Fedora Core: Maybe Later

I've abandoned trying to install Fedora Core 5 for now. The last straw was when I tried to do a complete reinstall of the system:

• If I tried doing a "Custom Install" the system hung while searching for the package list.
• If I tried doing a "Workstation Install" the system hung.
• If I tried doing the default install, I got a little further. I got a message that Fedora couldn't unmount my CD, and I should go to tty2 (the second terminal screen) to see if it was mounted.
  • First of all, I was working from the DVD, not the CDs
  • Second, when I went to tty2, I saw a "#", the system prompt, with no error messages. This is a Good Thing. But when I entered the "df" command the system hung again.

Now this last problem has been mentioned (you'll have to search for it) and has been reported to bugzilla. Now maybe I should have stayed and debugged the problem, but I had a hosed system with no way to get a new version of Fedora Core 5 installed on it. If I had another box to play with ... maybe in a week or two, I'm working on it.

I could have gone back to FC4, but that didn't seem particularly worthwhile, especially since I would have had to do about 500 software updates to bring my system back up to where it was last week. So for now I'm abandoning Fedora Core. I may (and honestly, most likely) come back to Fedora/Red Hat, where I've been almost since I started using Linux, but I'm going to do a Monty Python and try something completely different — well, as completely different as one can be in Linux: I'm going to install Ubuntu.

Thus, this post marks the end of the Working With Fedora Core series, at least for now. Starting soon, at a website near you, will be Working With Ubuntu Linux. Stay tuned, boys and girls.