chromium in fedora 14

Commands I used to install Chromium web browser in Fedora 14:

$ su
# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
# wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/chromium/fedora-chromium.repo
# cd
# yum install chromium

I found those instructions at:  http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2010/install-chromium-on-fedora-using-yum/.

You can also accomplish the same thing by going to http://repos.fedorapeople.org/, clicking on "fedora-14," and pasting the contents of the next page into a new text file at /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-chromium.repo.  Then install Chromium with yum or Yumex.

screen edges

I like to take advantage of KDE4's screen edges settings.  In PCLinuxOS, I access the configuration tools from the main menu:

System Settings > Workspace Appearance and Behavior > Window Behavior > Screen Edges

Or:

Configure Your Desktop > Workspace Appearance and Behavior > Window Behavior > Screen Edges

In the Screen Edges module, in the Active Screen Edges section, I set the behavior of the screen when the cursor hits the corners of the screen.

Upper left and Lower left (as shown above):  Present Windows - All Desktops

With this setting, moving the cursor to either of the corners on the left side gives me a spiral tile view of each of the apps I have open:

Upper right:  Show Dashboard

This brings up my widget dashboard:

Lower right:  Show Desktop

That one, of course, toggles between minimizing/maximizing all windows.

I left the Window Management section at the defaults.  In the Other Settings section, I use the "Only When Moving Windows" setting for "Switch desktop on edge."  That's nice for dragging windows to other destkops.

fedora 14

Prior to last week, the only .rpm distro I'd installed and used was PCLinuxOS, but I've had my eye on Fedora, Mandriva, and openSUSE for a long time.

I finally downloaded the Fedora 14 KDE live CD.  It ran fine on my hardware, so I decided to install it, adding it to my multi-boot set-up.

Fedora 14 looks great!  Most of my experience with package managers has come with apt-get (and Synaptic), so I'm still learning my way around yum and its front-ends, KPackageKit and Yumex.  And I had to do a fair amount of tweaking to get everything in my multi-boot set-up working smoothly.

But the system was just about ready to go out of the box.  They didn't include OpenOffice on the live CD, so I installed OOo Writer and OOo Calc.  I wasn't crazy about the default appearance, but I tweaked KDE4 to make things look more comfortable.

I enabled the rpmfusion free and non-free repos and then installed codecs so I could play .mp3 files.

KDE4 desktop effects didn't work out of the box on my hardware.  I checked the name of my graphics drive:

$ lspci | grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV41.1 [GeForce 6800] (rev a2)

Then, I made sure I had the latest kernel:

# yum update kernel*

Then I ran this:
# yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

Then I rebooted, and after that I was able to enable desktop effects.

I don't know how important SELinux is, but I found the pop-up messages to be annoying, so I disabled SELinux by editing /etc/selinux/config:

SELINUX=disabled

The default web browser was Konqueror.  Uncool.  Google Chrome and Chromium were not in the repos.  Also not cool.  So I went to the Google site and downloaded Chrome.

On the panel, I replaced the Task Manager widget with the Smooth Task widget, which I prefer.  Another little tweak was to install the Glassified theme (Workspace Appearance > Desktop Theme > “Get New Themes...”) so I could use the Glassified Analog Clock (Workspace Appearance > Desktop Theme > Details tab > change the analog clock to the Glassified Analog Clock theme).  The Glassified analog clock looks better than some of the other themes' clocks that I've tried.


My main concerns have to do with how things will look over the long term.  I want to see how well yum handles things and how well I come to like yum, KPackageKet, and Yumex in comparison to Synaptic.  And, since Fedora releases a new version about every six months, and the current version is supported only a month after the second version down the line is released (F14 will receive support until a month after F16 is released), I'm interested in seeing how I like Fedora after one or two new versions.

But they've put together a nice release.  I haven't been seeing any flaws or bugginess.

My Fedora 14 desktop:

My widget desktop:

the little guy

Sports is all about the underdog, the little guy.

Earl Boykins, 5 feet 5 inches, out of Eastern Michigan University, born in Cleveland.  How do you measure heart?  Boykins is in his 12th season!  OK, so he's never been a superstar, and he's had to come off the bench a lot.  But he's had some good years.  And how many so-called basketball players never make it the NBA, let alone hang in there for 12 seasons?  Gotta love it.

Oh, yeah, and he dropped 22 points on the Lakers last night as the Bucks won at the Staples Center!

widget dashboard

My widget dashboard in KDE4 in Linux Mint Isadora.  Nothing fancy, just a few tools.

MultiSystem

For the first time, I created a bootable Linux USB flash drive.  I used the MultiSystem application (http://www.pendrivelinux.com/multiboot-create-a-multiboot-usb-from-linux/) with Ubuntu Lucid to add a couple of distro's live CD sessions to a 4 GB flash drive.

I had to go into my BIOS and change the boot order, and I after doing that I was able to boot into live sessions of Linux Mint Debian and Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick).

Works good; the systems run much faster than from a live CD, and being able to put more than one on a flash drive is convenient.

I would use a larger flash drive (maybe 16 GB) for an actual installation, or to run a persistent mode; and, ultimately, it's cheaper to use CDs for live CD sessions than it is to use flash drives, although the prices of the latter continue to drop.

the scale of the universe

An incredible presentation at this web page:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Makes ya feel a bit insignificant, doesn't it?