thanks to friar! but the installation document is not very explicit and in fact quite cryptic!
my questions:
- what to do with the bug in the BIOS announced by fedora7?
- do I have to create empty space before installation?
- the partitioning part is very obscure!! when I chose using the empty space what to do next?
- when creating the empty space can I use the partitioning supplied by Windows?
thanks
zoba

regarding partition... if u r not sure abt installing fedora or any linux distro, backup ur data in the FAT32 or NTFS partition then start installing linux... or else jus start creating a swap partition and a ext3 partition for / rather than creating partition for individual directory..once u r familiar with the partition structure n stuff, go ahead n play around with it...:-D...

installing Fedora as an operating system should be quite easy
there is no partitioning that you can do using MS products
there's PQmagic that might help you with that but for the beginning i would advise you not to use it but to rely on Fedora's partitioning tool
if you want to dual boot windows and Fedora then you might consider shrinking down some windows partitions to get at least 20 Gb of contiguous free space
while installing Fedora Linux you will be asked about how to partition your hard drive where you should choose automatic partitioning which has some more options like replace all Linux partitions and create new partitions or replace all partitions and create new partitions but from there you should choose use free space to create new partitions

that i think will help you to get started

if you chose to partition yourself you should know that fedora uses 3 partitions :

1. one partition mounted as /boot (boot partition) and should be 100 Mb
2. one swap partition (as the windows swap file - virtual memory) the maximum size for that is the computers memory x2 (if your PC has 256 Mb memory the maximum size for the swap partition would be 512 Mb)
3. one partition mounted as / (root partition - that's where everything else goes)

i put my swap partition to the end of the available free space
the other two partitions could be ext3 type

after completing the installation of Fedora you will get GRUB as boot manager to chose Linux or windows
if during install something went wrong (hopefully you did not erased your windows partitions that might contain important stuff) then boot up your PC from the windows(XP???) install CD where you enter in recovery mode and use the following commands:

fixmbr
fixboot

reboot and all is back as before and you may boot your windows again and also you may give it another try to install Fedora

You should also note that the last two partitions mentioned by Booboo are normally inside a Linux "logical volume" which will appear as a single partition on your disk. You can override this default, but if you accept the default partitioning setup, that's what you'll get.

This is worth noting because the "logical volume" default adds another level of abstraction to your physical drives, and requires using lvm (the "Logical Volume Management" package) to do most things you'd want to do with a partition manager. And, most significantly, applications like fsck cannot be run on the LV physical partition without destroying the LV contents. (I was burned by this.) To run the file system checker on a partition inside a LV, you must do it on the mapped volume in /dev/mapper/.... (Of course, the boot-time run of fsck is done correctly.)

thanks! I
brought the installation process to the end until I was asked to restart, it started but ended on a blue screen and stayed there! During the "restarting" appeared a bug report on the Bios : bug 08[00000000] . Thus, the installation failed! what remains is that the grub functions correctly and than I can go to windows without any problem!
what to do?
hoping for your help!
one more question: how to use bit.torrent?

Is this the installation document you used?

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f7/

It is available in several languages, so you can choose the one you know best.

Perhaps you should reinsert the installation CD you used and restart your computer. When the first screen appears, select the option to "rescue installed system"

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...tallation.html

Here is another helpful page:

http://linuxidiotnote.blogspot.com/

"If you install XP, then Fedora 7 on the same PC. Grub will be used as a loader for systems. However, If your XP corrupted, and re-installed. Grub will be lost. You can follow the operation listed below to resume Grub.

How to resume Grub on a XP/Fedora system:

After Boot-up using Fedora 7 Install Disk, there are four option:

- Install or upgrade an existing system
- Install or upgrade an existing system (text mode)
- Rescue installed system
- Boot from local drive

Select the 3rd option, Rescue installed system.

Follow the steps, until Rescue ask "Continue" to find your Linux installation and mount it ..., "Read-Only" or "Skip". Select "Skip".

Now you are in # shell.

type grub, the shell will change to grub>
....#grub

To check your Linux partition
grub> root (hd0,[TAB]

In my case, it's:
Possible partitions are:
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x07
Partition num: 1, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 2, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x8e

Actually I don't know the meaning. But I guess partition 1 is my Linux.

grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)

Now you can re-boot, and the Grub loader have been re-loaded."

F.Y.I. - Partition type 07 is a Windows NTFS volume and type 8e is the Logical Volume containing your swap and / logical partitions. (The last one is your "Linux" file system.) What's on the type 83 partition is just the /boot part of the / file system.

As I remarked above, the reason /boot is in its own partition is (as your listing illustrates) that GRUB doesn't "know" what a type 8e partition "means."

A couple of comments: First, if you're interested in doing so, you can give your Linux system rw access to your NTFS partition by installing the ntfs-3g driver and adding a line like the following to your /etc/fstab file:(Note that the /hd/c part of that line is my own naming of a directory I created in / for the attach point.)

And that illustrates my second point: The Linux file system is "monolithic" with everything listed a a "child" of /, with partitions looking no different from what Windows calls "directories." (This is in contrast with the Windows scheme where each partition is required to be on it's on "letter" location. I.e, A:\, C:\, etc.)

thanks to ehawk, but I really don't understand what he means. I can't use the line commands since my linux does not work!
latest is that I installed the 64 version, this time no bios bug, smooth sailing until the restart, then nothing at all, the screen is obscure, and the sound doesn't work. in fact the test on the nvdia pilot failed! there is a small button on the computer which indicates that the sound does not work. I have also a problem with eth0 since internet is connected through wifi to my pc!
help, please,
zoba

Fedora installation!
it seems i am at the end!! I have tried installing a x86_64 version, the installation process proceeds smoothly and then when rebooting the machine freezes! the only way then is to stop manually.
since I have windows vista, perhaps it is incompatible with Fedora? or is the portable, a hp pavilion tx 1240 newly acquired?
I have a sound problem on it, I don't seem to be able to pass the sound test! and an internet problem also: the machine is linked by wi-fi to the live box of the PC (on the windows side) and I don't know how to do that on Fedora.
When I start Fedora, I can see "hidd failed".
please help!

it seems the main installation problem on my hp pavilion tx 1240ef was about vga and acpi. adding "vga=0x317 acpi=off noacpi" to the kernel line in grub was enough to install the system.
There is however the sound problem, I am not getting sound from the system and the internet problem: I have the so-called "live-box" of France telecom on my PC and I should be able to connect with it via wireless (wi-fi) to internet, but what to do?
can I hope on some help?
zoba