Fedora Core 4

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Contents (hide)

  1. 1. News
    1. 1.1 Jun. 8, 2007: Upgrading yet again
    2. 1.2 Jan. 2, 2007: Where did ATRPMS go?
    3. 1.3 Dec. 29, 2006: Upgrading to Fedora Core 4
  2. 2. My Linux Box
    1. 2.1 Wireless LAN
    2. 2.2 Audio
    3. 2.3 Video
    4. 2.4 DVD Playback
    5. 2.5 Making The Lid Switch Work
  3. 3. Wine
    1. 3.1 Winetools Setup
    2. 3.2 Using the KDE Print System with Wine
    3. 3.3 Applications
  4. 4. Cedega
    1. 4.1 Games
  5. 5. Other
    1. 5.1 Sending email from Firefox with KMail
    2. 5.2 Adding True Type Fonts as User
    3. 5.3 Converting TeX files to HTML with Kile
    4. 5.4 The Linux Printing System (CUPS)
    5. 5.5 Posting Flash Videos with FFmpeg and FlowPlayer

1.  News

1.1  Jun. 8, 2007: Upgrading yet again

Over the past year I have become more comfortable upgrading my entire distribution without too much pain or lost information. One of the most useful tricks was to set the /home directory in a different partition from the root directory. This has made the last two upgrades virtually painless. Thus, upgrading yet again to Fedora Core 6 proved to be quite simple this time. Check the new Linux page and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.

1.2  Jan. 2, 2007: Where did ATRPMS go?

As of today, the Fedora Core 4 ATRPMS repositories and most of its mirrors disappeared. I had no idea this would happen and I am still hoping they are just being updated or moved. I haven’t been able to find any related post, so if anyone knows what happened please give me a shout. In the meantime, the following mirror is still available.

http://dist.itu.dk/ATrpms/fedora/4/en/i386/at-stable/RPMS/

1.3  Dec. 29, 2006: Upgrading to Fedora Core 4

The winds of change have finally reached the good old Fedora Core 3 and widespread maintenance and support is slowly decreasing. Thus, in order to keep up with the times, I have decided to move forward and embrace a new era with Fedora Core 4 (I know, it is still kind of “old” but I prefer a robust system with full support to bleeding edges. After all, I am still not much more than a mere Linux user). You can still access the old Fedora Core 3 page here. Cheers to a new and improved system!!

2.  My Linux Box

2.1  Wireless LAN

The IntelŪ PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver for Linux works well with the integrated wireless card. I managed to get the pre-compiled binaries from the ATRPMS repository before it disappeared on Jan. 2, 2007:

2.2  Audio

Audio worked right out of the box. The integrated intel card seems to be pretty standard hardware by now. I also got non-KDE applications (e.g. firefox) working with the ALSA mixer using the aoss script (e.g. $ aoss firefox) available here.

2.3  Video

A proprietary Linux driver with full hardware acceleration support for the ATI Radeon M300 video card can be found in the ATI drivers page. The latests versions of the driver no longer contain the fglrxconfig utility which could be used to create the xorg.conf file. So I had to do a bit of a trick:

  1. Run a version of the ati-driver-installer that contains the utility fglrxconfig. You can get version 8.14.13 here. If your X Server is not initially supported by the driver, you can override the automatic version detection with the following command: $ export X_VERSION=x690; sh ati-driver-installer-[version].run
  2. Run the latest version of the ati-driver-installer (8.32.5)
  3. On the command line execute the following: $ aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf
  4. Run the fglrxconfig utility to create an updated xorg.conf file
  5. Restart the xserver and enjoy your accelerated card!

2.4  DVD Playback

In order to optimize the performance of the DVD/CDRW combo drive on the dell D610, it is necessary to enable DMA on the drive. You can do this by typing the following command as root: 

$ hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc

In my case this resulted in: 

/dev/hdc:
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 using_dma    =  0 (off)

which apparently means that the kernel was not compiled with DMA support. So, I have to compile a new kernel… oh well… since watching DVDs on my computer is not high in my list of priorities, I guess I will pass for now. Besides, MPlayer does a fair job compensating for the low data transfer rate. However, if I do ever find some time and patience to compile a new kernel, I will post the result here.

Solution found!

Step 1:

Add the following line to the end of the /etc/modprobe.conf file: 

options libata atapi_enabled=1

Step 2:

Add the following parameter to the kernel boot line in /boot/grub/menu.lst: 

combined_mode=libata

Take a look at the complete workaround here

2.5  Making The Lid Switch Work

You can use radeontool to turn on/off the backlight of the LCD panel. This tool is available in the dries repository. You can also download the source here. After installing both the laptop-mode-tools and radeontool packages, I added the following lines at the beginning of the /etc/acpi/actions/lm_lid.sh script: 

LIGHT=$(radeontool light | grep "looks on")

if [ "$LIGHT" = "" ]; then
        radeontool light on
else
        radeontool light off
fi

This enables turning on/off the backlight of the LCD panel according to the state of the lid switch. It also works nicely with laptop-mode to save some additional battery power.

3.  Wine

Does your brand new Windows system refuses to install that awesome application you loved in Windows 98? Well, I bet you can run it with Wine! Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix. This means that Wine allows you to run Windows applications on Linux! I have also used Wine to test Windows applications on Linux to avoid cluttering up my Windows partition (in case I end up not liking the application).

Note: You should complete the winetools setup before installing any Windows application. This will ensure a stable Windows environment. I installed both Wine and Winetools from rpm.

3.1  Winetools Setup

  1. Type winetools on a console window.
  2. Complete the Base Setup.
  3. If the Microsoft Foundation Classes 4.x download hangs, save the files mfc40.dll and mfc42.dll to the sys directory in your $HOME/winetools folder. You can get the dll files here
  4. Complete the Windows System Software installation.
  5. Complete the Microsoft TrueType core fonts installation.
  6. If the font installation hangs, you can download the files directly from here.

3.2  Using the KDE Print System with Wine

Step 1:

Edit the win.ini file in your C:\Windows directory, located in $HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows, to make kprinter the default printer. Add or change the following entries: 

[windows]
device=KDE Print System,WINEPS.DRV,KDE:

[devices]
KDE Print System=WINEPS.DRV,KDE:

Step 2:

Add to $HOME/.wine/system.reg: 

[System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Print\\Printers\\KDE Print System]
"Attributes"="dword:00000000"
"Name"="KDE Print System"
"Port"="KDE:"
"Print Processor"="WinPrint"
"Printer Driver"="PS Driver"
"Priority"="dword:00000000"
"Start Time"="dword:00000000"
"Status"="dword:00000000"
"Until Time"="dword:00000000"

[System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Print\\Printers\\KDE Print System\\PrinterDriverData]
"PPD File"="/usr/share/wine/generic.ppd"

Step 3:

Add to $HOME/.wine/user.reg: 

[Software\\Wine\\Printing\\Spooler]
"FILE:"="tmp.ps"
"KDE:"="|kprinter --stdin"
"LPT1:"="|lpr"

Step 4 (Optional):

Note: This step must be repeated for each application. The procedures may vary or may not be available at all in some applications. You can substitute the now redundant “Print…” function with the “Print” (i.e. print directly) function available from the toolbar customization menu. In Microsoft Office 2000 do the following:

  1. On the menu bar do rigth click | Customize…
  2. Drag the “Print” button to the desired position in the File menu.
  3. Drag the “Print…” button away from the File menu and drop it anywhere.

3.3  Applications

Application Installation Status Issues Screenshot
Microsoft Office 2000
  1. Simply run the installer from CD: ~$ wine "Path to CD Drive\SETUP.EXE"

Notes:

  • Do not install the Office Assistant, it will make your installation unstable.
Running + PowerPoint crashes while editing but presentations are ok. Microsoft Office 2000 on Linux: Word

4.  Cedega

These days, game support is about the only reason why I sometimes still regress to Windows, but that is rapidly changing. Cedega is a neat piece of software that you can use to install and run Windows games under Linux. You can download it from their site after paying a US$15 registration fee which includes a 3 month period of technical support. They have a fairly large library of games supported and they tend to focus on the hottest titles. Here is what I have managed to install (that I actually like):

4.1  Games

Application Installation Status Issues Screenshot
Unreal Tournament (v4.36 Patch)
  1. Simply run the installer from CD: ~$ cedega Path_to_CD_Drive/Setup.exe
  2. Follow the instructions
  3. Repeat for v4.35 Patch: ~$ cedega Path_to_Patch/utpatch436.exe
Running smoothly None
Unreal Tournament
VisualBoy Advance (v1.7.2)
  1. Download the latest version from http://vba.ngemu.com/
  2. Unzip the downloaded file.
  3. Run: ~$ cedega Path_to_Unziped_Files/VisualBoyAdvace.exe
Running smoothly None
VisualBoyAdvance

5.  Other

5.1  Sending email from Firefox with KMail

  1. Enter about:config into the url field, this will bring up the configuration & preferences data.
  2. Look for the entry network.protocol-handler.external.mailto and make sure its value is set to true
  3. Right click on an open space and select New → String. This opens up a name box.
  4. In the entry field write network.protocol-handler.app.mailto
  5. Hit enter and write kmailservice in the next dialog box.
  6. Restart your browser.

5.2  Adding True Type Fonts as User

  1. Add *.ttf file to $HOME/.fonts folder.
  2. Open a console and type: 
$ cd $HOME/.fonts
$ fc-cache ./

. 3. Restart the X display manager.

5.3  Converting TeX files to HTML with Kile

  1. Download and install TeX4ht. Get the Fedora rpm here.
  2. Start kile
  3. Then, choose: Settings>Configure Kile>Build>New Tool. Type in TeX4ht. Click Next button, then Finish button.
  4. At the command text field, type in: mzlatex
  5. At the Options text field, type in: '%source' 'xhtml,mathml-' (with all quotes intact and there is a space between the quoted options)
  6. Click the OK button.

5.4  The Linux Printing System (CUPS)

5.5  Posting Flash Videos with FFmpeg and FlowPlayer