LinDesk

Fedora does not include MP3 support out of the box. This is because MP3 is a proprietary format. Fortunately, enabling MP3 support in Fedora 7 is very easy.

First thing to do is enable the Livna repository for Yum.

Run these commands as root

wget http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/7/i386/livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh livna-release-7-2.noarch.rpm

The next step is to install all the necessary libraries. This is what I did…

yum install  gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad xine-lib-extras-nonfree

Install MP3 Support in Fedora 7

The default Linux bootloader, Grub, has a 5 second delay in booting. This is provided so that the user has the time for selecting another Kernel/OS. But most users(like me) use just one Kernel. For us this extra 5 second is wasted time.

My windows-supporting brother often makes fun of Linux for its slow boot time. Our ‘Windows Vs Linux’ debates usually go like this…

My Brother: “Linux takes too long to boot.”
Me : “Windows may be faster to boot - but there is nothing in it that makes it worthwhile to boot into.”
Brother: “Linux takes too long to boot.”
Me : “The features in Linux makes it worth the boot time.”
Brother: “Linux takes too long to boot.”
Me : “Whatever…”

Naturally this motivated me to find ways to speed up my booting. Disabling the Grub delay is one of these methods.

Its very easy to do too - if you are comfortable with the terminal.

• Become root (su -)
• Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (pico /boot/grub/menu.lst)
• Find the line ‘timeout=5′
• Change that to ‘timeout=0′
• Save the changes (Ctrl+O)
• Exit (Ctrl+X)

Restart to see the difference.

You can speed up the booting process a lot by disabling the services you do not need. Another advantage of disabling unwanted services is that you can free up a lot of RAM. Fedora has a utility to make this very easy. In other distros you will have to edit the files in /etc/init.d folder.

First run the ‘Service Configuration’ utility.

KMenu > Administration > Server Settings > Services Service Management
Or run ’system-config-services’

Then disable all the services that you will not need. For more information on what to disable/enable here, go to Services in Fedora 7. That should give you an idea about which all service must be enabled.

List of all the enabled services on my system…

• ConsoleKig
• atd
• autofs
• cpuspeed
• crond
• haldaemon
• httpd
• iptables
• irqbalance
• kudzu
• lm_sensors
• Mussagebus
• mysqld
• nasd
• network
• readahead_early
• readahead_later
• smartd
• syslog

After all configuration is done, click ‘Save’. You will notice the difference on the next boot.