Device Drivers in Fedora 18

[Bill Davidsen]

Alan Findly wrote:
> Dear users,
>    I am on the verge of a rather thorough hardware upgrade, ie. motherboard/cpu,
> and in addition want to migrate from XP 32 to Fedora 18 64.  So, now it occurs
> to me that all the drivers from Windoze will be gone--are there drivers in the
> Fedora CD package, or will I have to hunt them down?  Actually, there may be a
> more basic driver issue--namely, running the CD player itself: the driver won't
> be loaded yet.  Is this a problem?  I also have an ISO image on USB, if needed.
>    Thanks for any info.

The big issue running on new hardware is video drivers, and you should be sure 
to test your hardware booting and running off a Live-CD image. Fedora does not 
include vendor drivers for some hardware, which unfortunately include video 
vendors ATI and Nvidia, WiFi drivers for many Broadcom network products, and a 
host of scanners, printers, and other things you don't need to consider to do an 
install.

In other words try it first, as long as you have video (you might have to try 
"basic mode") and network to install, you can get installed and add drivers if 
and when you need them for full functionality. The reasons for not using the 
vendor drivers are non-technical, they install and work fine.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot