As promised, I installed Fedora 9 – and promptly moved back to Fedora 8. The problem is not Fedora – its KDE. KDE 4 is not yet ready for normal use. And if you are a KDE user, I would suggest that you stay away from Fedora 9.

The purpose of KDE 4 is to make KDE compactable with Qt4. Its not for actual use. Sure, it could be used as a desktop, but it will lack many features that you expect in KDE.

I am surprised that Fedora decided to include KDE4 – despite its ‘alpha-ness’. But they have their reasons

Problems With KDE4

Customizable Panel

I could not find any options to customizing the panel – KDE 3.5 have a lot of options.

Many Options/Settings are missing.

It will be coming in the future releases – but its missing now.

Desktop Icons have no consistency

Some icons are bigger than others. On the other hand, you can rotate these icons – but I fail to see any practical application for that.

And many more…

Random crashes, dolphin, irremovable ‘Add Plasmoid’ option on the desktop, etc.

Long story short, I am back in Fedora 8. And I will be on it until Fedora 10 is out. And even then, I’ll wait some time before upgrading.

Links

Fedora 9/KDE4 Positive Reviews

• Fedora 9 Review
• Fedora 9 and the road to KDE4
• Review Roundup: Fedora 9
• Fedora 9: Leading edge or bleeding edge?
• Hats off to Fedora 9
• 5 Reasons Why You’ll Love Fedora 9
• aseigo: talking bluntly
• KDE 4.0 – why now?

And the Negative Ones…

• Fedora 9 (The unfair review)
• FedoraForum – Fedora 9 and KDE 3
• Is KDE 4 a Huge Step Backwards?
• Ten Things I Hate About KDE4 RC2+
• KDE 4.0.0: Sweet Follows Sour

I have started the download – but I have a 256kbps internet connection – and it will take around 4 days for the download to complete. After the install, I will write a review on it. I can’t wait to see the new KDE!

I have began a process of backing up my data so that nothing will be lost during the upgrade. No matter how careful I am, I always manage to loose something in the upgrade. Yeah, I know – Murphy’s Law. I hate Murphy. I am waiting to see what I loose this time. Last time it was my database. Luckily I was able to restore it from my backup – but the data entered after the backup was lost.

Fedora 9 Links

• Download Fedora 9
• Fedora 9 i386 DVD Torrent
• Fedora 9 (Sulphur) Release Summary
• Fedora 9 Announcement
• Fedora Release Notes
• Fedora 9 Announcement in FOSSwire

Fedora and Me: A History

• Installed Fedora 3
• 32bit Linux installed(Fedora Core 5)
• Fedora 7
• Fedora 7 – Installation

All Posts in the Fedora Category

If you are using Fedora 8 with KDE you may have noticed an interesting bug. Once you open some Gnome apps(for example, Exile, all the fonts in the KDE applications becomes one size smaller.

If this happens, the only way to fix it is to restart the X server – or so I thought. At first, I thought it was the issue of just one application – namely RhythmBox.

But I just found that there is a simple fix for this problem…

• Run the command ‘gnome-appearance-properties’
• Go to the ‘Fonts’ Tab
• Click on the ‘Details’ Button at the bottom
• Change the Resolution to 96 Dots per Inch(DPI)

That should solve your problem.

This issue appears only if your screen resolution is bigger than normal – mine is 1440×900.

Today I upgraded my system from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8. The installation process went very smoothly. But once the installation was done, I started the long process of configuring it. That’s when I ran into the sound issue in Fedora 8 – and based on the forum posts, so did many others.

Basically, you get this error at KDE startup…

Sound Error Informational Message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (Permission denied)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device

You will not be able to play any sound – amarok will crash if you try to play anything. But if you run system-config-soundcard(or System -> Administration -> Soundcard Detection), you will be able to hear the test sound. That is because you are running it as root.

Solution 1 – Console-Kit Service

Did you turn of Console-Kit and avahi-daemon startup services using system-config-services? If so, go back and re-enable them.

• Run system-config-services(or System -> Administration -> Services)
• Find Console-Kit and enable it
• Find avahi-daemon, enable it
• Restart the system and see if that fixed the problem.

This worked for me – so I did not try any of the following solutions.

Solution 2 – alsa-plugin

If the first solution did not solve the problem, try removing the pulseaudio plugin for alsa by running this command.

yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

Solution 3 – Permissions

If neither of the above work, open /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default-perms and add this line to the top…

<sound>=/dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*

And at the end, add this line…

<console> 0666 <sound> 0600 root

Related Links

Hopefully, your problems are solved by now. If not, here are some links to help you further…

• Bugzilla Bug 292201: ALSA mixer only usable as root
• Fixing Broken Sound in Fedora
• Fedora 8 & pulse audio – nonroot users have no sound Thread
• Pulse Audio Potential Issues

More about Fedora 8 in the next post.

Most site uses fonts that are available on Windows – if you want to view sites as the designer of that site intended, you need these fonts. And since I am a Web Developer, and spend most of my time on various sites, I had to install it.

Its not as easy as installing other software – but its possible. This is how you do it in Fedora 7…

• Download the MS Core Fonts Smart Package File and save it as msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec
• Install rpm-build and cabextract packages
  yum -y install rpm-build cabextract
• Build the Core Fonts package…
  rpmbuild -ba msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec
• Install the package…
  rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm

More Details…

• Install Windows Web Fonts
• An easy way to install Microsoft’s TrueType core fonts on linux
• Installing Windows Font(in Ubuntu)

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

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.

As you know Fedora 7 is out in the open. I finished downloading the ISO images a few days back – yesterday, I installed it. Now I am on Fedora 7.

The Installation

The installation went without a glitch – well there was a small problem – but that is my own fault. When I reached the partition section, I forgot wether my ‘/’ was sda5 or sda6. So I when to the terminal and mounted sda5 and checked its contents. sda5 was ‘/’ and sda6 was ‘/home’. Then I continued with the procedure. But when the installation started, I got a rude message saying that the installer could not format ‘/’. The message said that it is a serious error.

Well, I got scared – but then I remembered that I forgot to unmount the sda5 partition. So I restarted the system and tried installation again. There were no problems after that.

Configuration

The installation is complete – now it is time for the great art of configuration. It could take days for me to set up my system exactly as I want it.

Usually I just backup all my ‘dot files’ and then dump it back after the installation is complete. But this time I am going to configure the system manually.

So, this is the first post in a series on how to configure your Fedora 7 system to my tastes. It is pretty pointless to configure your system to my tastes – but hang around, you will find something interesting.

The latest version of the popular Fedora Distribution was released today. From this release onwards, the word ‘Core’ is taken out of the name. Take the Fedora 7 Tour for more information about the latest release.

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project.

Some Stats

• Linux kernel 2.6.21
• GNOME 2.18
• KDE 3.5.6
• Xorg 7.3

Download

• Torrents
• Mirrors

I would recommend that you use the torrent for downloading it. When Fedora 6 was released, the servers became inaccessible due to heavy traffic.

Links

• Fedora 7 released
• Release Notes
• Release Announcement

It is very easy to setup an internet connection sharing in Linux system using iptables. This method can be used to share an internet connection from a Linux system(I used Fedora Core 6, but it should work on other distributions that support iptables). Another method of doing this is using a proxy server like squid.

Enable IP forwarding

Run as root

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

To enable it in system startup, edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf and set

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

iptables

Run command as root

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
service iptables save

Configuration

The configuration should be like this

Router

Connected to the internet provider
IP : 192.168.1.1

Internet Connected System

eth0 (LAN Card 1)

Connected to router

• IP : 192.168.1.10
• Netmask : 255.255.255.0
• Gateway : 192.168.1.1 (IP of the router)

eth1 (LAN Card 2)

Connected to the other system

• IP : 192.168.0.20 (Not the same network as the first card)
• Netmask : 255.255.255.0
• Gateway : 192.168.1.1 (IP of the router)

Second System

LAN Card connected to the first system

• IP : 192.168.0.30
• Netmask : 255.255.255.0
• Gateway : 192.168.0.20 (IP of the second Card in the first system)

Disclaimer

Linux networks is not a subject I am an expert on. So take my advice with a pinch of salt. The above procedure worked for me. YMMV.

Status

Some results of various commands are shown here. Check to see if it matches the result on your system.

# iptables -t nat -L POSTROUTING
Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
MASQUERADE  all  --  anywhere             anywhere

# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
1

# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination