OK, so I determined that both Ubuntu and Fedora Core 7 (rescue CD) could see my network cards. Ubuntu could see the one on the mother board, and Fedora Core 7 could see both. But Ubuntu couldn't connect to my network via DHCP.

So I decided to use Fedora. But when I tried to download via http, it demanded a domain and a folder on that domain. When I input both, it insisted on inputting double slashes between domain and folder, even when I deleted them from both ends, so naturally, the repository couldn't be found.

So I decided to download the Live CD. When I did so, it turned out to be larger than 700 meg, which meant that I couldn't burn it on to a CD--I had to use a DVD. If I'd know that, I would have simply downloaded the entire DVD iso.

The problem is, I've never burned a DVD (though I have a DVD burner) so that means that I have to go out to wherever, and buy blank DVDs. Why couldn't Fedora put a Live install on a CD? It wouldn't have been much smaller...

[Update a few minutes later]

I should add that I suspect that my earlier problems were due to attempting to install a 32-bit version of the OS on an AMD 64 chip. So perhaps a solution is to burn a 64-bit version of Core 6...

One time on my Ubuntu box is suddenly stopped grabbing an IP address from the router. I gave it a static IP and it connected and then I switched it back to dynamic and it was able to obtain an IP address on its own at that point. *shrugs* Its a mystery to me.

Also, how may megs over 700 was that live CD ISO? The way the files in an ISO are formatted and compressed can cause the size of the ISO to be as large as 800 megs. However, the image can still fit on a 700meg disc because media files like avi's or wav's aren't really size dependent but time dependent. It is one of the reasons why discs are reported in both terms of size and minutes. If you've tried to burn it and failed then perhaps another burning utility may understand the ISO contents better and allow a successful burn. Also, you can overburn some 700meg cdr's to almost 730 megs. I know this for a fact because I used to encode movies using VideoCD format and span a movie across multiple discs. How much you can overburn is dependent upon the brand of the CD, the type of burner you have, and which burning software you are using. Finally, they do make 800 and 900 meg cdr's but there again it depends upon the burner drive as to whether it will be compatible with these high capacity cdr's.

All I know is that Nero told me that the ISO was too big to fit on the disk.

Hmm Nero is usually pretty good. Maybe another utility like Alcohol 120% might have better luck.

I'm tearing my hair out by a fistful as my worldview collides with Rand's here. And we consider ourself user-friendly?! If Rand cannot do it, who the hell can?

I, of course, never used HTTP download method. Before switching to BitTorrent around FC-6, I used FTP. That always was reliable. I only switched because torrents run 100 times faster than FTP.

I went to our FTP site... download.fedora.redhat.com (although I could use mirrors too, like the one at kernel.org), to check how it looks. Everything seems fine as always. Man... where did we go wrong with HTTP server?

BTW, i386 has a smaller LiveCD, which fits.

lftp download.fedora.redhat.com:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Live/i386> dir
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 719859712 May 25 20:23 Fedora-7-KDE-Live-i686.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 733427712 May 25 19:56 Fedora-7-Live-i686.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 370 May 28 03:08 SHA1SUM
lftp download.fedora.redhat.com:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Live/i386> cd ../x86_64
lftp download.fedora.redhat.com:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Live/x86_64> dir
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 871643136 May 25 21:33 Fedora-7-KDE-Live-x86_64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 817156096 May 25 21:00 Fedora-7-Live-x86_64.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftp ftp 374 May 28 03:10 SHA1SUM
lftp download.fedora.redhat.com:/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Live/x86_64>

I would not use it though. I always downloaded normal CD images and became used to them. I would not even know how to install using LiveCD.

There's no problem whatsoever in using a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit CPU. Typical Winblows XP and Vista installs are 32-bit, but all new CPUs are 64-bit. Much of Linux development is on the 32-bit versions, so you're better off with 32-bit (i386 as mentioned above), imo.

As for the distro, I'd recommend sticking with Ubuntu as it seems to cover more networking chipsets, especially wireless, than the others. I used RedHat -- even to the point of spending money on RHCE courses and following the fork to FC4 -- but switched to Ubuntu about six months ago due to the lack of wireless drivers. In any case, be sure to check the distro's hardware compatibility list and buy accordingly.

It's odd that Ubuntu couldn't connect to the network. On this box, I'm connected through a switch by cat5 to a D-Link wireless router hanging off of my cable modem. I merely gave the box a name, Ubuntu (Xubuntu, to be more specific), and told it where to look for the DHCP server (192.168.0.1). The only thing I can think of at the moment is that you incorrectly identified the DHCP server.

By the way, Ubuntu works perfectly with the D-Link WDA-1320 wireless card (Atheros chipset). I'm not a D-Link fan-boy, I've just spent too much money on incompatible hardware and so try to match new parts to my existing system. Once the 802.11n dust has settled I'll upgrade, but until then 11g works well enough.

Test comment

DHCP protocol uses broadcast. If you have to tell "it" (the client) where to find the DHCP server, something is broken in the client implementation, stack, or the NIC driver. It's just a bug in Ubuntu, it seems. But it's odd that they even provide a way to enter the DHCP server. Maybe a bug in their script writer's mind, not in the code.

I agree that the 32-bit version is preferable if nothing asks for 64 bits, although for different reasons. Firstly, since you still need a 32-bit environment for compatibility, a 64-bit OS requires quite a bit more space. Many components are installed in two versions. The compatibility itself is not entirely automatic, e.g. for Java you have to create links by hand, install nspluginwrapper, etc. It's far easier to stick to a 32-bit system for now. On Ubuntu it's also a whole another story because they are retarded and install 64-bit components into /lib instead of /lib64 (actually, it's an idiocy they inherited from Debian and could not change because they wanted to run Debian's dpkgs). On x86, 64-bit programs are marginally faster than their 32-bit versions due to larger number of registers available, but it's not significant. Clearly 32-bit installs are less trouble.

When Rand wrote about his guess that 64-bit versions work better, I thought about suggesting that it cannot be, but then his system is clearly very magical. What if something is fishy with some MTRR or whatnot... Also, the architecture support code in kernel is not merged (yet -- over the opposition of the architecture maintainer Andi Kleen), so there may be differences. It is theoretically possible that 64-bit kernel makes a difference. Unlikely, but who knows.

DVD ISO is the easiest route. On (K)Ubuntu, i have oftentimes just mounted the ISO file for an install, but its easier to burn the DVD.

CD-Rs are going out of fashion fast. Storage and bandwidth are cheap, so nobody apart from Knoppix heads spends time on making anything smaller.

Well, them, and us embedded developers, one of whom just spent half a day shaving a few kilobytes off a ~100kb binary...

DVD ISO is the easiest route.

Yes, unless you upgraded a motherboard on a machine that doesn't have a DVD reader in it. And you don't have any blank DVDs...