I will assume that you know how to boot into your BIOS setup and cause your machine to boot from live media. Your first step is to visit the Fedora site and download a livecd iso image. Fedora provides several ways of doing this but the preferred way is to use a bittorrent client. The bittorrent protocol has built-in error control that will ensure your downloaded image is good.

Next insert a USB stick into an available port. The Fedora image is 654 MB in size, so your stick must be at least as large. At this point Windows users can use the popular unetbootin utility to burn the iso image to the stick but GNU/Linux can do it easier from the command line.

Bring up a terminal and issue the “mount” command. This will give you a listing of mounted file systems. Look and see what device is assigned to the USB stick. On my machine it shows ‘/dev/sdc1′, on yours it may be different. The numeric ’1′ is a partition number and is not required in the next and final command.

Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the image. Issue the command “sudo dd if=Fedora-12-i686-Live of=/dev/sdX bs=4M“, substituting your device letter for X. This will copy the image to the stick and will delete any data previously on it.

You are done. Reboot and have fun!

In reading another blog I found a GNU/Linux user who tried to install Mint on a friend’s machine. That user encountered the 800X600 limit and for him, it was a show stopper. So… the bug is not limited to Koala. No, not at all.

Today I downloaded a livecd of Fedora 12 (Constantine) and ‘burned’ the iso to a bootable USB stick. Guess what? Constatine is constipated too. Yes, that’s a pun but it’s fitting. The resolution bug is not confined to Ubunu or its derivatives. Once again I could not achieve a screen resolution greater than 800X600. I am not a regular Fedora user but, as the work-around described in the earlier post relies on some Unix commands and not Ubuntu itself, I would expect that affected Fedora users could use the same fix.

What do Koala and Constantine have in common? Could it be the ‘new’ Intel video drivers that both distros have adopted? This is just a guess, but I do know that a huge number of users have boxes with Intel drivers and that enough users are encountering the bug so as to mention it in blogs!

Developers… let’s get this damned thing fixed!

I looked at Linux Mint and did not like it. It was a step backward, not forward. Many say that Fedora is the “bleeding edge” of Linux distros. I don’t dislike Fedora but I can’t find anything that it can do that Ubuntu cannot. In fact, installing third party proprietary software in Fedora is a bit more difficult.

The point is that Ubuntu works and there is little motivation to change to something else. Some will say that this makes me a “fanboy”. Not really. I have simply not found anything that justifies a change. If something better comes along, I’ll change in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, I’m staying with Ubuntu.

There is a Best Buy store in my town and occasionally I do make a purchase there. I am hoping that their “experts” (the Geek Squad?) are really smart and will not pass along the Microsoft propaganda. I am also preparing myself on how I will respond to an employee who decides to unload some anti-Linux FUD on me.

I will tell that person that they should not misrepresent a product until they have proven the facts to themselves which they clearly have not. I will ask them why millions of computer owners worldwide (including myself) have replaced legal copies of Windows with some variety of Linux. Then I will offer them my business card informing them that the card was made with easy-to-use Linux software and pointing out that one of my services is Windows virus removal.

I do not expect to see Best Buy passing out free Ubuntu or Fedora live CD’s. I do expect truthful information from a clerk assisting in my purchase. An “I really don’t know” response from a clerk might be acceptable. A “Windows is better because Microsoft told us so” response would be unacceptable and would motivate me to shop elsewhere. Best Buy take notice!