Linux Dummies 9th

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Part VI: Appendixes
If you don’t have a DVD-ROM drive, you have a few options:
✓ If you want to try out Ubuntu, you can go to the Ubuntu site (www.
ubuntu.com) to download the LiveCD and burn it yourself (as discussed
in Chapter 3).
✓ If you want to install the full Fedora system, you have go to the Fedora
Project site (http://fedoraproject.org) and download the CD
images for Fedora 11 and burn them yourself. This is a lot of downloading,
so that may not be your favorite choice.
✓ Go to the Fedora site and download the Fedora LiveCD image, which
doesn’t give you a full version you can install on your computer permanently,
but is just one CD that you can boot directly into Linux without
needing installation.
✓ Go to a site like CheapBytes (www.cheapbytes.com) and order the
Ubuntu or Fedora CDs for around $10 — we can’t anticipate what they’ll
charge, so don’t hurt us if we’re wrong.
If you download the CD images to burn, make sure that you tell your CD
burner you’re working with ISO images (usually the option has something to
do with the word “image”). If you burn the CD and find that it contains just one
big file (the ISO file), it will not work. The ISO image actually contains all the
files that would be on the CD, so if you put the CD in and find that it contains
many files, the CD was created properly.
System Requirements
Make sure that your computer meets the following minimum system requirements.
If your computer doesn’t match most of these requirements, you may
have problems when using the contents of the DVD-ROMs:
✓ A PC with an Intel-compatible Pentium-class processor: We recommend
a 400 MHz Pentium IV or better for using Graphical mode,
although for a heavy-use desktop system, “more is better.”
✓ At least 256MB of RAM: You need at least 192MB of RAM for Graphical
mode. (Linux can handle as much RAM as you can fit into a typical computer,
and more is almost always better than less.)
✓ At least 1GB of hard drive space: We recommend 10GB if you want to
install all the software from the DVD. You need less space if you don’t
install every program, but you should go ahead and make more than
10GB of space available, to give yourself more options and room for file
storage. Again, more is better.
✓ A DVD-ROM drive — double-speed (2x) or faster: The faster the DVD-
ROM drive, the faster your installation experience.