Q about installing F10 from Live DVD

[Kevin Kofler]

Dean S. Messing wrote:
> I presume that the machine will "just come up", running in-memory from
> the Live Image on the DVD. (Is that right?) So, how does one get the
> in-memory system onto a root partition?  Does the Anaconda Installer
> get involved in the process so that a "regular install" occurs using
> the Live data as source?

The installer comes up, with some of the screens (notably package selection)
unavailable because they aren't applicable to how the live system is
installed.

What happens is that Anaconda comes up as usual, it will let you do the
partitioning, then instead of installing the packages onto the system as it
does for a regular install, it will just dd the live image to your /
partition and resize it to the desired size.

When working with live images, the best solution is to use the CD-sized
image for the desktop you intend to primarily run (GNOME, KDE 4 and XFCE
images are available), then customize your packages post install (by
installing the packages you want from the repository and removing those you
don't want). For KDE users, the KDE live image is the recommended way to
install Fedora, though KDE is also available on the installer DVD.

Note that you cannot use a live image to upgrade an existing installation of
Fedora, so there are 3 possibilities:
1. keep a separate /home partition (and possibly /root if you want to
preserve root's stuff as well) and reinstall from the current live image at
each release. The drawback of this approach is that you lose any systemwide
configuration and that you have to customize your installed package set
again at each release.
2. use the live image for the initial install, then use some other method
(e.g. preupgrade) to upgrade to newer Fedora releases.
3. don't use the live image at all. ;-)
My personal favorite is option 2.

        Kevin Kofler