As many of you know, a while back I was converted to Ubuntu. Currently running (happily I might add) Ubuntu 7.10, I have had no need to return to my Red Hat roots. Of course being a writer in this industry, it behoves me to make sure I am up to date on the latest, greatest software. So I decided it was necessary that I install Fedora 9 and see if it was worthy of me betraying the hug-worthy Ubuntu community and head back to the distribution based on the distribution that weaned me from Windows.

And thus I gave Fedora 9 a try. How did it go? Let’s take a look.

Installation

One of my biggest grips of late is how finicky the Fedora isos are. I have had many burned images that had bad md5 or were corrupt or simply wouldn’t install. Fedora 9 was no exception. After burning all SIX installation cds (I have no usable DVD burner at the moment) I found that disk 2 gave me trouble. So I reburned disk 2 and gave it another try. No luck. Now this image came directly from the Fedora site - not a mirror. So I downloaded the image once again only to find the md5 was not with the image. No problem, I let the install continue and that it did.
And finally, after quite a long time (much longer than I have grown accustomed to with Ubuntu), Fedora 9 was up and running.

First Impressions