Formatting HDD

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2006 at 19:10:24 +0100,
  horse <no-reply-gw at fcp.homelinux.org> wrote:
> I am fed up with internet malware and have been told that a Linux-based program gets little or none.

I wouldn't recommend switching for this reason alone. It is possible to use
a Windows system safely, it is just harder because Microsoft believes it
is a good idea to make it easy for people to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will be some pain in switching over that you need to balance against
what you are saving.

> I loaded the complete DVD of Fedora Core 4 on my old Fujitsu laptop. It went smoothly. The HDD is 10Gb and FC4 loaded about 5Gb!
> 
> Most of it is superfluous to my requirements. I intend using FC4 on the laptop as the only internet-facing computer in my 3-computer network until I become more comfortable with FC4. Who knows, I'd eventually like to completely migrate away from the evil empire (Microsoft).

FC5 is going to be released Monday. You might want to wait until then to do
your install.

> My questions:
> 1. How do I format the HDD so I can start with a fresh and minimal installation.

When you install Fedora, you can let it repartition the disk for you. If you
don't want you previous installations, this is probably a good idea.

> 2. I only want to access the internet, use Fedora's version of Outlook as an email client, use Fedora's 'Word' program, and use Adobe Reader.

When you do the install, you can choose not to install packages you don't
want or need. FC5 might be a bit simpler for doing this than fedora was.

There are several options for email clients. Since I use one you probably
don't want to use, I'll let others make recommendations. Open Office
provides comparable to Microsoft office and its writer program would be the
equivalent of MS Word. There are other alternatives available if you want
something lighter. Fedora only includes "Free" software and won't have
Adobe's PDF viewer. I use xpdf, but there are other PDF viewers available.