doing more of my posts on the following link
http://linuxgrab.wordpress.com/
Trying to avoid duplication.
Hopefully I can keep up the momentum. 😀 😀
making yum faster
just a little tweak that’ll help you make your yum a tad faster.
it’s a plugin for yum that picks the fastest mirrors for you.
so on your terminal :
# yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror.
simple as that. the rest it’ll do itself.
skype problems fedora 20/ korora 20
for those of you having skype issues on fedora 20 /korora 20
I had a bit of a problem with a buzzing sound or no sound on your skype.
Here’s what should work for you
# sudo sed -i 's/^Exec=.*/Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype %U/' /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop
this helped sort out my issues.
hope it helps you out as well.
many thanks to this guy.
korora linux
happy new year!!
now that we have that out of the way let’s get on with the year.
new year new things.
top of the list is the korora project, which I have been following very closely.
and to put it in a nutshell it’s amazing work right there.
For those who don’t know korora it’s a spin off of fedora with a few things added to make it easier as well as prettier to use.
Quite frankly it’s a solid clean
distro that can hold it’s own. Very stable no issues.
Wanna take the plunge? Take it here.
fedora 20 review
Heisenbug is finally released and in memory of Seth Vidal. A great loss to fedora and the opensource community. His work on yum especially.
Downloaded it the first chance i got.
This time i flipped back to gnome. I just missed the crisp clean gnome look and navigation.
I am a simple creature 😀
Setup is clean and no issues or bugs with anaconda.
Btrfs is an option in the setup. I’ll stick to ext4 for now but for the more daring among you have fun.
Couldn’t get chromium repo to work so just installed google-chrome this time.
Everything else works fine though. speed is amazing and preferable to kde.
Good to see a few of the latest programs as well eg. xbmc gotham (rpm fusion repo).
The bijiben note viewer is simple and powerful to use. Weird name though 😀
Tips:
yum install heisenbug-backgrounds-extras-gnome.noarch
for extra beautiful wallpapers. I like the selection this time round.
a few extensions you can look at for the gnome shell are (assuming you’ve installed gnome-tweak tool):
yum install gnome-tweak-tool
netspeed: which shows you your download/upload speed on the top right—see screenshot
window overlay icons — this attaches icons to open programs when in overview mode
have fun. feel free to ask  for assistance if any.
fedora 20 release delayed
After all the waiting the release date has been pushed by another week.
Anaconda (the installer) done sunk it. Got a couple of bugs that need sorting, although when I installed the beta there were no issues actually.
Well, patience is a virtue I suppose.
Let’s hope it’s a good release when it does come.
Maybe it’s in the name…. Heisen-bug  😀
icons only on task manager
this post will help you save some time.
icons only  on the task manager is a feature that is included by default on KDE.
always check your basics otherwise you’ll end up like me trying to compile it from source code. Â yeah very embarrassed right now.
unlock your widgets–> go to add widgets —> search for icons
and you’ll get it right there place it as you wish and enjoy.
here’s a shot of what to expect. i like icons better than the standard. it’s good to have choices on your desktop.
kde connect on fedora 19/20
now kde connect is nifty little tool to integrate your android phone with your KDE desktop.
It has a two part installation.
One you download from the android play store
and the second you have to install on your desktop. This is the tricky bit. Fumbled a bit here with libraries but managed to get through it.
this bit needs a few libraries installed:
yum install gcc-c++ cmake kdebase-workspace-devel git qjson-devel qca2-devel Â
git clone git://anongit.kde.org/kdeconnect-kde
cd kdeconnect-kde/
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ./
make
make install
##then as non root user ###
qdbus org.kde.kded /kded loadModule kdeconnect
kbuildsycoca4 -noincremental
Kudos to the developer Albert Vaka
it’s still under development so am hoping for more features in future but for what it gives currently I am very much impressed.
Media player control is seamless and a welcome feature.
Would love to see notifications for sms in future though.
Here’s some screenshots of what to expect.
EDIT:
still works on fedora 20 with same instructions
if not connecting ensure firewall is not killing connection
# systemctl stop firewalld.service
# systemctl disable firewalld.service
give it a reboot and you should be good.
kde or gnome
yeah this is the most evil option anyone has to make on a linux distro: what DE you’re going to use.
for me it boils down to just two having played around with so many and a bit of a leaning towards the pantheon desktop at some point.
and that of course icludes a lot of distro hopping just to try out the distro that seems to best support your DE. eg.
linux mint —> cinnamon
fuduntu —-> gnome 2 (so sad they had to close shop)
elementary —> pantheon
suse —–> KDE
arch linux —-> just to try out all the desktops | in a way arch will help you slow down the distro hopping coz everything is available and if not officially supported it’ll be in the AUR.
** will do a post on my wild journeys distro hopping 😀 one for each distro including my likes and dislikes and how i always end up on fedora.
for now am back to KDE having left when they went from 3-4 so that should count for like 4years or so.
to be quite honest am very much impressed at how far it has come since the dark dark times.
gnome wasn’t quite hacking it for me. eg. switching between full screen and windowed mode on xbmc always crashes gnome+xbmc on my laptop. very annoying for me other people seem not to mind.
plus i have always believed in customization. so gnome isn’t really going down a good road for me currently.
over the years KDE has always looked good but the one thing that always got me when i would try it was the amazing number of crashes i would get with every click. bug this bug that just isn’t how i like to use my OS.
so to install the KDE spin for fedora and have absolutely no crashes till now is amazing.
even gnome wasn’t doing so well in the crashes department.
in a nutshell KDE is just beautiful right now. amazing work and amazing where they’re going with it. now. here’s to hoping they don’t screw it up again.
installing vmware player on fedora 19
update: latest one now installs no issues. if you can, just use virtualbox.
Been having a problem with vmware-player on fedora 19 with kernel 3.10.10
Actually got the final solution from here.
quick summary of what i did
first download the installer for your architecture from their site
#chmod +x theinstaller.bundle
#./theinstaller.bundle
it will install with a few prompts nothing difficult there
now launching it didn’t really give me what i wanted
so we go ahead and do the following
1. Open /usr/bin/vmplayer in vim or other text editor of your choice, using sudo or su.
2. Look for the lines that read as follows:
Code:
export PRODUCT_NAME="VMware Player" libdir="$LIBDIR"/vmware bindir=$libdir/bin sharedir=$libdir/share
3. Add the following after the above lines:
Code:
# Makes vmware player more compatible with Fedora 19. export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_LIBS=force export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/modules/:
4. Save the file. You should be able to at least get the program running after that.
now to sort out the module issues:
download the following patches
then
1. Go to /lib/vmware/modules/source and copy the vmnet.tar and vmblock.tar archives to the desktop. Also put the patch files on your desktop.
2. Extract files for VMNet and VMBlock TAR files to desktop. You will have two folders when done.
# tar -xf vmnet.tar
# tar -xf vmblock.tar
3. Just cd into vmnet folder on desktop in terminal and run
Code:
patch -p1 < ~pathtopatch/vmnet.3.10.patch
4. Just cd into vmblock folder on desktop in terminal and run:
Code:
patch -p1 < pathtopatch/vmblock.3.10.patch
5. Put the folders back into the archives sitting on your desktop, rename the original TAR files in the folder mentioned in step 1, and put your modified tar files into the same source folder.
After that, VMWare Player should run and rebuild the modules in Fedora 19 with 3.10 kernels.
pretty much everything sorted and persistent across reboots.
hope this sorts someone out!
fedoragrab 