, you did not format this partition (lets say /dev/hda1) and then you just edit your /etc/fstab to include the partition after you do the install, point your boot loader (grub or lilo toward the old kernel) to the old kernel and you would be done...I hope...never tried it. As far as X goes...I'm not sure how you would pull that off. As long as you know your hardware, it shouldn't be a big deal to set it up again. Matter of fact, I recommend people recompile their kernels after a install anyway. Your in that early stage...where one suffers from don't want to undo what my Distro did during the default install or I'll break it phase.

You can not keep your current fedora configuration.
And go with debian sarge.

Sarge is definately the way to go now. The new installer is quite user-friendly. Woody is ancient for desktop usage. Sarge security support should start fairly soon. If you are using your system as a desktop only, I would suggest installing sarge with a 2.6 kernel (start the installer with expert26, it asks you more things but then you can select if you want grub/lilo etc+ install a 2.6 kernel as default).

"I have fedora core 1 installed, and it runs great"

If it works, don't fix it. I do not see any reason as to why you should change distro's other than some urge or mental itch you might have.

Install Sarge to a seperate partition, if all fails you still have Fedora, if all succeeds you can wipe the Fedora partition.

I just did a similar conversion - from RedHat 9 to Debian Sarge. What I did was back-up my fedora to another drive, and then install Debian and got everythign set up and working. Then the little annoyances, like setting up my wacom graphix tablet and such that I had added into my RedHat XF86Config, I just copied all of the lines for my tablet from my old config to the new debian config.

But like everyone above is saying, the two distros are too different to just install debian over the top of RedHat/Fedora. I say install debian and migrate your configs over. You may be suprised and have most everything work for you.

Got one more comment on this - I would definately use Sarge instead of Woody. The install was much smoother for me in Sarge (I tried both)
good luck!