Choosing computer hardware to Install Fedora 12

This may not really be a choice. You may just have an old PC lying around that you want to try Fedora on. Or you may have a killer workstation with some extra disk space and want to try out Fedora on a separate partition or whole disk. To install the 32-bit PC version of Fedora successfully (that is, the version on the accompanying DVD), the computer must have the following:

• x86 processor — Your computer needs an Intel-compatible CPU. With the latest version, Fedora recommends that you at least have a Pentium-class processor to run Fedora. For a text-only installation, a 200 MHz Pentium is the minimum, while a 400 MHz Pentium II is the minimum for a GUI installation.

• DVD or CD-ROM drive — You need to be able to boot up the installation process from a DVD, CD-ROM, or other bootable drive. (You can also boot from a USB flash memory drive by using the livecd-tools package to build an installable image for your USB device from the live CD or another minimal boot image.) Once you have booted from one of the media just described, you can use the Internet or a LAN connection to install Fedora software packages from a server on the network, or you can figure out a way to copy the contents of the DVD to a local hard disk to install from there.

• Hard disk — The minimum amount of space you need varies depending on the installation type and packages you select. If you are an inexperienced user, you want at least 2.3GB of space so you can get the GUI (with some Office and Productivity apps) or 3GB if you want to do software development. Although different install types are no longer supported in Fedora, the following items roughly indicate how much disk space you need to install different types of desktop or server systems:
• Office and Productivity — Requires 2.3GB of disk space.
• Software Development — Requires 3.0GB of disk space.
• Web Server — Requires 1.1GB of disk space.
• Minimal — Requires at least 620MB of disk space.

• RAM — You should have at least 128MB of RAM to install Fedora (text mode only). If you are running in graphical mode, you will want at least 192MB. The recommended minimum RAM (for decent performance) for GUI mode is at least 256MB.

• Keyboard and monitor — Although this seems obvious, the truth is that you need only a keyboard and monitor during installation. You can operate Fedora quite well over a
LAN using either a shell interface from a network login or an X terminal. For the really advanced, it is even possible to do a graphical network install over VNC (virtual network computing), a serial console, or an integrated lights out (ILO) solution to do a headless install.

Fedora versions, are available for the AMD64 architecture and PowerPC. The minimum PowerPC hardware supported is a PowerPC G3/POWER3.
Supported PowerPC products include the Apple Power Macintosh (1999 or later), IBM 32-bit RS/6000, Genesi Pegasos II, as well as 64-bit G5 and POWER processors from IBM eServer pSeries computers. Check the Fedora Project download site for information on PPC versions of Fedora.

For other hardware, such as Intel Itanium and IBM mainframe, there are versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux available (which you have to purchase from Red Hat, Inc.).

Source of Information :  Wiley - Adobe Fedora Bible 2010 Edition Featuring Fedora Linux

Choosing computer hardware to Install Fedora 12