A noobs experience with FC3

[Kokanee100]

I used to use Linux as my primary OS years ago in the days of Redhat 5 & 6. So I would consider myself fairly knowledgeable about Linux and its operation. Just a little behind because when Windows 2000 came along I switch over to the dark side because I was sick of all the time I spent working on the OS. Over the years I checked out some the other Linux distros (Suse, Mandrake, Redhat 9 etc..) all of which I hated and uninstalled immediately. Now I decided to check out Fedora. I started a while ago with FC1. Uninstalled it because it was too basic. A while later came FC2 so I decided to try it... it hozed my partition table when installing. I was not impressed ( lost a lot of stuff ). Later I tried a different build of FC2 which had the duel boot bug fixed. To my relief it didn't screw the partition table but it would freeze when loading the kernel. unInstalled it.

Now the other day I download the DVD ISO of FC3 to try out and I must say I really like it. Heres what I installed it on..

Custom built system
Intel D845PEBT2 Motherboard (http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bt2/)
Intel P4 2.54Ghz
Pioneer A04 DVD-RW
LG DVD-ROM
ATi Radeon 8500LE
HP Deskjet 960 Printer
Logitech MX700 cordless optical mouse
Microsoft internet keyboard
Gyration cordless mouse & keyboard (http://www.gyration.com/ultragt-compact.htm)
Some crappy old Intel webcam

I installed the Gnome system (I hate KDE). To my surprise everything (sound, NIC, DVD-RW, printer, video, mice) worked upon first boot except the webcam. I can remember from the good old days having to recompile my kernel just to get my CD-RW and sound card to work and spending countless hours just to figure out the scroll wheel on the mouse! Then I plugged in my Canaon A75 camera gThumb found the camera! Woot!

So my first task was to mount my XP NTFS partition. That was super simple after installing the NTFS driver (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora3.html). So I got the partition added to the fstab and permissions working right... its all good now. So it was time to transfer some stuff over.

MP3s. WTF? It can't play MP3s? After doing some reasearch I fixed that (http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/fc3-tips.php#mp3).

Videos (MPEG, DIVX, Windows Media). I was quite disappointed at first that Totem didn't play anything. So I uninstalled it and installed the Totem player that uses the Xine back end (http://heidelberg.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=347). Now I'm happy. So far it plays everything I got. But it doesn't play DVDs?? I had to install mplayer (http://heidelberg.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=229) for that.

Some things that impressed me...
- Gome Ghost View is soooo much faster than Adobe Reader for Windows.
- Even without video acceleration it feels snapier than Windows.
- Memory management (caching) is sooooo much better than Windows.
- A lot of Linux distros give you lots of useless apps (4 web browsers, countless email clients, 7 IM programs, 3 word processors etc..), which is a waste. Fedora has seemed to pick the best and only give you those.
- OpenOffice is sweet! I love the way its been converted to GTK and matched the look and feel of Gnome really good. It also did a great job of opening my Word documents. So far none have been messed up.
- The default fonts look nice and are anti aliased. But I still installed the Microsoft TrueType Fonts (http://fedoraguide.org/fc2/fc2beginnersguide.html#rpmmicrosofttruetypecorefon ts).

Now for the annoyances...
- I can not figure out how to setup MIME types in Gnome. Here is my problem: In my video collection I have some .WMV files. When double clicking them it won't open Totem and just gives me a error something like "blah blah indicates that the file type is Microsoft WMV video. The contents of the file indicate that the file type is Microsoft ASF video.... blah blah". So it won't let me open it. I can right click it and open it by "Open with Totem Movie Player" and it plays fine. So I figure I would rename it to a .ASF. No go. So where do I go to fix MIME Types?
- With Firefox 1.0 when ever another application opens a link it opens a new windows not a tab even though the "Open link from other Applications in a new tab on the most recent window" is checked.
- I can not create a symlink on my desktop to a folder on my NTFS mounted partition. Bad UI design. You have to goto the file/folder of what you want to link to, right click and select "Make Link". Then you have to drag the symlink to where ever you want it. Since the file NTFS system does support symlinks the option is grayed out. Am I missing something here?
- In Windows when drag-n-dropping a file in Explorer if I did it with the right mouse button it would popup a menu when I dropped the file which would let me select Copy, Move or Create Shortcut. This was handy since I don't like it making decisions for me. Can't do this with Gnome.
- The Spacial File Manager. One word... stupid. What a retarded idea... I hate having to open 7 windows just to get to one folder. This is taking a step backwards. it kind of reminds me the Windows 95 file manager. Good thing you can turn this off and go back to the browser type file manager.
- Cut-n-pasting is STILL flakey.
- S-Video out on my video card does not work! This is very important to me!
- There is no central location for the config options. Where did the Gnome control center go? These endless little config apps and countless layers of sub menus makse it all hard to find things.

Overall I'm really impressed with the progress things have made over the years. I think I may try to make the jump back to Linus seeing as most on my Windows apps have direct replacements...

Mozilla Firefox -> Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird -> Evolution
Microsoft Office -> Open Office
Gaim -> Gaim
Paintshop Pro -> Gimp
iTunes -> Rhythombox (almost)
Windows Media Player -> Totem (If only it would play DVDs)
Kazzaa Lite -> <haven't found one yet>
G3 Torrent (http://g3torrent.sourceforge.net/) -> <haven't found one yet>
Filezilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) -> gFTP
Nero (http://www.ahead.de/us/index.html) -> X CD Roast

Some other stuff I need to find for Linux...
- A Gnome based app that is a all-in-one solution for ripping a DVD to DIVX. I could never get it right in Windows because of video/audio sync problems. I would love to try this with Linux.
- A all-in-one program that will clone DVD and automatically re-encode it to fit on a 4.7gig DVD-R. Something like CloneDVD 2 (http://www.elby.ch/products/clone_dvd/) for Windows.
- Something that will sit in the Panel and notify me of new emails in my Gmail account.
- ATi Radeon drivers RPM packages for FC3 and Xorg.

Any input would be great.
Thanks

[bunsen]

limewire →kazaa
azureus →bittorrent
windows media player →xine
and thunderbird is available for linux in case you want to keep it ;)

the nautilus file-management approach is something of taste. i do not hate it. sometimes, it is useful, sometimes not. just a right click lets you select the old browser-mode.

[Pegasus]

- I can not figure out how to setup MIME types in Gnome. Here is my problem: In my video collection I have some .WMV files. When double clicking them it won't open Totem and just gives me a error something like "blah blah indicates that the file type is Microsoft WMV video. The contents of the file indicate that the file type is Microsoft ASF video.... blah blah". So it won't let me open it. I can right click it and open it by "Open with Totem Movie Player" and it plays fine. So I figure I would rename it to a .ASF. No go. So where do I go to fix MIME Types?
I've writte a How-To for exactly this problem. You'll find it in how-to section of this forum... http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=26875

- The Spacial File Manager. One word... stupid. What a retarded idea... I hate having to open 7 windows just to get to one folder. This is taking a step backwards. it kind of reminds me the Windows 95 file manager. Good thing you can turn this off and go back to the browser type file manager.
There is a File-Browser in your menu. It starts with "nautilus --no-desktop --browser". Then you work with one window...

- There is no central location for the config options. Where did the Gnome control center go? These endless little config apps and countless layers of sub menus makse it all hard to find things.
Several updates will be on stack for the next time.

[Kokanee100]

I've writte a How-To for exactly this problem. You'll find it in how-to section of this forum... http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=26875

Oooo! Thanks. Very good stuff.

[yr2alex]

I have found that k3b is a better replacement to nero than xcdroast, and actually closely maintains the same functionality in that regard. see for yourself... =-)

[Tru]

For a great p2p program then I reccomend that you give this a try here is a link www.gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net there is also xmule and amule but I have found that the one in the link I have provided to produce more search results and usally much faster downloads. It uses several networks at the same time it uses limewires, bearshares and some others.

I also agree gnome needs a centralized control center like kde I cant stand having to look in system tools, prefrences and then some just to try and find things that should all be under one centralized location. If you didnt like kde I would reccomend just trying the new one that comes with fc3 it is pretty nice. I am having a hard time deciding between the two they both have things I like and dislike.

[Shadow Skill]

Just so everyone knows totem plays dvd's as well, just make sure you get totem-xine though.

[PeTzZz]

There is a File-Browser in your menu. It starts with "nautilus --no-desktop --browser". Then you work with one window...
There is another and even better way. In nautilus choose Edit-->Preferences. Then open the Behaviour tab and mark 'Always open in browser windows' as enabled.

[Kokanee100]

Just so everyone knows totem plays dvd's as well, just make sure you get totem-xine though.

Thanks. I can get Totem to play the DVD by openning Totem and selecting Play Disc. I tried to setup Gnome to auto launch Totem and play the DVD when I insert the disk. Totem launchs and gives me an error message "Totem could not play file:///dev/hdd There is no plugin to handle this movie"

Is there any way to fix this?

[jayemef]

- With Firefox 1.0 when ever another application opens a link it opens a new windows not a tab even though the "Open link from other Applications in a new tab on the most recent window" is checked.
That option seems to be a bit iffy with certain apps. However, generally if an app has the ability to display a link, it also has an option about what to open it with. Check for that. Most of the time you will be able find something along the lines of "new tab in firefox".


For a kazaa replacement, check out apollon. Here is a tutorial for setting it up: http://foolish.fedorausers.org/gift/index.html. This was written for FC1, but this still applies, though yum is slightly different now.

For a bittorrent replacement, try azureus. Here is a tutorial for setting it up: http://ghaefb.fedorausers.org/howto02.html.


And for any other windows replacements, check out this link:http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml

Glad to hear you're impressed with Fedora. Good luck with it.

[OpenSouls.com]

I'm not the most knowledgable user, but I was unhappy with the default setup of GNOME. I didn't like the two-taskbars (one on top and one on the bottom). Any ideas on how to fix that (the defualt setup in FC2 was great).

Peace

Jeff the newb.

[Kokanee100]

I'm not the most knowledgable user, but I was unhappy with the default setup of GNOME. I didn't like the two-taskbars (one on top and one on the bottom). Any ideas on how to fix that (the defualt setup in FC2 was great).

Right click on the top bar and select Delete This Panel. Then you will have to add you add the Main Menu and the Notification Area to the bottom bar by right clicking on it and selecting Add to Panel.

[cindym003]

Originally Posted by Kokanee100
- I can not figure out how to setup MIME types in Gnome. Here is my problem: In my video collection I have some .WMV files. When double clicking them it won't open Totem and just gives me a error something like "blah blah indicates that the file type is Microsoft WMV video. The contents of the file indicate that the file type is Microsoft ASF video.... blah blah". So it won't let me open it. I can right click it and open it by "Open with Totem Movie Player" and it plays fine. So I figure I would rename it to a .ASF. No go. So where do I go to fix MIME Types?

[Pegasus]

@cindym003: sorry, but i don't get your post...

[cindym003]

The post was the attached thumbnail, Pegasus. Any application can be set as the default in that tab.

[Pegasus]

The post was the attached thumbnail, Pegasus. Any application can be set as the default in that tab.

I tried this procedure on my box without success. Doubleclick -> Mime type error.
That's the reason why i've written the mime-type how-to.

Anyway, thanks for the answer ;)

[Ph34rT3hP3ngu1n]

don't know how old this thread is, but i realised something the other day that is very usefull for every gnome user... Remember the right-drag with teh create shortcut menu and everything? well you can do that with mouse3 or the scroll wheel button. just click and drag with it and when you let go you get a list of options like shortcut, copy, move, etc. My two cents to the project
-ph34r

[cindym003]

To copy, hold Ctrl while you drag, to create a symbolic link hold Ctrl + Shift while you drag. I knew that holding Alt while you dragged would bring up the menu (I read all this in the Help section) but I didn't know until now that my middle wheel on the mouse would do the same. Thanks

[pauls]

- S-Video out on my video card does not work! This is very important to me!


No-one maid any mention of a solution to the S-video problem, I've encontered the same with FC3 on my laptop. Any suggestions?

[LeoXV]

G3 Torrent -> G3 Torrent Linux, Rufus
Nero -> NeroLINUX

http://www.nero.com/en/NeroLINUX.html

http://g3torrent.sourceforge.net/ python 2.3 wx2.4
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1195066&forum_id=348632
http://www.rootshell.be/~leoxv/gentoo/g3torrent/g3torrent.v1.0.final.1.png
http://www.rootshell.be/~leoxv/gentoo/g3torrent/g3torrent.v1.0.final.2.png
http://www.rootshell.be/~leoxv/gentoo/g3torrent/g3torrent.v1.0.final.3.png
http://www.rootshell.be/~leoxv/gentoo/g3torrent/g3torrent.v1.0.final.4.png

http://rufus.sourceforge.net/ python 2.3-2.4 wx 2.5 (recommend version 2.5.5.1) (try cvs version)
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1259409&forum_id=440415
http://www.kolumbus.fi/jukka.lehtomaki/rufus/rufus_1.png
http://www.kolumbus.fi/jukka.lehtomaki/rufus/rufus_2.png

[arjay]

"Artificially created intelligence is no match for naturally inhereted stupidity."
Oops - last time I looked inherited had an "i" in it! Like the quote though
RJ