I have Fedora 16 on a cd disk. I have Windows XP Professional on my hard drive. Fedora boots up with no problem. I want to remove Windows XP completely from my hard drive. Questions...1)Will Fedora 16 boot up in an empty hard drive? 2)Does Fedora have it's own Browser built into it? 3)Once Windows XP is deleted, Will I be able to upload any programs into Fedora 16, which I have backed up from Windows XP?

I look forward to receiving anyone's reply.

Thanks,

fed16user

1. Fedora will boot up from Live CD or Live USB on an empty hard drive (I'm assuming you mean the primary hard drive).
2. Fedora comes with Firefox by default. You can find out what default software comes with Fedora here.
3. You *might* be able to if you can get WINE and the necessary Windows dlls and programs from Winetricks installed. Or you can find Linux equivalents.

To expand on what xjonquilx said, Windows programs will not run on Linux; they do not speak Linux and Linux does not speak Windows.

You may be able to run them using Wine, which enables Windows program APIs to communicate with Linux. But you may not. It is best to find native Linux programs to accomplish your goals.

You can learn more about Wine here: http://www.winehq.org/ The AppDB section lists a number of programs and how well they run under Wine. http://appdb.winehq.org/

I want to apologize, for not replying sooner. Thank you Xjonquix and Frankbell for your information. To be sure I am doing the correct steps. I will format drive C (hard-drive). Then, even though the hard drive is empty, I will be able to incert my Fedora 16 CD and boot-up Fedora 16?Correct? I can then, download Linux software that is on the alternatives list. The only software I am concerned on having access to is a word processor, mplayer or similar, and a pdf reader. I can always excess my email accounts via the internet. Based on what I have shared with you, is there other software you think might be useful?

Thanks again,

fed16user

You would set your computer BIOS to boot from the CD drive, put the Fedora CD in and let it boot. Downloading software should be done from the Fedora repositories to prevent compatibility problems. You should be able to get all the information you need by using the Search function here at LQ. If you don't, google. Word processing, pdf reader and media player should come standard with the installation. I'm not a Fedora user so I'm not sure which specific programs but I'm sure someone else who is a Fedora user can supply that info.

To Yancek, thank you for your reply. I am not very computer savy as you can see. I assume I am to set my BIOS to boot up from my CD drive, before , I format C drive? What I do not understand is ...Why currently, when my BIOS ,is not, set to boot from the cd drive...the Fedora 16 cd is booting up. Should you know the answer, will you please explain? Thank you for your time and PC education.

Regards,
fed16user

Basically, you don't need to format the hard drive... When you install Fedora it will do that for you.
To do an install, you have to boot off the Install Media, generally a CD or DVD.
When a PC boots up, it should (briefly) tell you which key to press to get into the BIOS if its not already set to boot off CD/DVD drive.
Often you have to hit/hold down the Delete key or one of the Fn keys eg F2.
Try a reboot and watch carefully.
Alternately, tell us what make / model you have and we can probably tell you the key or just google it.

HTH

PS Home site for Fedora https://fedoraproject.org/

I'd keep Windows if I were you, and install Fedora alongside it (double booting, we call it). After all, you paid for Windows when you bought the computer, and you never know whether it might come in handy. I've only got one Windows program I need, but it's been very tricky getting it to work with Wine (my computers don't have Windows).

Yes keeping windows might be a good idea.
However if you want to install fedora just boot from the CD like you have been doing it and just select install. Don't worry about setting up BIOS it looks like it is already set to do that anyway.
Proceed with the installation
The installer will ask you if you want to use the entire disk and if that is what you want to do then go for it.

After installation you will have a web browser, a PDF reader, and a word processor and a ton of more program for different tasks.

Good luck to you

Fedora comes with LibreOffice (an office suite similar to MS Office), Banshee (a media player), whatever Gnome's standard PDF reader is called (I can't remember), Evolution (an email client similar to MS Outlook), and Firefox (a web browser). If that's all you need you should be very happy with Fedora.

Gnome standard PDF reader is Evince. However that is assuming his install CD is the Gnome edition

Here is the link if somebody wants fedora with different graphical interface http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options

isnt totem the default media player... anyways i uninstalled it and installed xine, mplayer and vlc.

the default pdf veiwer is called evince.

to the original poster: i would suggest using the live-usb creator to testdrive fedora before you permanently install it to your harddrive. else you could just boot from the cd or usb then click on the 'install-fedora-to-your-harddrive' icon in the hot corner menu -> activities -> system tools.

i havent installed it in a long time but it is pretty self-explanatory. in the step where it asks where to install fedora it will give you the choice to install alongside other operating systems or to take over the entire drive.