What is Live CD "Install to Hard Drive"?

[ToddAndMargo]

Hi All,

I was at a customer's site a few days ago. It is an institution. They got donated a used XP computer. Their intentions is for guests at their facility to use it. Problem: Windows Genuine Advantage tagged the pirate copy of XP really well. I called M$ and they said the licenses number was a big abuse number and that for $149.00 they would fix it for the. My customer can not afford it.

So, I put FC14 Xfce live cd into their dvd and let them use that. They seem to like it, although it is a bit slow running off a DVD.

And, I noticed that the desktop has an icon called "Install to Hard Drive". What does that icon do? Does it wipes out the NTFS partition and essentially put the Live CD on to the hard drive? (The customer would love that and I would not have to do a group install of Xfce.)

Many thanks,
-T

[bbfuller]

Hello ToddAndMargo

"Install to Hard Drive" does exactly that. It leaves you with a working version of Fedora booting directly from the hard disk.

There are several options during the install process where you can determine how it goes onto your hard disk.

One will be to wipe the hard disk and make Linux the only operating system.

Another will offer the chance to resize the Windows partition to make space for Linux and install a boot menu to allow choice between Linux and Windows.

A third will offer the chance to install into free space - if there is any - and give you the option of choosing between the two operating systems.

Personally, I've never had much luck shrinking the Windows partition during the install, not that I've tried it that way recently, I usually have a copy of "PartedMagic" to hand. That's another Linux LiveCD that has the GParted linux partitioning tool as its centerpiece. Use that to shrink the Windows partition and then use the third option above.

Post back if you want to talk about that anymore.

[ToddAndMargo]

Thank you! I use gparted all the time. In this instance, since the M$ stuff is counterfeit, I will happily just wipe it all.

-T