Red Hat Fedora Core 4 on a Laptop
 

Hi all

I have been considering installing Red Hat Fedora Core 4 on my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop as the main operating system, however I have heard that one of the issues with Linux is that it may not have drivers/support for certain graphics/sound cards. Could anyone (briefly) explain what I might encounter if I have Linux as the main operating system?

I have experimented with using VMWARE installed in Windows XP and installing Linux in the virtual machine (on my desktop computer), however I could never get the network side of things working and could not see any files or the network (but incidentally the internet did work). This experience is what is suggesting I go for Linux being the standalone operating system on my laptop.

I am familiar with Linux from the user point of view, but not from the installer/administrator point of view.

Any help would be great.

Thanks

Fedora Core 4 does not exist any more. Fedora 7 and Fedora 8 are the current releases, and Fedora 9 is around the corner. You won't find any support for Fedora 4 from the Fedora community. Grab yourself a copy of the F8 DVD :)

As for linux driver/hardware support... its patchy... some areas its excellent, others its less so. Also, it varies between distros because some distros are "bleeding edge" and therefore support new hardware, and some distros are more stable/older and therefore don't support a lot of new hardware. A new release of Fedora (8 preferably) would be a good choice, especially for a laptop - you'll find that most things work although some take more configuration and time to make work than others... its all a good learning process though and there is tons of support available through various channels for when things don't go right.

Grab F8 and go for it!

Welcome to LQ!!

One quibble with the above: Get the Fedora 8 CD--not DVD. Assuming a reasonable internet connection, it's better to install extra stuff after the basic system is working. Also, it may be easier to reliably burn CDs than DVDs

Most modern distros have support for all the most common hardware. Post the details of any situations you run into. Be sure to include the exact name, model #, etc. for the relevant hardware.