Fedora 2 / what other distros would you recommend?
 

i 'm sure that this is addressed somewhere but this is my first post...i figure i'll ask a question then start reading what people have written.

I recently bought a book entitled Red Hat Fedora 2 (first printed Aug 2004) it includes the Fedora Core 2 as well as the "Publisher's edition"(whatever that is) i decided to pay for the book as i am new to computer programming and i figured that it would help me to go step by step with a hard copy in front of me as i slough off windows and try on linux.

but as i was perusing the web i have found many warnings mostly from May 2004 saying that Fedora 2 does not respect a partitioned hard drive. It is my plan to indeed partition my harddrive since i am not yet confident in my ability to get linux up and running very quickly (though i am greatly looking forward to learning as i go along). So i am thinking i will take the book back as that sounds like a problem i will not enjoy encountering

what distro(s) would you recommend for a newbie who is not much of a programmer (but is an accountant and very detail oriented) and who uses mainly the office suite and web browsing capabilities when computing. though i do indeed plan on crafting a website with linux once i get things up and running?

I run a toshiba satellite laptop
intel pentium 4 processor
internal modem/cable internet connection
25 Gb
256 K ram

thanks up front for any advice....

Hey where did you find the book at, if I might ask? I run Fedora Core 3 and would like some hardcopy info on Fedora. I personally like Mandrake for it's ease of migration. I have run Fedora Core 2 and 3 and have found both of them a little buggy but very good overall. I have a second machine on Mandrake 10 and it has been really good to me. About any of the distros will work for general office applications and web browsing just fine. I myself like the speed and the learning experience on my older 1.1 gig AMD machines. Good luck with whichever choice you make and remember it isn't harder than windoze to learn, just different.

the book is published by Sams
"Red Hat Fedora 2" by Bill Ball and Hoyt Duff
i bought it at a store called Books-a-million here in florida, but they sell online too

Hoyt Duff is a contibutor at fedoranews.org.

Thanks for the information.

To answer the OP's question, you shpould probably just download the ISOs for FC3. 99% of it will be the same as FC2. Also, there's an extremely simple fix for the FC2 dual-boot bug, which a google search will find for you.