Draft document on burning ISO images

[Timothy Murphy]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>> I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing Fedora are
>> more adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for.
> 
> Considering the flood of questions every release, I dont think so.
> Providing good detailed documentation is not a question of credit but
> guidance.

I would have thought that one could say everything about burnings ISOs
in a few sentences;
it hardly seems to me to warrant a separate document.

My view would be that a document on how _not_ to burn ISOs,
ie how to install Fedora without using CDs (or DVDs)
would be much more useful.

I know there is a section in the Installation Guide
on Alternative Installation Methods,
but it strikes me as rather esoteric -
eg I would prefer to read the actual commands one has to give
if using PXEboot, for example.

I've had a surprising amount of trouble with the FC-5 CDs -
quite possibly due to my CD-burning hardware -
and this has led me to wonder if too much emphasis
is not put on CDs as installation medium.

If you have only one machine, is it really worth burning a CD?
Many people have huge disks nowadays,
so if you have to download the ISOs,
isn't it just as simple (and more reliable, in my case at least)
to install from hard disk?
And if you have lots of machines,
isn't a USB drive as easy to use today as CDs?

Just a few, slightly OT, thoughts.

PS I'm very happy with FC-5, thanks -
it does seem to me that each FC distribution is slightly better,
although I would worry that they are also getting more complicated.

I'm also very impressed with the effort being put into documentation.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland