Live Image README

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Table of Contents

Introduction
What Should I Do With My Live Image?
Suggested Hardware
Booting
Benefits
Caveats
Experimenting with the Live image

    Sharing Existing Data
    Making a Backup Copy of Data

Installing Fedora from the Live Image

Introduction

A Live image is a low-risk and time-efficient method of "test-driving" the
Fedora operating system on your own familiar hardware. If the evaluation
provides a pleasant adventure, you may choose to install the Live system
software to provide your normal computing environment. This Live image provides
you with an experience that is very similar to running Fedora, but there are
some benefits and caveats. Refer to the section called “Benefits” and the
section called “Caveats” for more information.

What Should I Do With My Live Image?

Before you use your Live image, read the next section to learn how to maximize
your enjoyment of Fedora. You may also want to read the section called
“Booting” for hints on booting from this media. Then insert this media in your
computer and boot from it.

Suggested Hardware

This Live system successfully boots and runs on most computers with 256 MB or
more installed system memory, or RAM. If your computer has 1 GB or more
installed system memory, for higher performance, select Run from RAM from the
boot menu.

Your computer must have the ability to boot from the device holding the Live
image media. For instance, if the Live image is on a CD or DVD, your computer
must be able to boot from the CD or DVD drive.

Booting

This section gives additional guidance for users whose experience with starting
the computer, or "booting," is limited to pushing the power button. To set up
your system to boot from the Live media, first shut down or hibernate your
computer if it is not already off. Power your computer on, and watch the
initial BIOS screen for a prompt that indicates which key to use for either:

  ● a boot menu, or

  ● the BIOS setup utility

The boot menu option is preferable. If you cannot see such a prompt, consult
your manufacturer's documentation for your computer system, motherboard, or
mainboard for the correct keystroke. On many systems, the required key will be
F12, F2, F1, or Delete.

Most computers boot from hard disk (or one of the hard disks, if there are more
than one). If you are reading this document from a CD or a DVD, then set the
computer to boot from the DVD or CD drive. If you are reading this file from a
USB device such as a memory stick or thumb drive, set your computer to boot
from the USB device.

If you are making changes to the BIOS configuration, record the current boot
device selection configuration before you change it. This record allows you to
restore the original configuration if you choose to return to your previous
computing environment.

The BIOS on older computers may not include a choice you desire, such as
network booting. If your computer can only boot from floppy diskette or hard
disk, you may be unable to experience this Live image on your computer.

You may wish to see if an updated BIOS is available from the manufacturer of
your computer. A BIOS update may offer additional boot menu choices, but
requires care to install properly. Consult the manufacturer's documentation for
more information. Otherwise, ask a friend if you can try running this Live
image on their newer computer.

Benefits

The following benefits accrue with a Live image:

  ● While running this Live image, you are in control, and are not limited to a
    set of screenshots or options chosen by others. Select which tasks or
    applications to explore with complete freedom.

  ● You can experiment with this Live image with no disruption to your previous
    computing environment, documents, or desktop. Hibernate your current
    operating system, restart with the Live image, and restart the original
    operating system when finished. Your previous environment returns with no
    changes made.

  ● You can use the Live image to evaluate whether all of your hardware devices
    are recognized and properly configured.

    Full Hardware Recognition

    In some cases, the Live image does not offer the full range of hardware
    support seeing in an installed Fedora system. You may be able to manually
    configure support in the Live image, but must repeat these steps each time
    you use the Live image.

  ● You can use the Live image to try different desktop environments such as
    GNOME, KDE, XFCE, or others. None of these choices require you to
    reconfigure an existing Linux installation on your computer.

Caveats

The Live image also involves some drawbacks in exchange for convenience:

  ● While using this Live image, your computer may be much slower to respond or
    require more time to complete tasks than with a system installed to hard
    disk. CD and DVD discs provide data to the computer at a much slower rate
    than hard disks. Less of your computer's system memory is available for
    loading and running applications. Running the Live image from RAM trades
    higher memory usage for faster response times.

  ● To fit space constraints, fewer installed applications are included than in
    a full installation of Fedora. Your favorite applications may not be
    present in this Live image, even though they may be present and run quite
    well in a full installation of Fedora.

  ● At this time, you cannot permanently install new applications in the Live
    image. To try other applications, or newer versions of existing
    applications, you must generally install Fedora on your computer. You may
    be able to temporarily install or update applications, however, if you have
    sufficient system memory. Most systems require more than 512 MB RAM for
    installations or updates to succeed. These changes will be lost when you
    shut down the Live image.

  ● Changes may also evaporate if your system's memory usage forces the system
    to reread the original software or settings from the Live image. This
    behavior is peculiar to a Live image and does not occur in a full
    installation of Fedora.

Experimenting with the Live image

As you explore the the cascading menus on or around the desktop, look for
application programs you may wish to run. In addition, you may wish to explore
other capabilities.

Sharing Existing Data

You can share data via mounting existing storage devices, such as:

  ● floppy diskettes

  ● USB drives

  ● disk partitions

Making a Backup Copy of Data

You may use this Live image to make backup or archival copies of data, if your
computer system includes:

  ● a CD or DVD burning drive

  ● a hard disk with ample free space

Files normally in use by your previous operating system when it is running are
not in use in the Live image. Therefore you can use the Live image to copy
files that are problematic for backup software in the previous operating
system.

Installing Fedora from the Live Image

To install the system from this Live image, run the LiveOS as described above,
and select the Install to Hard Disk application on the Desktop. Using the
resulting Fedora installation, you can customize the software and configuration
to your liking on a persistent basis.

