Hello,

I am trying to install Linux (Fedora) on my PC, which is at the DOS level right now. The PC has a CD drive and a floppy drive, along with hard disk.

I have downlaoded ISO images, three of them, and have burned them onto separate CDs. I am baffled as what to do next! I have scoured the documentation and don't have a clue.

When I insert the disc #1 and reset the PC, it does not boot from the CD.

- Are ISO images suppose to be bootable?
- How do I create a bootable CD?
- Did I download the right files?

I have a good knowledge of Unix and DOS. However, not being able to find the appropriate documentation is very frustrating.

thanks

Rauf

1.) make sure you have burned the images onto the disks and not the ISO files themselves.

2.) Insert CD 1 into drive
3.) Reboot
4.) Enjoy

thanks. I know now I was on the wrong path.

How do I burn images on the CD from the ISO files?

The BIOS has to be set to boot from CDROM drive before the hard drive

Burn with Roxio Easy CD Creator 5. Thats what I used for my Fedora Core 1 ISO images.
(It even worked when I would get constant buffer underruns burning anything else.)

Windoze blows d00d. Go total Linux! I did. I was once a total n00b too.

Thanks. The BIOS is set to boot from the CDROM drive before the hard disk.

What utility I use to convert the ISO files into images. My computer is at the DOS level.

Or, Do I need to download files other than the ISO images?

ISO files are images. You need to use a burn cd from image option on the burning software and then select the image file to burn. Both Roxio and Nero will do that.

I don't know what type of computer you are using to burn the disks. You could even either right clicking on the .iso file. There may be a menu entry to burn the image to cd. Double clicking may work also.

http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html - should be of help.

Thanks all for your help.

This is where I went wrong: I dowloaded ISO files and instead of BURNING them on a CD, I COPIED the three ISO files on individual CDs.

I was using an old CD burn software (SpeedyCD). Even though it gave option to BURN a CD, it copied the ISO file as it is to the CD.

That is why I was baffled out of my mind how in the world can a system boot from a file with extension .iso :-)

Anyways, I used NERO. Downloaded it from download.com... It burned iso files to the CD without any problem.

My new PC had Windows XP-Pro pre-loaded. I had to remove XP from the system, repartitioned the disk with an old windows 98 CD (fdisk). I used 30G for XP and rest of the 50G on the same disk for RedHat 9.0

I installed XP first in its allocated partition, allowing XP to format only its partition. All the time during and after installation, XP kept on begging, "Drive E is not formatted.. should I format it". I rejected each and every request brutaly :-)

After the XP installation, I installed RedHat 9.0 from the disks. First I selected the "auto-partition" option and installed the whole OS. Then I went to install other packages and found out that boot partition did not have enuough space for additional packages.

Then I re-installed Linux from scratch. This time, I selected "manual partition" with the following settings:

Device: Mount: Type: Size (comments)
/dev/hda
/dev/hda1:: NTFS:29996 (for XP)
/dev/hda2:/boot:ext3:5000
/dev/hda3:/:ext3:40000
/dev/hda4::extended:1020
/dev/hda5::swap:1020

After that, the installation of the OS and additional packages invloved just staring at the screen while Linux was doing its work. The system is up and running.

One little problem: the system is not able to detect sound card. As a result of that, it will not play any music CD or record any sound from the microphone. The same sound card is shown to be available when the PC is booted with XP.

I will search other forums for the sound card help. If any of you has any suggestions, please post.

Thanks

Rauf