I'm a total Linux noob, but am looking to learn a bunch about it. During my first couple attempts to install the Fedora OS onto a PC I have it's giving me a ton of errors.

The version I downloaded was Fedora-15-i386-DVD. I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but it seemed based on the description that it might be. The PC has a 1.3ghz Intel Celeron Processor, and 512mb of RAM.

The screen it halts on gives me a number of errors:

Unable to load System Description Tables
Fatal: Error Inserting Fan
Warning: Error Inserting Processor: No Such Device
Fatal: Error Inserting thermal: Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter

Here is a lovely picture of the actual screen that I took, with more details for each error:
Screen Image


Any help that I could get would be WONDERFUL. This problem could be as easy as they come, but as I've said I'm a total noob. I hope I've provided all the information that you need.

Thank you in advance!

I have heard of this problem popping up on older machines. My understanding is that this can happen when ACPI is not enabled in the BIOS. Enter the BIOS setup screen and try to find a section related to "Power Management", and make sure anything involving APM or ACPI is enabled.

Failing that, I would verify that the download and burn were good. Easiest way to do this is to check on another machine, if you have one handy.

Thanks. That didn't solve my issues, but all the power management was disabled. I'm trying to reburn the disc right now, and then I'll redownload if need be. If I continue to have issues with 15, are some of the lower versions worth attempting? I'm basically trying to learn everything I can about computers, and from what I understand linux gives it's users a much better view of what is actually happening within it's operating system.


EDIT


It appears the reburn is going much better. Hopefully it makes it all the way through this time!

Thanks again, hopefully I won't be returning to this thread any time soon!

EDIT

Ugh, now it gave me an error about the CPU temperature. It then proceeds to tell me that it set it to normal and gives:
Machine Check Events Logged

It did that twice at least, then gave me an ugly grey screen. I'm wondering if the hardware I'm using just isn't powerful enough. I know my RAM is a bit low, but I was hoping it could cope with that.

with only 512 meg ram
Fedora 15 and the Gnome gui might NOT install
the installer might error and default to the TEXT ONLY install
-- NO GUI ---
i would upgrade to at LEAST 1 gig ram

But it might install gnome ,if it dose 15 will be very slow with only 512 meg
the "slightly" lighter xfce gui might be a bit better , but not by much .

--- edit ----
i just checked the documentation
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...dware_Overview

THERE WILL BE NO GUI !!!
with only 512
640 is the Min.

you can still install fedora but it will be 100% text ONLY
you type in everything
-- no firefox
-- no surfing the web, not with ff or or any other gui.

Thanks a bunch for the information. Looks like I'm going to have to look into a barebones kit, and just dispose of everything that I'd been trying to work with.

Again, I thank you.. and hopefully my next installation will go smoother on a PC that will meet the minimum requirements easily!

You may want to look into trying again with a distribution that doesn't have such high requirements, such as Slackware or Debian.

Just one more quick question before I let this post die. The main reason I've been going so hard after Fedora is the book I purchased. I bought a book called the "Linux Pocket Guide" which is Fedora based, are most of the basics the same across the board? Also I tried installing Ubuntu, and it installed fine but once it loaded it told me I didn't meet the reqs. I'll start downloading Debian now though.

Thanks again.

The underlying works of most linux distros are pretty much the same as regard file structure, permissions, paths, and so on.

The main differences I have observed are

1. the choice of interface. Most use either Gnome or KDE, while Ubuntu is going off into Unity land. Some default to lighter weight desktops such as LXDE and XFCE. Others, usually those designed for server use, are text-only be default, but can use GUIs.

2. package management. Fedora and its derivatives use *.rpm, with the Yum package manager. Debian and its derivatives use *.deb, with the aptitude (apt-get and Synaptic) package manager. Slackware use *.tgz but does not have official repos, though Slackbuilds.org is the leading non-official package archive. Slackware also does not resolve dependencies. Then there are some distros with their own package managers, such as Arch with pacman.

3. system configuration files, meaning the files in the /etc directory. Debian and Fedora based distros use a System 5 methodology and Slackware and its descendants use a methodology more similar to BSD (and, to my mind, simpler and more straightforward).

Items 2 and 3 are where you will most likely find significant differences between what is contained in your Fedora book and what you will encounter in Debian.

Quite frankly, even though I am assiduously studying Fedora, I prefer either Debian or Slackware's approach to configuration over Fedora's.

Many persons consider Slackware to be little more challenging to the beginner because it won't offer to partition your drive for you and doesn't hold your hand. I think that's a plus. When you learn how to use Slackware, no other distro will ever intimidate you.

Me, I started with Slack, I'm glad I did, and it's still my favorite six years later.

Living without a GUI is not that hard: and you will be able to browse the web, but you will have to load a text-only browser such as 'lynx' to do it.

The lynx package is simply 'lynx'. If you have the 'updates' repo in your list, you can read all about lynx by typing "yum info lynx", and install it by typing "yum install lynx".

That said, I can't think of a compelling reason to live with the text-only limited install of Fedora rather than either 1) upgrade your memory: memory is cheap these days or 2) try one of the other distributions already mentioned, which require less RAM. But you did mention you have a book that uses Fedora for its examples, so that might be reason enough. You decide.