I've personally never used Fedora Core, but I have used Red Hat 9 - the predecessor to Fedora Core 1, and not that much has changed. I'll tell you some stuff about it: it tends to include A LOT of software, a lot more than you'll need.
Well, just about all Linux distros can look that way when properly configured. Any Linux distro can run just about any window manager, such as KDE or Gnome. KDE is certainly larger, but it can handle more special effects and is often more suited towards programmers. I prefer Enlightenment as my window manager.

*Cough*, *cough* Fedora Core isn't exactly lightweight, as previously mentioned, it's a monster of a distro, and won't likely run much faster than Windows unless you tweak it heavily. However, if you've got a fast computer it won't be too bothersome. But just to let you know: no matter how fast the distro seems to be, the load times for Linux are always longer than Windows.

I've never used Google Desktop Search, but no I don't think Fedora comes with one. Knowing Linux though, it's highly probable that one has been made for Linux. Google is your friend.

Fedora Core is pretty good at detecting your partition settings and setting up GRUB for dual-boot. Several things: you do know that you have to shrink your existing partition that Windows is installed on if you don't have any unpartitioned hard disk space? And also, although Linux (Fedora Core included) can read and write very nicely to the older Fat32-formatted partitions, it's limited to read-only on the newer NTFS partitions.

Depends on what hardware you have. Generally, standard hardware will be accepted by most brands of Linux, and Fedora Core usually doesn't require much if any tweaking to detect the less important peripherals, such as your printer or modem.

Another popular distro is Ubuntu, which is also very good at detecting hardware, but I find that it's often over-simplified and is somewhat bloated like Fedora Core. If you want a truly fast distro but still easy to use, go with pure Debian. It's one of the oldest around, and has good features without sacrificing speed.

Hope this helps

I do like my software


OK, so when ever I have tried to install "special effects" on windows they always to out really bad and riddled with viruses and bugs. Could you possibly recommend me a few different ones.

Yeah I know that from past experience because the load up goes through all those checks. I am really bothered about how fast it is when it is running. I guess that will be superior to windows?

Google is my friend, one of my only friends (joke) I was just hoping for the best kind of hoping for too much.

Is dual booting made easier over twohard drives? I can do that and that is what I was planning to do?

OK this is the sort of stuff I need to put in, it is all pretty well know stuff:

• Creative Sound Card
• Nvidia Graphics Card
• Wacom Graphics Tablet
• Microsoft wireless mouse and keyboard
• Trust web cam (I don't really care about that though)
• Normal LAN network
• Canon Scanner
• Ipod
• Bluetooth Dongle

Will they work?

I say that because I had real problems before getting my laptop to play any sounds with suse.

Ubuntu is nasty, it is way to simple!



Thank you very very much for your help and time. Thanks for all that info.

Well, you don't have much to worry about in term of malware, as viruses are practically non-existent in Linux. I'd recommend Gnome or Enlightenment if you want a fast desktop manager. Gnome has more add-ons and skins available, so choose that if you like to customize your environment a lot - just head over to www.gnome-look.org. I'd only recommend KDE if you need tons and tons of eye candy, and have lots of memory.

Meh... On my old clunker PII, Red Hat was slower than Win98, however Fedora Core will likely be faster than Windows XP, just don't expect that much of a speed improvement. If you want a truly fast distro, just go with plain old Debian - or Slackware.

The actual installation is definitely easier; no messing around with partitions, and there's a lot lower chance that the Linux installer will wipe out your Windows partition.

However, the dual-boot setup is more prone to problems when Linux resides on a second hard drive. They key is to make sure that GRUB (the bootloader) gets installed on the Primary Master - the hard drive that the BIOS checks for an operating system. Then GRUB find the kernel image on the Primary Slave, and Linux loads. Generally, the Red Hat installer detects everything perfectly and it works - and if it doesn't, just come here for help.

Your NVidia graphics card will work initally, although Fedora will use a generic display driver, so it won't take full capability of the card. Once everything's working properly, you should download and install a dedicated driver from NVidia.

Your tablet probably won't have problems being detected under Fedora Core - but if it does, see this page. Keyboard and mouse should be painless; your Canon scanner *should* work, although it might require tweaking. Your iPod will most definitely not work; thanks to Apple. Bluetooth should work fine.

Hmm... Originally Red Hat didn't detect my sound card; it was only after I did a bit of modprobing and then uncommented a line in the module-loading file (I can't remember what it's called) that it worked. Probably the best thing you can do if it doesn't work is to google the exact model of your soundcard and "linux drivers", and you'll get a help page on how to set it up.

Finally, someone who has the same point-of-view as me!

No problem - I do it all the time.

Thanks for your excellent help and you have cleared all my queries up nicely. I know who to ask if I have any problems whn i install it. Thanks again!!!

If you like the idea of fedora take a look at SuSE but bear in mind thats its updater is currently broken but its very nice (just about on a par with vista)

Beware as Fedora has quite high system requyirements but it is good for beginers

But Suse costs money and when I used it when it was free I had some compatability issues. So I think I will just try fedora for the mo. I am yet to find some time to do it though...

OpenSuSE is to SuSE what Fedora is to RedHat

Opensuse = free
Fedora = free

Suse enterprise = costs money
Redhat enterprise = costs money

personally, i favour Ubuntu over FC or oS. Simply because I like being able to run

apt-get install software

Yeah granted I could run YUM, or run apt-get on fc and vice versa, but Ubuntu just has more standing at the moment. Its clean, its smart, the install is only 1 ISO, and the people who use it, and help are just more friendlier

i prefer debian etch netinbstall to ubuntu (install like 100mb then use APT-GET) as its faster