I wanted to try out and review the new Fedora, but I’ll pass. I did actually download the Fedora Live CD, but it refused to install, in a way that would be amusing if it wasn’t frustrating. I chose ext4 as the filesystem, but the installer wouldn’t accept that. Apparently, Fedora 11 needs a ext3 formatted boot partition, since the grub that comes with it doesn’t support booting from an ext4 one.
Okay, but the grub that comes with Arch does, and is installed in my MBR, which I didn’t want to overwrite in any case. In other words, I did not need a seperate boot partition, but skipping the error simply wasn’t possible.
No sweat, I thought, I’ll just format the partition as ext3. Alas, the Live CD doesn’t support that. You need one of the other install media for that.
*groan*
What’s more, the reviews I read of Fedora 11 aren’t very positive, so I’ll sit this one out.
San
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The recommended option is to have a small /boot, say 200 MB formatted as Ext3 and rest of it as Ext4
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ext4_in_Fedora_11
If you just leave the default alone it installs fine. I have a 210MB boot partition formatted as ext3, and the rest of my hard drive is ext4. I thought the installation process was very easy. I also think that installing Fedora 11 is worth it, and I enjoy it more than I did fedora 10.
If your live system is online, you can use yum to install the tools to do the reformat without resorting to other install media.
Mike:
That’s interesting. Can you tell me how?
Alas. I love my eyecandy. I love fast boot times. I love all the latest goodies. However, I am a dinosaur when it comes to how I format my partitions.
Until 90% of the boot and recover cd’s out there support ext4 and there is a project like the ext2 for XP that can read ext4. I am keeping away from it.
I don’t like getting stuck with a memory stick and 3 live CD’s and none of them can read my hard drive.
So to be clear: everyone who only support ext3…get with the program!!!
[…] as I mentioned, following up on Fedora 11 release stuff. Sadly, there’ve been a few very negative reviews and comments, based on problems with the partitioning stage of […]
It never ceases to amaze me how different we experience installations. I installed F11 after a disk crash and used an empty hard disk. First the live CD, one never knows, and then the installation. Worked like a charm. I mean, ok, it knows it has to make a small boot partition in ext3, and it does just that. The system boots fast, is rock stable, and is overall an even better experience than F10. Keep in mind I did this on an empty hard disk. Now… what were the arguments against using a small ext3 boot partition?
Johan:
I have a partition table I want to keep…one partition for my main system, another for testing distribution, a huge one for all my documents and the last one is a swap partition. There’s no room for an extra boot partition, and in any case I’m veeeeery careful before letting software change my partition table.
For testing fedora it wasn’t worth it. I ended up using the netinstall iso.
[…] to the ones that are based on Debian. Apt just is simpler and faster to me than rpm. But since I reviewed Fedora 11 (or tried to, in any case), I thought I’d have a go at the other big two RPM distributions: […]
[…] 11 Some posts to reduce Fedora peoples' smugness: Fedora 11 Fails to Impress | IT News Today Fedora 11: No review Celettu’s Weblog PRINT HEAD Fedora 11 test updates for […]
I am surprised you had problems installing F11. I am a linux newbie – infact F11 is my first switch out of Windows and i didn’t have any issues with installation! Installer did complain about Ext4 for boot part’, but with Ext3 it went fine. Rest of it was intuitive and happened in a breeze.
Cheers to the Fed’ community !
Wow Thats Brilliant! you see, this is what happens when developers rush! i’m passing on fedora 11! i hope they can do it right the next time! i believe in you Red Hat!