User Hostile Download Page

[Tim]

Tim: 
>> Before burning, and potentially wasting a disc, *I* check the downloaded
>> ISO against the checksum.  After that check, I move onto the next step
>> (burning the disc, or simply using that file on the hard drive).

Charles Curley: 
> Good advice. It would help if the sha1sums were readily available. To
> download the DVD image for F8, I went to http://fedoraproject.org/,
> and clicked on "Get Fedora" in the left hand column. That took me to
> http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora. Now, I may be getting blind in my
> old age, but I see no reference to [check|sha1|md5|etc...]sums on that
> page.

I suppose this all depends on how you got your hands on the ISO files.
I've always started from a HTTP or FTP download site, walked through to
the location for the ISO files, and the checksum file was in the same
directory.

But I agree that the information you need to know to do this isn't as
obviously available as it could be.  What I did was easy, the dumbed
down webpages have gone too far (as is typical for such things).

>> Some reference material:
>> http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burning-isos/

> Generally a useful page, except:
> 
> * It refers to F7, not F8.

I'm not sure that's too much of a problem, though it would be better if
it were generic.

> * It refers to Windows tools and procedures. That's fine for folks
>   using Windows. However, news flash: there are other operating
>   systems in the world: Mac OS X, Free BSD, HP-UX, and one you may not
>   have heard of called "Linux".

Yes, I've thought that a bit of an omission, too.  Though, if you're
already using Linux, you've already got documentation included with your
burning software, so there's a bit of presumption, there.  You'd expect
the same for Windows users (documentation with their software), but some
Windows software is a bit tricky to work out how to burn a disc from an
ISO.

> the main download page should have direct links to this sort of
> stuff.

It certainly should be easier, but you can't have *everything* on the
download page.  You'll end up with a mammoth page.  ;-)

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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