Fedora 15

[AYHJA]

I am fairly new to linux as an OS, and very new to Fedora, having only installed it earlier today...But, for other n00bs like myself who may just need a helping hand, I'm going to make a few notes to hopefully help out if you're browsing Google for help...I'm sure the other guys here would be glad to chime in as well...

First off, get Fedora (Which is version 15 at the time of this writing)

http://fedoraproject.org/

Now, what you do from there is up to you, but I elected to install it onto a flashdrive to make it live...There are some ways to do it in linux, but I prefer to do that in Windows using a program called Linux Live...

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

If there is a program in linux that does what LiLi does in Windows, I'll be sure to update this post...But for a man with two failing HDD's, having an OS on my keychain is golden...Once you download the ISO, it will do the rest, including create a persistence file so that you can save your changes...

NOW...As I have learned the hard way, if you have another OS on your system, you may way to back it up first, format, and then install Fedora first, with your other OS in second...In my case, I already had Debian Squeeze on, installed Fedora on another partition, and Fedora at my GRUB loader...I'm sure there was an easier way to repair it, but since I had nothing to loose, I just reformatted, repartitioned, and installed Fedora first...Debian does a much better job of managing other OS installs...

Once you get Fedora installed, up, and running, and have done your first updates, consider yourself lucky if all your hardware works...I'll report back on fixing my sound later, but upon first boot, there are little to no codecs installed...I could not even play an mp3..! BUT, what a beautfiful program this is:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=171660

Autoplus...Installs several codecs and things of that nature to get you some basics up and going...I can't even imagine how much time I've saved with it...

-- As far as I've gotten, hopefully I'll have more to post..! --

[5829]

i was going to make this a separate thread but here is good.

tips on installing fedora

the official installation guide is here
installing fedora 15 on x86, amd64, and intel 64 architectures
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-us/fed ... index.html

common f15 bugs - official
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/common_f15_bugs

you can read this if you want to. it is unofficial.
personal fedora 15 installation guide
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f15.html


distro comes in two forms. live and full.
the live fits on a cd and is only a subset of the full.
the full fits on a dvd and is about 3.3 gigs.
unless they changed it for 15, if you install the live it will only install what is on the cd.
below is for the full install. have not done the live install so i don't know how, or if, it differs.

during the install it is best to enable the fedora repositories. this should pull in updates.
you will need to set up the network first, wired or wireless (if supported by the linux kernel).
note: it is best to set up your network during install (button on lower left) even if you don't add the repositories.
check installation repro, fedora, fedora updates.

add the rpm fusion repositories.
the rpm fusion repositories (rpmfusion.org) is where most of the software comes from that fedora does not officially support.
there are four repositories. free, free updates, non-free, non-free updates.
note: this is for f10 - just replace the 10 with 15.
http://rpmfusion.org/enablingrpmfusiond ... orainstall

if you don't want to add rpm during the install you can do so later.
instructions for after install here:
http://rpmfusion.org/configuration


fedora comes with icedtea for java. but no flash. you can install free open source gnash or adobe.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/flash


if you want to install chromium
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/chromium
note: when you place the file in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory you have to do it as root otherwise you will not be able to save it.
i do it with gedit.
open a terminal
type 'su -'
type 'sudo gedit'
then paste the code in and save in as any file name you want (no spaces) with the '.repo' extension.
open add/remove software, refresh the package list and you should find chromium.


if you want to install opera
download the rpm version
open a terminal and go to the directory that it is in then type.
yum --nogpgcheck localinstall filename.rpm


some other things that i installed
i find that a lot of the codecs installed when i installed the media players.
leafpad - simple text editor
filezilla - ftp
smplayer - media player
vlc - media player
fslint - dup file finder (and other things)
p7zip
p7zip-plugins
unrar
bzip2
gparted - partition editor
gimp - picture editor

if you want to you can read this.
20 things to do after installing fedora 15
http://www.khattam.info/things-to-do-af ... 06-01.html

[jdog]

That's why I avoid Fedora. Too much command line stuff. You can always do it in Linux...doesn't mean you should be forced to.

[AYHJA]

As usual, another excellent post 5829...I didn't know about the DVD version, it may have eased my suffering a little...

Looks like you want the best of both worlds j, all the cutting edge without all the work...We call that "Windows 7" cdr...

I don't know what it is, but I'm kinda enjoying all the tinkering with the command line...It's just not so great when you have problems and can't get to the gui to read help threads that fucks me up...

My next post is going to be related to Samba...I'm not working on my beastly Acer laptop anymore, I'm on the baby Acer, which has less power but a 64 Bit chip...As a result, I went ahead and installed the 64 Bit version of F15...Should be interesting getting software to work...I'm not having any of the sound issues with this machine like I did before...Which is a bonus...Once I get Samba installed and can reach my home server running XP Pro, I will consider this experiment a success...

[jdog]

I don't know what it is, but I'm kinda enjoying all the tinkering with the command line...It's just not so great when you have problems and can't get to the gui to read help threads that fucks me up...

Never had any issues in any distro where I couldn't get to a GUI. There are actually a lot of Linux users that are anti-command line and helping push Linux in the right direction through GUI interfaces.

I also liked Gnome 3. I just don't like everything command line in Fedora 15. Tried putting Gnome 3 on Mint 11 and it didn't fly too well. LOL!

[AYHJA]

I have an nvidia video card in my Big Acer...There are apparently some experimental proprietary drivers for the card...Only Mint saw those drivers and allowed me to use them for 3D hardware acceleration...Getting the default Xorg driver off, and the nvidia driver on in Debian and Fedora has been painful...I was wondering if you could put gnome 3 on Mint, I think I remember reading that 11 would come with it, guess not...I'll stick w/Fedora, I've gotten further with this now than with any of the others at this point...

This is how I got Samba working BTW...

Install it from the repository or whatever, I'm assuming that if you've gotten that far, you know how already...If not, please send me a PM and I'll be more specific...

Run these two commands first:

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systemctl status smb.service
systemctl status nmb.service

And then run these:

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su -c 'systemctl enable smb.service'
su -c 'systemctl enable nmb.service'
su -c' systemctl start smb.service'
su -c 'systemctl start nmb.service'

Got me on my Windows XP machines np, and vice versa...I should also note that I am not running the firewall, so if you have issues even after running these commands, you should probably check there and allow Samba through...

[AYHJA]

Because I didn't feel like doing all that clicking in the software repository, I downloaded the .tar file from here:

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

I also must note, even though I didn't try it, that you could run this command in the terminal to get the suite:

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yum groupinstall "Office/Productivity"

But what's the fun in that right..? Let's go hard! CDR...Once you have downloaded and extracted the files, this is how I got it up and working via the terminal:

1) After downloading the installer archive file, use Nautilus to decompress it in a directory of your choice (your Desktop directory, for example). After decompressing it, you will see that the contents have been unpacked into a directory (whatever version you downloaded) called LibO_3.3.0rc1_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US. Open a Nautilus file manager window, and change directory to that directory.

2) The directory contains a subdirectory called RPMS. Change directory to the RPMS directory.

3) Right-click within the directory and choose “Open in Terminal”. A terminal window will open. From the command line of the terminal window, enter the following command (you will be prompted to enter your root user's password before the command will execute):

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su -c 'yum install *.rpm'

4) The above command does the first part of the installation process. To complete the process, you also need to install the desktop integration packages. To do this, change directory to the desktop-integration directory that is within the RPMS directory, by entering the following command at the command line of a terminal window:

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cd desktop-integration

Now run the installation command again:

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su -c 'yum install libreoffice3.3-redhat-menus-3.3-1.noarch.rpm'

Don't forget to replace your package name instead, for instance, the code that I ran was:

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su -c 'yum install libreoffice3.4-redhat-menus-3.4-12.noarch.rpm'

Entire suite is now in my applications menu under gnome...Sweet..! :)

[AYHJA]

Fedora proved to problematic for me...15 ran fine, but after 2 days of trying to install 16 Alpha, I have given up on it...My affection is for Gnome 3, not so much Fedora...

So, I've switched to OpenSUSE, and I don't think I'm going back to Fedora...I have never seen installing an OS cause so many problems...I am running the latest Beta of SUSE without any issues, so I've deduced that as far as I'm concerned, there are some very serious issues with Fedora, so even if they do get worked out, I don't want to go back...

[jdog]

Fedora proved to problematic for me...15 ran fine, but after 2 days of trying to install 16 Alpha, I have given up on it...My affection is for Gnome 3, not so much Fedora...

So, I've switched to OpenSUSE, and I don't think I'm going back to Fedora...I have never seen installing an OS cause so many problems...I am running the latest Beta of SUSE without any issues, so I've deduced that as far as I'm concerned, there are some very serious issues with Fedora, so even if they do get worked out, I don't want to go back...

Which is why I am a firm believer that Fedora is merely a server Linux distro. There's no way it is meant for anything else.

I've been using Ubuntu 11.10 Beta quite a bit on a laptop at work. The Unity interface has grown on me.

[5829]

Personally I never install anything other than the released versions (no alpha, beta, rc, etc). And even then not until at least a couple of weeks after they have been released.
I find that unless you have a spare PC that you can fool around with, have time to do it, and don't mind being frustrated more than normal, is not worth it. This not only goes for Fedora.

I really have not much problem with Fedora. The main problem that I have with Fedora is the 'stricter than most' policy of not including anything that is not 'free and open source' in the distro (or ask if you want to install it) like Mint or Ubuntu does. Mainly due to my lack of knowledge it can be rather time consuming to find out how to. And I find that the Fedora forums most times are not much help unless you already know what you are doing.

I don't care for Gnome 3 either, it is the only reason that I am still using Fedora 14 on my main pc.
Even Linus Torvalds does not like it.
Linus Torvalds dubs GNOME 3 'unholy mess'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/05 ... ome_three/
Linux daddy Linus Torvalds has dropped GNOME 3 in favor of the Xfce graphical desktop interface, dubbing GNOME 3 an "unholy mess".
"While you are at it, could you also fork gnome, and support a gnome-2 environment?" he wrote. "I want my sane interfaces back. I have yet to meet anybody who likes the unholy mess that is gnome-3."