Fedora Linux

The next screen, shown in Figure 1-28 , is used to select the software that will be installed. Use the checkboxes to select the categories of applications that you wish to have installed. To further refine the software selection, select the 'Customize now' option; this is recommended if you are installing on a system with minimal disk space or a slow Internet connection.

When installing from DVD or CD, the button labeled 'Add additional software repositories' can be used to add a Fedora Updates network repository to ensure that the latest versions of the Fedora Core packages are installed. This can be somewhat faster than installing the disc version of all packages and then updating the software after installation, but it requires a good Internet connection (or local repository). See Lab 5.3, 'Using Repositories,' for more information. 

Figure 1-28. Software selection screen 

Click Next to continue. If you selected 'Customize now,' you will see the screen shown in Figure 1-29 . Otherwise, skip ahead two paragraphs.

Figure 1-29. Software customization screen 

Select a category on the left side to see the package groups within that family on the right side. Use the checkboxes provided to select the groups you want. For even finer control, you can select a package group, click the 'Optional packages' button, then select the individual packages you wish to include from the window shown in Figure 1-30 .

Figure 1-30. Optional package selection screen  

 Click Next to continue. After a short time for dependency processing, the screen shown in Figure 1-31 will appear.

Figure 1-31. Installation confirmation  

This is the point of no return; once you click Next, the partition table, filesystems, and bootloader will all be modified. Once the installation process begins, it cannot be safely interrupted and must be allowed to run to completion. During the installation, a progress bar similar to the one in Figure 1-32 will be shown.

Bored? You can read the release notes during the installation; just click on the button in the lower-left corner of the screen. 

Figure 1-32. Installation progress indicator 

When the installation is complete, the confirmation message shown in Figure 1-33 is displayed. Remove the installation boot media, and then click Reboot to start up the new system.

On some systems, you may need to click Reboot and wait for the system to start the boot process before you can remove optical media. 

Figure 1-33. Completed installation 

1.3.1.11. First boot

The first time you boot your freshly installed Fedora system, you will be asked a few questions to finish up the initial configuration. The display shown in Figure 1-34 will greet you; as you work through the questions, the arrow on the lefthand side of the screen will move downward to indicate your progress.

Figure 1-34. First boot welcome screen

Click Forward to proceed to the license-agreement screen. Read the license carefully, and then click Yes or No to indicate whether you accept the license terms.

Click Forward to enter the firewall configuration screen. I strongly recommend that you leave the firewall enabled, and that you initially select only ssh as a trusted service. You can loosen your firewall to permit other inbound services later, as you set those services up.

Click Next to proceed to SELinux configuration. SELinux hardens the Linux kernel against attack. Although it can be a bit difficult to configure at times, the protection that it provides is well worth the extra effort. SELinux is covered in more detail in Lab 8.2, 'Using SELinux .' For now, leave the Modify SELinux Policy option at its default setting; you can always adjust SELinux later.

Click Forward to proceed to the date and time configuration screen. Select the current date by clicking on the calendar, and enter the current time into the fields provided.

If you have an always-on Internet connection, click on the Network Time Protocol tab. Select the checkbox labeled Enable Network Time Protocol. This will configure your system to communicate with timeservers on the Internet to keep the clock closely synchronized to official time. This is valuable because it ensures that time and date stamps on your system are always accurate.

You can edit the list of timeservers that can be contacted using the Add, Edit, and Remove buttons beside the server list. The NTP Server Pool Project maintains a pool of publicly accessible timeservers; the default server list ( 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org , 1.fedora.pool.ntp.org , and 2.fedora.pool.ntp.org ) configures your system to randomly select up to three timeservers from the pool at boot. To use a timeserver in your country, use your ISO country code as the hostname within the pool.ntp.org domain; I'm in Canada, so a server in my country could be found using the name ca.pool.ntp.org .

Click Next to proceed on to creating the first user. The root password that you entered during installation is used only for system administration and should not be used for day-to-day work. This screen lets you create the first user account; you can create as many additional accounts as you want later (see Lab 4.7, 'Managing Users and Groups').

Fill in the four fields on this screen:

Username

Choose a username that contains no spaces and starts with a letter. This name will be used for logging in and will also serve as the user's local email address (typically, this is not intended to replace the email address you got from your ISP or mail provider; it is generally used to receive system notices and other local messages). I recommend using only lowercase letters, digits, underscores, and periods. If you are setting up a home or personal system, first names work well; for a corporate server, full names in firstname.lastname form reduce the likelihood of confusion between users (now and in the future).

Full name

Enter the user's full name (for example, Chris Tyler ).

Password

Enter a password that is easy to remember and hard to guess. Just like the root password, using the first letter from each word plus the punctuation from an obscure line of text can be helpful (for example, FL:AcgtRHcd.