Problem with Fedora 14 installation

[choucete]

Hi, I've decided to give Fedora a try after many years using Slackware since at my new workplace they give me the option to use Linux and Fedora is one of the supported platforms. Last week I installed a Fedora 13 from an iso into a VMware. I had a graphical install and if my memory is not failing it installed around 1205 packages, then booted directly into Gnome.

Now, at home I downloaded the full Fedora 14 DVD for i386, burned the iso to a dvd and tried installing on my test box, a Pentium III, 192 RAM, 30Gb hard drive and a 3D Blaster Banshee Video card. It boots and I get to the installation, but the problem is that I don't get the graphical install such as the one shown here: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Installation_Guide/sn-welcome-x86.html

At first I just kept going ahead, but it installed only 198 packages and after reboot never got to Gnome, only to a console. The torrent I downloaded is the i386 / Install DVD from here: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all

What am I doing wrong? Could it be due to the box specs? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

[smr54]

I think the gui install requires 512MB of RAM, so it could be the specs. 198 packages sounds like the minimal install, if I remember correctly.

Whether a GUI can be run afterwards, I'm not sure, but Gnome would probably be very slow.

Not sure what to suggest. You might be able to get a gui working with fluxbox, openbox, or another minimal window manager. Note that those are very different from what you may be used to, depending what you used with Slackware. They'll give you an X environment, and if you right click, you'll have the option to run a terminal and you can call programs from there.

You might also try the LXDE desktop environment, a reasonable compromise, which runs with openbox and is closer to the typical desktop (though somewhat sparser.)

To install that you can try

yum install @lxde-desktop

I think this will bring in the X org packages required.

However, like many of the more current, desktop oriented, distributions, Fedora isn't aimed at the PIII, less than 200MB of RAM machine, so this might be a losing battle.

[choucete]

Thanks a lot for your reply! I thought the specs could be the reason, but wasn't sure.

It doesn't worry me that much since it was just a test install, I'll give it a try on some VM and see what happens.

I'll let you know how it works out. :)

[choucete]

Just wanted to let you know that I'm running Fedora 14 on the laptop they gave me at work (lenovo T410). You were totally right and here I got a graphical install and all the packages.

[smr54]

Thanks for the followup. Glad it worked out.