Is Fedora better than Ubuntu?

Isn't it beautiful? Well this is a screen shot of Fedora. In the last few posts you read about Ubuntu so here are some reviews of Fedora. Decide about the title question on your own, although most agree that Ubuntu is the best. However your needs may be different, also the Live USB option is cool to have.

Fedora 9 Gives Ubuntu a Run For Its Money

By Scott Gilbertson May 13, 2008 | 10:56:23 AMCategories: Linux, software

The Fedora Project has released Fedora 9, a significant upgrade for the popular Linux distribution. Fedora 9 packs in a number of new features including an improved package management system, KDE 4 and more.

Perhaps the best part of Fedora 9 is the new live USB options. Fedora has always made it easy to go from a live CD to a bootable USB stick, but the new options allow for a non-destructive install and persistent data. The non-destructive part means that, provided your USB stick has space, you can install Fedora 9 and none of your existing files will be lost.

Thanks to the persistent data features, booting from a live USB install isn’t just a temporary trial experience like the live CD — any changes you make or files you create are stored and available the next time you boot up, and that includes system files as well. Fedora sent me a live USB stick with RC1 last week and I was able to upgrade the USB stick to the final release this morning without issue (note that the Fedora Project servers appear to slammed at the moment, so be patient and use a torrent download if possible).

Fedora 9 introduces a nice upgrade to PackageKit which allows you to treat all your updates the same whether they’re RPG, UM or Apt. There’s also a new feature that detects when you’re missing a piece of software needed to open a file. PackageKit will pop up a window offering to install what you need (provided there’s a free software package available).

Fedora continues its long tradition of strong Java support with OpenJDK6 and IcedTea (an implementation of OpenJDK, released in Fedora 8) included by default.

As always Fedora ships with both GNOME and KDE desktops available. The GNOME version comes with the 2.22 and all its assorted goodness like GVFS and more (see our Ubuntu review for more on what’s new in GNOME 2.22). On the KDE side Fedora 9 makes a leap of faith and defaults to KDE 4 with all the latest and greatest eye candy and new features.

After playing with the release candidate for a week or so I’m happy to report that Fedora 9 has made some significant strides and gives Ubuntu a serious run for its money when it comes to user-friendliness.

You can grab a copy of Fedora 9 from the Fedora Project download site.

(more at Fedora 9 Gives Ubuntu a Run For Its Money | Compiler from Wired.com)

2.

First Look at Sulphur, Fedora 9

- Encryption support, ext4 filesystem, kernel 2.6.25 and more!

By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor & Marius Nestor, Linux Editor

Enlarge picture

Believe it or not, Fedora 9 (dubbed Sulphur) is here! It was OFFICIALLY released (as expected) today May 13th, 2008. With hard drive encryption support implemented in the graphical installer (a feature that is missing from the popular Ubuntu distribution), latest Linux kernel 2.6.25, GNOME 2.22.1, GIMP 2.4.5 and Firefox 3 Beta 5, we guess the final release will really rock your world and it is our pleasure, here at Softpedia Labs, to introduce you to the latest features of Fedora 9.
Powered by the latest and greatest Linux kernel, version 2.6.25, Fedora 9 Sulphur brings you ext4 support, a filesystem that's more scalable and performs much better than ext3. Although it is considered to work better than ext3, it is still under development and not enabled by default, with some features that are not fully completed. Moreover, Fedora 9 doesn't bring you a fully ext4-compatible version of e2fsprogs, although this utility can create filesystems mountable by ext4.
Fedora 9 sports the latest stable release of the popular desktop environment, GNOME 2.22.1, which features the brand new Cheese webcam photo and video making utility, Google Calendar support, PolicyKit integration, better network filesystem support and much more. If you are a KDE fan, you will get KDE 4.0.3, so you can install one or both desktop environments.

(more at http://news.softpedia.com/news/First-Look-at-Sulphur-Fedora-9-85520.shtml)

3. Here is another review which isn't so optimistic about Sulphur:

 

Linux examined: Fedora 9

The community edition of Red Hat's distro works well and is widely supported -- but it can be a difficult install.

By James Turner

May 14, 2008 (Computerworld) For many of us, our first painful introduction to old-school Linux installs came from installing early versions of Red Hat. Like most early Linux installs, it was a highly technical, highly finicky process that was best left to the experts.

Well, times have changed. Today, many Linux users are getting blasé about the ease with which we can install Linux. We've been spoiled by distributions such as Ubuntu, which is actually easier to install than Windows. Unfortunately, Fedora 9, the community edition of Red Hat, was a bit too much of a blast from the past for me.

This new release keeps Fedora in step with the rest of the popular distributions, updating Gnome and KDE to recent releases, improving the network management capability, freshening the kernel and adding a USB booting capability.

At a Glance

Fedora 9

Pros: Extensive repository of prebuilt software, good hardware support.

Cons: Installation may intimidate nontechnical people, and may not deal well with multiboot environments.

Who should use this: Experienced Linux users who want an enterprise-grade distribution or will be deploying software to Red Hat Enterprise.

However, when comparing Linux distributions today, the differentiating factors are fairly limited -- a 2.6.x kernel is a 2.6.x kernel, Gnome is Gnome, KDE is KDE and so on. So you have to look at a few specific factors. How easy is the install? How well does it recognize and accommodate different operating systems that share the disk? What's the package manager like? Does the distribution offer you the chance to use proprietary drivers for your hardware? How well does it work with Wi-Fi?

( more at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9085160)

Other Reviews about Fedora:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/12/fedora_9/

Complete List of Compiz Keyboard Shortcuts

Compiz is one of the most important reason why many love Linux. Compiz is definately the best looking thing on a PC, even Mac OSX looks pale in comparision against Compiz. Ubuntu has included Compiz by default since Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) release. Many of you must have been disappointed to find out that the 'Cube' and other cool effects you saw in the Youtube videos is not present in Ubuntu. Well, don't worry Ubuntu has all the goodies installed you merely have to unlock them. For that you require an amazing utility called “Compiz setting manager”. It gives you an easy to use dashboard for controlling the Compiz effects. Make sure you have the necessary Graphics card available, I'd recommend EnvyNG for that.

Now:

1. Open a terminal window.

2. Execute the following command:
sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager

To open the Settings Manager, click System, mouseover Preferences and select Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. You will be presented with a large selection of effects to choose from.

Here are the shortcuts.

Desktop Effects1	Keyboard Shortcuts
Rotate Cube	Mousewheel on Desktop
Switcher2	Alt + Tab
Shift Switcher3	Super + Tab (2 modes: flip and cover)
Ring Switcher	Super + Tab - overrides Shift Switcher
Expo	Super + E (toggle)
Film Effect	Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow4
Rotate Cube Manually	Ctrl + Alt + Left Mouse Button
Scale Windows	Alt + Shift + Up Arrow
Show/Clear Desktop	Ctrl + Alt + D (toggle)
Snapping Windows	Move a window across workspaces5
Screenshot	Super + Left Mouse Button
Zoom In/Out	Super + Mousewheel
Transparent Window	Alt + Mousewheel
Resize Window	Alt + F8
Move Window	Alt + F7
Add Helper	Super + P
Widget Layer	F9 (toggle)
Water Effects	Shift + F9 (toggle)
Fire Effects: On	Super + Shift + Left Mouse Button
Fire Effects: Clear	Super + Shift + C
Annotate: Draw	Super + Left Mouse Button
Annotate: Start	Super + 1
Annotate: End	Super + 3
Group: Select Window(s)	Super + S
Group: Group Windows	Super + T
Group: Ungroup Windows	Super + U
Group: Flip Windows	Super + Right or Left Arrow

¹ Effects have to be enabled to see results.
² To see the full effect, have multiple windows or programs open.
³ To configure: Go to Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.
⁴ Use left and right arrow thereafter to move to workspaces.
⁵ Disables Wobbly Windows.
Another tip, the 'Super' key is nothing related to Superman, it is just the 'Win' key on Windows.

[Source]

Installing Thoggen on Fedora 11

Thoggen is a DVD backup utility ('DVD ripper') for Linux, based on GStreamer and Gtk+. There are several other DVD rippers. There is a good article Choose the DVD ripper that's right for you which give a good account of the various DVD ripping application available on linux.

Some of the features of thoggen (taken from Thoggen Website) are as followed:

• Easy to use, with a nice graphical user interface (GUI)
• Supports title preview, picture cropping, and picture resizing.
• Language Selection for audio track (no subtitle support yet though)
• Encodes into Ogg/Theora video
• Can encode from local directory with video DVD files
• Based on the GStreamer multimedia framework, which makes it fairly easy to add additional encoding formats/codecs in future.

To install thoggen on Fedora 11, first you have to install RPM Fusion. For more information on RPM Fusion installation, see Blog Entry RPM Fusion Repository. Remember to do a "yum check-update" after you have install the repository

Step 1: Install thoggen

# yum install thoggen 

Step 2: Install libdvdcss2. libdvdcss is a free software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS).

# sudo -s
# rpm -ivh http://dl.atrpms.net/all/libdvdcss2-1.2.10-5.fc11.i586.rpm 

Step 3: Install gstreamer and related gstreamer-plugins

yum install gstreamer gstreamer-plugins-base gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad

ntpdate no server suitable for synchronization found

I was configuring one of head node of our cluster server to synchronise from our time server in our organisation, and in turn the head node becomes a NTP Server for the compute nodes that on a private IP addresses. As I was configuring the compute nodes and encounter "ntpdate[4933]: no server suitable for synchronization found"

I configured the ntp servers and ntp clients according to Setting up NTP Server for Local Network. And yet the error remain unresolved. Finally, I came across a solution

1. Open /etc/ntp/step-tickers and replace with the name of your local NTP Server
2. Open /etc/ntp/ntpservers and replace with the name of your local NTP Server
3. Restart your ntp services. You should eradicate the problem

Installing Likewise - Joining Linux to MS Active Directory

Continuing from Open Source Tools to integrate with MS Active Directory.


Step 1: Changing Your Hostname from localhost to domain name

• Read Changing the hostname on CentOS

Step 2: Download and Install Likewise

• Go to http://www.likewise.com/community/index.php/download/ register and download the essential packages and GUI (optional)
• # ./LikewiseIdentityServiceOpen-5.2.0.7111-linux-x86_64-rpm.sh
• Ensure that you register your computer name at your Microsoft Active Directory if your AD require registration
• # /opt/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli join Active-Directory-Domain-Name Administrator
• Log-out from your current session and Log-In with your AD credential

Step 3: Verify that you have join the Domain

• # /opt/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli query.
• You should see Name = ......... Domain = ......... Distinguished Name = CN= ..................

Note: If you are unable to logon, try using the Full Active Directory Name rather than the Short ones, unless you make the Linux Box aware of your WINS Server.

Further Readings:

1. See Likewise Documentation Library
   

Installing Subversion on Fedora 11

I was installing Subversion on Fedora 11 using the "Subversion from CentOS" taken from CentOS Wiki and the instruction set work without a hitch. Just a few important commands to take note

Importing commands to take note:

1. Initial repository layout for MyTestProject
   # svn import /tmp/mytestproject to file://var/www/svn/repos/mytestproject -m
   
   
2. Checking Out
   $ svn co http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   
   
3. Edit and Commit
   $ svn co http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   $ svn commit -m "Added a line to testconf1.cfg."
   
   
4. Adding and Commit
   $ svn co http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   $ svn add configurations/AnotherTestConf2.cfg
   $ svn commit -m "Added something else"
   
   
5. Deleting
   $ svn co http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   $ svn delete configurations/AnotherTestConf2.cfg
   $ svn commit -m "Delete something"
   
   
6. Reverting to Previous Version
   $ svn log http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   (You will see a complete list of revision numbers along with the comments)
   $ svn co -r (some number) http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject
   
   
7. To add back files to the current repository
   $ svn copy http://yoursvnserver/repos/mytestproject/oldversionfile@NNN ./oldversionfile (where NNN is the revision number)
   

For more informatio

1. Version Control with Subversion (Free Online Documents and Ebook)
   

Tex4ht for CentOS, Redhat and Fedora

TeX4ht is a highly configurable TeX-based authoring system dedicated mainly to produce hypertext.

To install text4ht, make sure you install the repository from http://centos.karan.org/

#yum install tex4ht (That's it)

Using Preload to boot startup and general performance for Fedora

Preload is a daemon that analyses what you do and fetches the binaries you're mostly likely to use to boost starup and general performance. To make a very superficial comparison, it is similar to Windows Superfetch

Note 1: To install preload on Fedora 11
# yum install preload

Note 2: To tweak the preload configuration, you can tweak the
# /etc/preload.conf
(the default value should work well for all most users)

Note 3: To view the log file of the preload daemon
# less /var/log/preload.log

Note 4: If you wish to take a look on what Preload is caching for you, you go to
# /var/lib/preload/preload.state

Note 5: To ensure that the preload daemon is startup everytime
# chkconfig --level 35 preload on

Finding problematic updates

I read about this tip from LINUX Format March 2009 Issue (page 83)

If you installed a software updates and something broke or no longer works, you may have to look at the Package Manager log File.

For Debian-based LINUX like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, the log file is /var/log/dpkg.log

For Redhat-based Linux like CentOS, Fedora, the log file is /var/log/yum.log

Scalpel - Recover lost file

Scalpel is a fast file carver that reads a database of header and footerdefinitions and extracts matching files from a set of image files or rawdevice files. Scalpel is filesystem-independent and will carve files fromFATx, NTFS, ext2/3, or raw partitions. It is useful for both digitalforensics investigation and file recovery

Step 1: Install scalpel
# yum install scalpel

Step 2: Define the file type you wish to recover by uncommenting it.
# vim /etc/scalpel.conf

Step 3: Recover the file
# scalpel /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 -o output

Note:

1. Make sure you do not have a directory output or scalpel will not work.
2. Scalpel search by partition and not directory. So don't specify directory. It simply cannot work
3. to know which partition yo have, type # mount

Article: For more information, see Recover Deleted Files With Scalpel by HowToForge

Good Fedora Online Guide

Finally one good site for all thing Fedora
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/59/26

Creating a Yum Local Repository at CentOS

Sometimes, you may want a yum local repository for your CentOS 5 Server as yum automatically resolve all the dependency, With a local repo as a resource it will help resolve potential dependencies especially if you do not have internet access

Step 1: You will need an utility, named createrepo.
# yum install createrepo Or
# rpm -Uvh createrepo-0.4.11-3.el5.noarch.rpm

Step 2: Copy the whole CentOS CD to a directory (E.g. /install/centos5.2/x86_64/CentOS)

Step 3: Createrepo
# createrepo /install/centos5.2/x86_64/CentOS
(you will need to run the above command again, so that the repository metadata gets updated)

Step 4: Create a local-repo file
(You may want to remove CentOS-Base.repo, CentOS-Media.repo if you are not connected to network)
# touch install-local.repo

Type the followings:
[localrepo]
name=CentOS $releasever - My Local Repo
baseurl=file:///install/centos5.2/x86_64/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///install/centos5.2/x86_64/RPM-GPG-KEY


Further Information:

1. Local YUM Repository by George Notaras
2. Docs/Drafts/SoftwareManagementGuide from Fedora

Using VNC Server on CentOS with Windows VNC Viewer

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) allows user to have access to remote GUI console. For CentOS, the vncserver comes installed.


Step 1: Starting a  VNC Session on Vncserver

Step 1a: Remember to turn on the services by issuing the commands

# service vncserver start

Step 1b: Enter the VNC Password

# vncpasswd

(Type and confirm the password)


Step 1c: Test the VncServer

# vncserver

New 'xxx.yourserverdomain.com:2 (root)' desktop is xxx.yourserverdomain.com:2
Starting applications specified in /root/.vnc/xstartupLog file is /root/.vnc/xxx.yourserverdomain.com:2.log

Step 2 - Connecting to VNC session using VN Client 

Step 2: Use an TightVNC or RealVNC for the Client


Step 2a: Type into the VNC Clients the VNC Server connection

xxx.yourdomainserver.com:2

You have your connection.........


Step 3 - Changing default Windows Manager to Gnome Session
(Change the default twm windows )

# vim ~/.vnc/xstartup

# Type the following at your xstartup:

unset SESSION_MANAGER
exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid greyvncconfig -iconic &xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
gnome-session &

Step 4: How to kill VNC Server Connection
At the VNCServer,

# vncserver -kill :2

Installng xsensors and lm-sensors on fedora 12

Background
It is quite useful to know information regarding  your hardware especially the temperature.

Lm-sensors is the low level driver and service that connects to the motherboard components capable of monitoring temperatures and voltages. Lm-sensors collects the data over the reevant subsystem, an I2C interface.

XSensors is the front-end to display the data collected by Lm-sensors

Hardware Prerequisites.
For more information on hardware support by lm_sensors, please visit the Device lm-sensors wiki



Install Prerequisites and XSensors
Step 1: Install lm_sensors package

yum install lm_sensors lm_sensors-devel

Step 2: Install gtk2

yum install gtk+

Step 3: Download the xsensors from the http//linuxhardware.org). The current version at this point in writing is xsensors-0.70.
*Ensure you have GNU compilers installed so that you can compile the program

tar -zxvf xsensors-0.70.tar.gz
cd xsensors-0.70
./configure
make
make install

Amaha Linux Home Server

Amaha Linux Home Server is not a Linux Distro but a collection of software packed as presented with a web-managed console. It sits on top of the version of Fedora 12.

The Amahi Linux Home Server core purpose makes your home networking simple. According to the Project website, it has a number of features that

1. Audio Streaming with the Amahi Tunes, a customised Firefly Media Server.
2. VPN using preconfigured OpenVPN
3. Networking including DNS, Web Servers and NAS Server
4. File Sharing
5. Hardware monitoring
6. Amaha Private Wiki
7. Backup to a network share
8. Vista Calendar Integration 
9. Outlook Integration
10. ICal Integration
11. For more information, do look at Amahi Feature Gallery

Before you install Amahi Linux Home Server, you have to install Fedora 12 and add the Amahi repository in. Use the web-based console to configure the services you need.

How to install SSHFS and FUSE

1. SSH File System (SSHFS) Website: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html
   Filesystem in UserSpace (FUSE) Website: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
   
   How to install SSHFS and FUSE: http://crazytoon.com/2008/10/07/sshfs-how-do-you-install-sshfs-and-fuse-centoslinuxredhat/
   
2. Some potential error during my installation:
   
   "fuse: failed to open /dev/fuse: Permission denied", the solution is to use root to run"chmod o+rw /dev/fuse"
   
   "sshfs: error while loading shared libraries: libfuse.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory." The solution is to run "ln -s /usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2 /lib64/" for 64 bit or ln -s /usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2 /lib/ for 32-bit
   

Using nautilus to display icons at Fedora 9

On a clean install of Fedora 9, you will not be able to see icons on the Desktop, as the nautilus package is not install by default.

Just do a "yum install nautilus"

Switching off CPU Throttling on CentOS or Fedora

Under CentOS and Fedora, you can switch off CPU Throttling or "Dynamic Frequency Scaling" to maximise your CPU performance. For more information of CPU Throttling, you can also read Dynamic Frequency Scaling from Wikipedia. Just type the command

# /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector -g performance

For Debian-based hardware, you may want to take a look at
Looking at Xorg High CPU Usage Issue for netbook

Installing IPW2x00 Kernel Modules

A good article on how to configure the ipw2xxx Wireless Modules. Make sure your Yum repository contains RPM Fusion

AS for the main installation of Installing IPW2x00 Kernel Modules, Read on....

Use Yum to download without installing it

Step 1: First, you have to install the yum-downloadonly plugin for yum

# yum install yum-downloadonly

Step 2: Run the command to download the latest vsftpd

# yum install vsftpd --downloadonly 

Step 3: To specifies an alternate directory to store packages

# yum install vsftpd --downloadonly --downloaddir=/opt