When I finally got fed up with one of my Windows XP boxes struggling through a thrashed registry and overly fragmented disk I decided to install a new OS on the box. Naturally I decided to use the latest Oracle Enterprise Linux release (r5). Once the base OS was installed and configured I moved on to installing a database. I used Oracle 10gR2 10.2.0.1.0 Enterprise Edition patched up to 10.2.0.3 for the database. For installation the "Requirements For Installing Oracle 10gR2 on OEL 5 (x86)" article from the MetaLink site is very useful. I found it much more specific for my installation needs. Specifically, it summarized the libraries I need to install using RPM despite installing using the software development profile. I used the Enterprise Edition since I wanted access to some features I will use for other projects not found in the standard edition. For both the base and the installation I had to work around the installer not accepting OEL 5. Since I copied the install media to a hard disk I found it convenient to alter the install/oraparam.ini so that OEL 5 was an acceptable version.