Something called GPT (Guid Partition Table)

I have been trying to install Fedoa 16 Alpha RC5 on my test laptop, a Lenovo T61p. I normal don’t waste a DVD for Beta and Alpha releases, so I use a USB stick with 16GB of space. My first try was a Alpha TC1 and I was hitting the same problem all the time. When I had entered my hostname, it crashed with a nasty bug, leaving me with no way to rapport it, and no way to bypass it. I then gave it a rest for about 3 weeks, and then went ahead at it again today (28-08-2011) But today I first tried the RC5 DVD (From my USB), just to get the same bug again, next I went for a Live CD, and some IRC #Fedora-qa, and I started to tune in to what was causing the problem. Something called GPT (Guid Partition Table) was the problem. Not knowing what it was I went with google, and founded something called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Now I had 2 things I didn’t know what was, and a Laptop I wanted to put Fedora 16 on and start debugging.

Finally I found a blog, taking the Fedora 16 installation step by step, and there I found that if I made the first partition /dev/sda1 to 1MB and labeled it “BIOS BOOT” and then next make a /dev/sdb2 to 500MB /boot The installation moved on. What is all this about ? what is wrong with the good old MBR ?

Now with a working Fedora 16 Alpha RC5 x86_64 installation on my Lenovo T61p laptop  I first discovered the lovely wallpaper in Gnome-shell, and I have to say I loved ever inch of it, nice work Designer team 😉

Now using my Lenovo T61P laptop I have a freedom hating daemon called Nvidia Quadro FX850m  I really like to preform over the top, and knowing that it was a long shot to install kmod-nvidia and akmod-nvidia from rpmfusion nonefree repository , what the heck… it is a testing laptop, but it didn’t work, akmod could not compile, and I had to use yum erase kmod-nvidia and akmod-nvidai, but at least I still are able to run the gnome-shell on what Fedora 16 comes with.

From what I just noted doing boot, F16 comes with a lot less strange errors then my F15 do, but that is also on my relative new Lenovo W510 laptop. Also the boot speed was remarkably faster. but maybe my tons of different  wallpapers I load to switch between is the problem there 🙂

I can only recommend everyone to try out the F16 Alpha RC5 if you can get pass the anaconda installer 😉 hop that  will be fixed in the next releases.

Now I will dive in to some bugzapping in Fedora 16 if I are able to find any 😉