Discussion for all testing needs

12. IRC Clients
* Konversation
A Qt based IRC client for KDE users

su -c ‘yum install konversation’
* xchat
A gtk+ based IRC client for GNOME users

su -c ‘yum install xchat’
You will find it under Applications -> Internet -> IRC
13. MSN Messenger Clients
Use an Instant Messenger to communicate with your friends. Ok, you all know what Instant Messengers are.
* Empathy
Empathy is the default Instant Messenger of Fedora 10. It supports many different networks such as Jabber, Salut, Google Talk, AIM, Gadu Gadu, GroupWise, ICQ, MSN, QQ and Yahoo. It’s in Applications -> Internet -> Empathy Instant Messenger. If it’s not there install it by typing:

su -c ‘yum install empathy empathy-libs’
* Pidgin
Pidgin was the default IM client of Fedora 9. If you like it better than empathy install it by typing:

su -c ‘yum install pidgin’
* Kopete
Kopete is KDE’s IM client. If you are a Gnome user it will download a lot of KDE packages and other utilities so be prepared. Install it by typing:

su -c ‘yum install kdenetwork’
* aMSN
Another pretty good IM is amsn. It has plugin support also.

su -c ‘yum install amsn amsn-plugins’
You will find it under Applications -> Internet -> aMSN
14. Author, Burn and BackUp CD/DVDs
* Sound-Juicer
Sound Juicer is a CD ripping tool. It supports flac, oga, mp3, wav and spx output formats. It is installed by default and you can find it under Applications -> Sound & Video -> Audio CD Extractor. If it’s not there install it with:

su -c ‘yum install sound-juicer’
* GnomeBaker
A CD/DVD burning utility for GNOME.

su -c ‘yum install gnomebaker’
It’s under Applications -> Sound & Video -> CD/DVD Writer GnomeBaker.
* k3b
Probably the best Linux CD/DVD burning program. It comes along with a lot of KDE dependencies if you are using GNOME.

su -c ‘yum install k3b’
To enable all encoding features and programs for k3b type:

su -c ‘yum install k3b-extras-freeworld vcdimager normalize transcode lame lame-libs’
* Brasero
Brasero is a CD/DVD disc authoring tool for the Gnome desktop.

su -c ‘yum install brasero’
* k9copy
K9copy is the linux version of DVDshrink.

su -c ‘yum install k9copy’
su -c ‘yum install libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd’

15. Download managers
* wxDownload Fast
wxDownload Fast (also known as wxDFast) is an open source multi-threaded download manager. This means that it can split a file into several pieces and download the pieces simultaneously

su -c ‘yum install wxdfast’
* kget
This is KDE’s default download manager. if you are using GNOME you will have to download a lot of dependencies and KDE libraries, so you’d better not use it.

su -c ‘yum install kdenetwork’
16. PDF Readers
* evince
The default pdf viewer for Fedora is Evince. If it’s not installed type:

su -c ‘yum install evince evince-djvu evince-dvi’
* acrobatreader
First you must install the adobe repository.
su -
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/i386/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm –import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
Now open a terminal and type:
su -c ‘yum install AdobeReader_enu’ enu stands for the English package. To search for other languages type:
su -c ‘yum search AdobeReader’
17. Torrent Clients
* Transmission
Fedora 10 comes with Transmission as a default torrent client. You can find it under Applications -> Internet -> Transmission or in case you don’t have it installed type:

su -c ‘yum install transmission’
* KTorrent
ktorrent is an alternative torrent client for KDE users.

su -c ‘yum install ktorrent’
* qBittorent
qBittorent is a featureful, lightweight torrent client based on QT4 toolkit. You must install an additional repository since it isn’t included still in any of the other fedora repositories.

su -c
rpm -ivh http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/fusion-testing/qbittorrent/10/i386/qbittorrent-release-1-1.noarch.rpm
yum install qbittorrent It has x86_64 packages also. Just type the same commands as above replacing i386 with x86_64.
* Bittorrent
You could also try bittorrent

su -c ‘yum install bittorrent bittorrent-gui’
* Deluge
Deluge is a lightweight, Free Software, cross-platform BitTorrent client.

su -c ‘yum install deluge’
* Azureus
Azureus is a powerful torrent meta-search with login support for private trackers. It’s now called Vuze and has reached version 4. However in Fedora repositories you will find only Azureus version 3. Install it like this.

su -c ‘yum install azureus’

18. Other Useful Applications
* unrar
su -c ‘yum install unrar’
* FTP Client
Pretty good FTP client with ssh support.

su -c ‘yum install gftp’
Another popular FTP, FTPS and SFTP client is Filezilla. su -c ‘yum install filezilla’
* chm Reader
For GNOME users gtk based chm viewer

su -c ‘yum install gnochm’
* eMule Client
su -c ‘yum install amule’
* linuxdcpp
su -c ‘yum install linuxdcpp’
* Partition Editor
For GNOME users gtk based partition manipulation program

su -c ‘yum install gparted’
For KDE users Qt based partition manipulation program

su -c ‘yum install qtparted’

* gtkpod
A song management program for Apple’s well know iPod.

su -c ‘yum install gtkpod’
It’ll be installed under Applications -> Sound & Video -> GtkPod
* Skype
You can just visit Skype’s site and click on the Fedora 7 package. Select to open it with ‘Package Installer (Default) and you are done.

Alternatively you can install the Skype repository. Open a terminal and type:

su -c ‘gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/skype.repo’
In that file copy the following lines:

[skype]
name=Skype Repository
baseurl=http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/fedora/updates/i586/
enabled=1
gpgkey=http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/rpm-public-key.asc
gpgcheck=0
Now you can easily install/update skype by typing:

su -c ‘yum install skype’
su -c ‘yum update skype’

19. Accessing Windows Partitions
Fedora 10 will auto detect the Windows Partitions (FAT32, NTFS) that you may have in your computer’s hard disk and it will place an icon of them on the desktop. Moreover ntfs-3g is installed by default which means that you have read/write access in NTFS partitions also.

If you want to enable/disable write support for external and/or internal devices with only two clicks you can install ntfs-config.

su -c ‘yum install ntfs-config’
You can find it in System -> Administration -> NTFS Configuration Tool
20. Accessing Windows Shares
If you want to access the shared files of a Windows box of you LAN through Linux and also to be able to view your videos and listen to your mp3 through your local network install smb4k like this:

su -c ‘yum install smb4k’
If you have an iptables firewall running you must set Samba as a trusted service. Go to System -> Administration -> Firewall and in ‘Trusted Services’ find ‘Samba’, tick it and press ‘Apply’.

**Note: If you get a message like:

mount error 1 = Operation not permitted
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)
open a terminal and type:

su -c ‘chmod u+s /sbin/mount.cifs’
su -c ‘chmod u+s /sbin/umount.cifs’
Each time you update smb4k or a samba component you have to run this command again.

8. Configuring Firefox

* Acrobat Plugin

To be able to view pdf documents through Firefox you must have adobe acrobat reader installed.

* Flash Plugin

Fedora 32bit

First you must install the adobe repository.

su -
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/i386/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm –import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
Now install it like this:

yum install flash-plugin
Finally restart Firefox and go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Plugins. You should Shockwave Flash among the plugins.

Fedora x86_64

Finally Adobe has released a 64bit version of Flash Player. Although this is still an alpha release it seems pretty stable. To give it a try Download 64-bit Plugin for Linux. Untar it and paste the library in the plugins directory of Firefox.

tar -zxf libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
su -c ‘mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins’
If you were previously using the nspluginwrapper with the 32bit version of Flash you first have to remove them:

su -c ‘yum remove flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-libs.i386′
Restart Firefox and go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Plugins. You should Shockwave Flash among the plugins.

If you are not happy with this alpha version you can still use the 32bit flash like this:

You must install the nspluginwrapper.i386 and nspluginwrapper.x86_64 packages to enable the 32-bit Adobe Flash plugin in x86_64 Firefox and the pulseaudio-libs.i386 package to enable sound from the plugin.

Create the 32bit mozilla plugin directory using this command:

su -c ‘mkdir -p /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins’
Install flash-plugin

su -c ‘yum install flash-plugin’
Install the nspluginwrapper.i386, nspluginwrapper.x86_64, alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 packages:

su -c ‘yum -y install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 curl.i386′
Restart Firefox and go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Plugins. You should Shockwave Flash among the plugins.

If you don’t see it run mozilla-plugin-config to register the flash plugin:

su -c ‘mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v’ If Firefox crashes when you visit a page with flash type the following:

su -c ‘gedit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg’and in that file paste the following line:

WindowlessDisable=trueSave and exit. Now try again with Firefox.

In some cases, nspluginwrapper produces SELinux AVC errors, some of which may prevent viewing Flash content. Changing the relevant SELinux boolean may resolve this problem, but eliminates a great deal of additional security when using nspluginwrapper. To make the change, run the following command:

su -c ’setsebool -P allow_unconfined_nsplugin_transition=0′

* Video Playback Plugin

Fedora 10 has totem-mozplugin preinstalled. Try to open a wmp video with Firefox. In case additional plugins are needed you will be just prompted to install them! That’s just a great improvement!

However SELinux might cause you problems if you have it enabled. The good news are that it is also telling you exactly what command to type to solve this problem. I had to type the following commands to make a .wmp to be played in Firefox, but finally I made it!

su -
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libx264.so.61′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libavformat.so.52.22.1′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libavutil.so.49.10.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libavcodec.so.51.71.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libpostproc.so.51.2.0′

So, if SELinux complains click on the yellow star icon and copy the Fix Command it says. Type it in a terminal as root and restart Firefox.

* java Plugin

Fedora 10 comes with java icedtea plugin preinstalled. However you may face some problems when trying to run certain java applets. For more information check here .

* mms streaming play

In the address bar type:

about:config
Right click somewhere and select NEW and then STRING. Type this in the box:

network.protocol-handler.app.mms
Click ok and in the box type the program you want to open the streaming media with, such as /usr/bin/mplayer.

Next right click again and select NEW and then BOOLEAN. Type this in the box:

network.protocol-handler.external.mms
Click ok and then type:

true

* Set backspace button

By default in Fedora’s Firefox when you press the backspace button it does nothing. If you want backspace to take you to the previous page type in the address bar:

about:config
and in Filter box type:

browser.backspace_action
Right click on it, select Modify and change its value from 2 to 0. Restart Firefox and the backspace will be set.

* IPv6

You might notice that your browsing through Firefox is a little slow on Fedora 10. This is because Firefox 3 has enabled by default IPv6 which causes Firefox to first resolve an IPv6 address and after the connection fails it switches to IPv4. To change this setting type:
about:config
and in Filter box type:

network.dns.disableIPv6
Right click on it, select Toggle and change its value to true. Restart Firefox and you are ready!

9. Configuring e-mail client

Fedora 10 has evolution as the default e-mail client. Of course you can install Thunderbird if you prefer it. Just type:

su -c ‘yum install thunderbird’

Now you can find Thunderbird under Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird Mail Client. To make it the default Fedora mail client go to System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Preferred Applications and under Mail Reader select Thunderbird Mail.

10. MP3 and Audio players

**Note: To install many of the following packages you must have the RPM Fusion Repository enabled.

The first time you will try to play an mp3 file Totem Movie Player will come up and it will ask you to search for the mp3 decoder. As long as you have enabled the RPM Fusion repo as mentioned before it will find it and install it automatically. Just like that! If you still want to do it the manuall way…! or install an additional application continue reading below.

* Rhythmbox

I believe that Rhythmbox is a better mp3 player than the default Totem for Gnome users. You can find it under Applications -> Sound & Video -> Rhythmbox Music Player. If you don’t have it, to install it type:

su -c ‘yum install gstreamer rhythmbox’
To make all mp3 files open by default with Rhytmbox right click on an mp3 file and select ‘Open with Other Application…’. Click on Rhytmbox Music Player and you’re done.

To add mp3 and other audio support type:

su -c ‘yum install gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly’

* Amarok

amaroK is a pretty good audio/mp3 player for KDE. Of course you can install it under Gnome or any other Desktop Environment too. To install it and add mp3 support type:

su -c ‘yum install amarok phonon-backend-gstreamer’

* Exaile

Exaile is similar to Amarok but it’s based on GTK+ toolkit. Therefore it’s a good solution for Gnome users! To install it type:

su -c ‘yum install exaile gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly’

* Audacious

Audacious is another audio player similar to old winamp 2.x. To install it type:

su -c ‘yum install audacious audacious-plugins audacious-plugins-freeworld audacious-plugins-freeworld-*’
If you want to use your winamp 2.x skin with audacious simply copy winamp’s *.wsz skin to /usr/share/audacious/Skins/

If your tags are in a different encoding than utf8 you can force audacious to use it:

Preferences -> Playlist -> Metadata -> Fallback character encoding -> iso8859-7

If you want to add in queue mp3s when double clicked edit this file:

su -c ‘gedit /usr/share/applications/fedora-audacious.desktop’
And change Exec=audacious to Exec=audacious -e

* XMMS

This audio player is no longer used, you could try audacious instead, but if you still want it type:

su -c ‘yum install xmms xmms-libs xmms-mp3′

11. DVD & Video

**Note: To install many of the following packages you must have the RPM Fusion Repository enabled. If you have most probably you will prompted to search automatically for the needed codecs. They will automatically installed. As simple as that!

* DVD playback

In order to play DVDs you must install the appropriate codecs.

su -c ‘yum install libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd’

Those files are enough for playing your non encrypted DVDs. However if you want to decrypt an encrypted DVD you need libdvdcss which isn’t included in RPM Fusion because of legal issues in some countries such as the US. As mentioned in RPM Fusion .

Opinions between the members of RPM Ffusion differ on the legality of libdvdcss, however no one is ready to vouch for it resuming the legal responsibilities.

Therefore libdvdcss is being dropped. See also the comments on legal issues in the link above. So, we have to wait and see what solution they will come up with.

**Note: Livna could be a temporary solution.

su -
rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm
yum install libdvdcss

Most probably SELinux will report an AVC Denial. To fix this type:

su -
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libswscale.so.0.6.1′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/sse2/libpostproc.so.51.2.0′

* Video files playback

When you will try to open a video file with Totem media player it will ask you to search for the necessary codecs. They will be automatically installed! If you have previously set up mp3 playback additional packages would have been installed as dependencies. These packages include video codecs such as xvidcore, ffmpeg and other.

To check some of them type:

su -c ‘yum install ffmpeg ffmpeg-libs gstreamer-ffmpeg libmatroska xvidcore’

* Totem

Fedora 10 has installed Totem Movie Player. If you want to play DVD files also with totem type:

su -c ‘yum install totem-xine totem-gstreamer xine-lib-extras-freeworld’

* Mplayer/SMPlayer

I prefer mplayer and smplayer (mplayer’s GUI) for video playback. It supports almost any video type, external subtitles as well as DVD playback as long as you have the needed codecs installed as shown previously.

su -c ‘yum install mplayer smplayer’
Open smplayer from Applications -> Sound & Video -> SMPlayer

* VLC

VLC (Video Lan Client) supports almost any video type without the need of installing external codecs.

su -c ‘yum install vlc’

* kaffeine

kaffeine is another KDE media player that uses the xine engine.

su -c ‘yum install kaffeine xine xine-lib xine-lib-extras-freeworld’

* RealPlayer

You can download RealPlayer rpm from here . Just choose to open it with the Package Installer.

* Avidemux

Avidemux is a very good video editor. Install it like this:

su -c ‘yum install avidemux’
It will be listed in Applications -> Sound & Video -> Avidemux Video Editor.

4. Configuring Services

You can easily select which services should run when you boot your system. To do so you can use Fedora’s services configuration utility which can be found under System -> Administration -> Services.

For a detailed description on all services and daemons read the Fedora Services Guide .

5. Installing video drivers

**Note: To install many of the following packages you must have the RPM Fusion Repository enabled

* Installing nVidia driver

In order to have 3D support in Fedora 10 you must install the binary nvidia drivers. Just type:

For GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9 & 200 series cards

su -c ‘yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs’

For GeForce FX cards

su -c ‘yum install kmod-nvidia-173xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-173xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-173xx-libs’

For GeForce 4 and below

su -c ‘yum install kmod-nvidia-96xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs’

Reboot and you should see the Nvidia logo in your screen.

* Installing ATi driver

In order the fglrx driver for the ATi cards you must downgrade a few packages to their Fedora 9 versions. That’s what Leigh123 from fedoraforum.org says. I don’t have an ATi card so I can’t really tell. For anyone interested here are his instructions.

1. Install driver

su -
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum –enablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing install akmod-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx xorg-x11-drv-fglrx-libs.i386

Additional install instructions for 64 bit users only !

rm -f /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
ln -s /usr/lib64/dri/fglrx_dri.so /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
ldconfig

2. Install system-config-display

su -
yum install system-config-display

run system-config-display and change *nothing*, but press “ok” to create an xorg.conf.

3. Edit xorg.conf

su -
aticonfig –initial -f
su -
gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then add these sections.

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
Option “AIGLX” “on”
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection

also add these options to the device section

Option        “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
Option        “VideoOverlay” “on”

4. Backup old initrd

su -
mv /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img.backup
mkinitrd -v /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img  `uname -r` 5. Edit grub.conf

su
gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

and add this “nopat” to the kernel arguments.

Optional (in case libdrm change breaks things due to relationship with KMS):
add “nomodeset” to end of kernel arguments

6. Reboot

due to the akmod, it is *absolutely necessary* to reboot after the install, otherwise the kernel module won’t be compiled.

Reverse changes

In case you want to reverse the changes you ‘ve made just type:
su -
rm -f /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-9.repo
rm -f /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora9.repo
sed -i -e ’s|^exclude.*||’ /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora*
yum clean all
yum update libdrm

6. Installing Microsoft fonts

Fedora uses Liberation and DejaVu fonts which are installed by default and look pretty smooth and nice, plus they are open source.

If you insist on using the Microsoft fonts you can download and install the msttcorefonts rpm like this.

wget http://www.my-guides.net/en/images/stories/fedora10/msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm
su -c ‘rpm -ivh msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm’

The procedure just in case you want to build it yourself is the following.

su -c ‘yum install rpmdevtools rpm-build cabextract ttmkfdir’
rpmdev-setuptree
cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
wget http://www.my-guides.net/en/images/stories/fedora10/msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.spec
rpmbuild -bb msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.spec
cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/
su -c ‘rpm -ivh msttcore-fonts-2.0-2.noarch.rpm’
Now you can change your fonts through System -> Preferences Look and Feel -> Appearance -> Fonts

7. Configuring Nautilus

* Open each folder in the same window

Go to System -> Preferences -> Personal -> File Management and in the Behavior tab select the Always open in browser windows option.

Now you will use the File Browser to navigate through your folders.

* Open Terminal here

It’s very useful to have an ‘Open Terminal here’ command to easily open a folder in terminal while you are browsing it in Nautilus. To do so type:

su -c ‘yum install nautilus-open-terminal’
log out and then log in, right click in a Nautilus window and you’ll see the command ‘Open In Terminal’.

* Enable Num Lock on GNOME startup

su -c ‘yum install numlockx’
su -c ‘cp /etc/gdm/Init/Default /etc/gdm/Init/Default_backup’
su -c ‘gedit /etc/gdm/Init/Default’
And add the following lines at the end of the file before the exit 0.

if [ -x /usr/bin/numlockx ]; then
/usr/bin/numlockx on
fi
Save and exit. Now restart X server and check if num lock light is on.