Fedora Core 1: A New Door Opens

In yesterday's Unix Vs. NT: 2004 I wrote about the problem I had with loading my Unix standard, FreeBSD on a new Dell Server I purchased. It just wouldn't load.

This is not the first computer I've had problems with loading FreeBSD. One of my clients replaced his old HP Net Server E 45 with a new IBM server. However, his old E 45 and new IBM were/are running Windows (NT and 2000 Server respectively). I had suggested we transform the E 45 into a Unix box for e-mail and as a Web server.

So I took the E 45 back to my office and proceeded to load FreeBSD, or so I thought. But I couldn't do it. After hours of research, I found that the EISA board wasn't compatible. Even with the kludge that was supposed to work, I couldn't get the software to load.

Fast forward about 60 days and, as I described in Unix Vs. NT: 2004 Unix Vs. NT: 2004, I was unable to load FreeBSD onto my new Dell. Jeffrey Posluns of SecuritySage Inc. had helped me in the past with Postfix, so I figured I'd give him a call and see if he had any insight.

He did, and it was Fedora Core 1. Fedora is the free version of Linux by Red Hat. It is essentially Red Hat 10, without the MSRP.Loading Fedora was mostly painless, with the loader giving the loadee several options as to how or what type of computer you want: workstation or server. Based on your selection, the loader will pre-determine suggestions on hard drive formatting as well as packages to load.

I am not a Linux guy, but I'm learning quickly and quickly understanding why Linux has gained such a strong foothold.

Looking for Linux? Look at Fedora Core 1 (by the way, I'm informed Fedora Core 2 is on its way).