This article is about how to use Fedora Linux as an operating system instead of Windows 2000 or XP. What programs to run, what programs to install, how to install those programs easily, and some other tips that might help you with specific tasks.
Fedora Core is a new open source group project to create a distribution of Linux based on the old consumer version of Red Hat Linux. Since Red Hat no longer intends to sell to the consumer market and wants to focus instead on enterprise sales, they spawned this new project together with some people who were working on making software available for consumer Red Hat. It is called Core because it will form the core of the new Linux releases Red Hat will be selling (including the aforementioned enterprise version).
It is free, it comes with some of the very latest software included (e.g. Gnome 2.4, Open Office 1.1, etc.) and it is slick. You can download it here and I recommend using BitTorrent to download it if you can, I was able to get all three of the necessary binary discs in around five hours over a cable modem. That's very very fast for almost two gigabytes of data. If you do not have high speed access to the Internet to download Fedora you can get commercial companies to mail you the burned discs containing the software for as little as $6(US) (it's legal because the open source licenses allow anybody to duplicate the software and make it available). Look on the DistroWatch.com site, they normally have two or three vendors advertising discs at any given time.
If you aren't already familiar with installing consumer Linux distributions like Red Hat 9.0 the installation of Fedora Core may take you by surprise. It's graphical, it's simple (at least as simple as installing any recent Windows release), and the final result is graphical, user friendly in lots of areas, and often quite attractive. It's not perfect yet, but it's hard not to think that by the time Microsoft gets around to releasing Longhorn (their codename for the next Windows version) in the 2005-2006 timeframe that Linux will have done a lot of catching up.
When you boot with the first install disc in your drive Fedora doesn't start with these nice graphical screens. Instead, like Windows, you will first see a couple of test screens which let you check the memory in your machine if you want to or check to make sure your discs are all readable and will work for the installation. After that it will start up the graphical installer you see below to perform all the real installation.