Heartland

I'm taking the plunge and installing Fedora Core 4 on my PC next week.

My nebulous plan is to choose the 'standard desktop PC' installation which should give me OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim and Gimp with Gnome as a desktop (as I understand it).

After I've got that lot working, I'll be installing Thunderbird as my email client.

Then I want to install Apache, Perl, MySQL, and PHP5 so that I can test my websites locally before uploading them to my web host.

So ... does this sound like a good plan, or should I install things in a different order? Do I need to know anything else (remember, I'm a Linux newbie for all intents and purposes)?

Sounds like a fine plan to me.

Have you got a clear idea of how you're partitioning your disks? (i.e. One disk dual boot or One disk Linux + one Windows, etc)

I have a spare hard drive that I'm planning to install Linux on. I'll probably accept the default formatting/partitioning suggested by the installation process.

If all goes wrong in the early days, then I can stick my Windows HD back in and run my W2K system.

My plan is to get rid of the Windows system entirely and run Linux solely.

Ok. The only thing I advise is that you find out how to set up your internet connection under Linux before starting the installation. Any other problems can be googled for once net access is secured

it's a (NTL) Cable Modem on an ethernet connection - I'm hoping it'll just plug into the network card and work immediately (which it did in Windows - I don't run any special software in Windows and no password is needed)

Do I need to install KDE as well, or is Gnome sufficient?

Gnome is more than sufficient, unless (allegedly) you desire uber configurability. Imho, KDE is an eyesore and Gnome is nice and smooth, although some obviously disagree (else there would be no KDE).

KDE is easier to use if you're used to windows but Fedora isn't that keen on you using it. I prefer it to Gnome.

A bog standard installation should be fine to start off with but you may find yourself experimenting with different distros and configs for a while to come.