Three Sticks — Something for Everyone

In Part 1, described what convinced me to try open source software my primary desktop computing environment. In Part 2, I will discuss my foray into Linux and configuring my Dell Inspiron 6000 with Linux.

I wanted to share my experience with Fedora Core 6 even though Fedora Core 7 is coming out in April. I hope this article gives some of the newer Linux users some insight into making the change from Windows to Linux. I also hope that my configuration and setup solves one of those head scratching problems that doesn’t seem to have solution.

I thought many of you would enjoy seeing the end result. The image to the left is my current desktop. Click here or on the image to see a larger version.

Goals for an Open Source Desktop Environment

I had several major goals for an open source desktop environment including

• No loss of productivity after a reasonable amount of transition time
• All software must be free
• All of my major computing activities must be met these include
  • Web Development currently met by HTML Edit
  • Graphic Design currently met by Adobe PhotoShop
  • Document Generation currently met by MS Office XP
  • Movie Watching currently met by PowerDVD, MS Media Player and VLC Player
  • DVD/CD Image creation and management currently met by Alcohol 120%
  • Internet chat for AIM, MSN and Yahoo currently met by Trillian
  • Graphical SFTP client currently met by WinSCP
  • Email client currently met by MS Outlook
  • Web Browsing currently met by Internet Explorer and Firefox
  • Subversion Repository access currently met by TortoiseSVN
  • Diagramming currently met by Visio
  • Replacement for Solitaire
  • Automatic system updates currently met by Microsoft Update
• Full support for my hardware including optimized drivers

In order to eliminate Windows completely I would also have to be able to play my 2 favorite Windows games in Linux these are Civilization IV and Wing Commander Prophecy.

Selecting A Linux Distribution

Selecting a Linux distribution was a rather simple choice for me. Given my experience with Fedora Core 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and CentOS (Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone) on servers it seemed reasonable to use Fedora Core 6 as the basis of the my open source desktop. After reading several reviews regarding Fedora Core 6 as a desktop operating system I learned that the Fedora team made extra efforts to ensure that this version of Fedora was stable enough to serve as the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. With a not so quick bittorrent download of Fedora Core 6 (Zod) I was on my way.

If you are new to Linux, I would recommend that you take a look at the Ubuntu and FreeSpire distributions. Both are free and have good support for most hardware configurations. This is an important consideration with Linux because to make it operational (ex. play DVDs, access wireless networks etc) can require alot of work to configure an setup. If you choose to use another distribution other than Fedora Core 6 use this article as a guide, but the install and configuration can be radically different.

I would suggest that before you commit to a distribution you take the time to download a LiveCD of the distribution. LiveCD’s allow you to try a distribution without actually installing the distribution on your hard drive. You have a fully functional OS with accompanying software packages. It’s an excellent way to get a feel for a new distribution.

Installation and Configuration of Fedora Core 6 on a Dell Inspiron 6000

This portion of the article describes the process I went through to install and configure Fedora Core 6 on my Dell Insprion 6000. I hope for it to also serve as a reference point for others Dell Inspiron 6000 owners that are interested in running Fedora Core 6. For those interested in a review of Fedora Core 6 I suggest reading the excellent review at Lunapark6.

After I setup Windows XP Media Center on 40GB of my laptop, I threw in my brand new Fedora Core 6 DVD and rebooted. After the first couple of screens, I setup my custom hard drive with Logical Volume Management see The Benefits of LVM on a Small System for the benefits of using LVM on a desktop system. I ended up having to go threw this process a couple of times. It appears that the speculation that Fedora Core 6 might have been rushed is true as my install died midway through the Anaconda setup several times.

I didn’t let this inauspicious beginning deter my enthusiasm for the experiment. Once I created my user and set the specifics for my system (Firewall Settings, SE Linux etc) I was presented with a GNOME desktop with the cool Fedora DNA background. Unfortunately certain features weren’t setup by anaconda specifically my wireless network connection, DVD support, Flash inside of Firefox among others. One note, I chose to install both KDE and GNOME although I ultimately decided to use GNOME as my desktop. I have a couple of KDE applications that I run so it’s necessary to have the KDE libraries installed.

Despite these missing components I was pleased with what I saw. However with my resolution set at 1024×768 the first thing I needed to do was setup my video. I wanted to go ahead and install the ATI’s closed source drivers. It was at this point that I discovered another flaw with Anaconda. it mistakenly installs the i586 kernel on machines that should run the i686 kernel. To overcome this I had to replace the kernel.

You could test this with running the command uname -a or rpm -q –qf=’%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}n’ kernel.

I followed the instructions at Lunapark6 and replaced the kernel and kernel-devel packages. As the root user I issued the following commands

• Download and Install yum-utils package
  • yum install yum-utils
• Download the i686 version of my kernel
  • yumdownloader kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686
  • yumdownloader kernel-devel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686
• Install both packages
  • rpm -Uvh –replacefiles –replacepkgs kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686.rpm
  • rpm -Uvh –replacefiles –replacepkgs kernel-devel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686.rpm

After a quick reboot, I was ready to go. First I added the Freshrpms and Livna repositories to my yum configuration by issuing the following commands as root:

• rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm

• rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/fedora/linux/6/freshrpms-release/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

Next. I went ahead and updated all of the packages on the computer by running yum update as root. I used yum update instead of Pup (Package Updater) because yum update seems to run much faster than Pup. Due to the extensive nature of the updates I went ahead and rebooted the system.

At this point I went ahead and installed the drivers from ATI by issuing the command:

• yum install kmod-fglrx as root

Although I had installed the drivers I unknowingly didn’t configure X Server to use the fglrx drivers. To properly configure X Server do the following:

• Select Administration -> Display in the Gnome Menu. You will be presented with a Display Settings Panel.
• Select Hardware hardware tab.
• Select the Configure tab for the adapter and select the fglrx driver
• Log out and login again to restart the X Server

You can confirm that your fglrx driver is working properly by selecting ATI Display Settings under the System Tools menu. The OpenGL Vendor line should ATI Technologies Inc (or something close to that effect) if it doesn’t reboot to make sure that the X Server restarted properly. If you still have a problem you can try this this trick:

• Create a text file named something.conf in /etc/ld.so.conf.d (it’s .conf that is important, I named mine ati-fglrx.conf0
• Locate the fglrx libraries – enter command rpm -ql kmod-fglrx
• Add a single line to file that points to you fglrx libraries – I used (/usr/lib/ati-fglrx/)
• Enter command ldconfig as root
• Logout and login again
• Verify that the driver is working properly, if not repeat the first set of my instructions to install the ati drivers

The fglrx driver does not support AIGLX which is a serious setback if you want to enable 3D effects.

From here on I will point you to the sites that have the relevant instructions for installing additional functionality. I’m doing this for 2 reasons. The first is that this article is already 4 pages long and the second is that I want to make sure that I give credit to the other authors who pioneered making Fedora Core 6 a more complete and robust desktop OS.

Install DVD and Firefox Plugins:

Most of that information can be found at Computer Bits

Of course you will now want to install Flash 9, but the link on the Computer Bits site will send you to the Flash 9 download.

To ensure that you can play all DVD’s make sure you have installed all of the necessary libraries. I recommend the command:

• yum install xine* in place of the yum xine command at computer bits

You will also want to install mozplugger which give additional support for other apps in your browser ex. Microsoft Office File, PDF etc.

To install mozplugger:

• yum install mozplugger as root

Install Wireless:

Wireless is a little challenging to get to work reliably in Linux. I have had mixed results making it work for my laptop. I’m at a point now though where it works 98% of the time as long as I haven’t upgraded the kernel etc. I would recommend reading the sites below and then applying the portions that I recommend to your solution

Here are a few of sites I used to install wireless access:

• The PaulWay Pages shows how to install NetworkManager. NetworkManager makes it easy to switch from one network to another. It also works with wired connections.
• Fedora Core 6 IPW2200 even if you have a different chip these are pretty comprehensive instrutions for installing wireless on Fedora Core 6. Just remember that some of kernel directory names might be different because of differences in the version numbers of his kernel vs. yours. To determine the proper directory name you will need the name and version of your kernel which you can determine by entering in uname -a.

You will also need to install the gnome-keyring-manager to hold your authentication and access credentials for you wi-fi sites. These sites will show you how to do that.

• Ubuntu forums
• Linux Questions forum
• Fedora Forums

Enable DMA on Dell Laptops:

Apparently, on some laptops, Dell’s in particular, DMA is not enabled which will lead to skips in video etc.

These sites will show you how to make this work:

• The Homer
• Fedora Forums

Optimizing Fedora Core 6

To ensure that my new Linux laptop was operating at its most capable, I decided to turn off any processes that I didn’t absolutely need. I used the following sites to guide me:

• Services in Fedora Core 6
• Computech.org article on linux services. This article explains the history behind some of the services and goes into greater detail if you are confused about any serivice.

Look and FeelThere isn’t any easy way to make your desktop match mine. I took a couple of hours to streamline it. I first installed one of the Mac OS X themes from gnome-look. I then just turned off all of the panels but one and reshaped it and added the applications I wanted to it. It took a little while, but it was well worth it.

Additional Applications

In addition to the applications already mentioned I installed the following applications usually using yum install <application name>. These represent personal choices like anything else in the open source world there are numerous ways to do just about anything and each way is correct.

Function	Windows Application	Linux Equivalent
Web Development	HTML Edit	Bluefish
Image and Photo Editing	Photoshop	GIMP and Krita
Document Creation	Microsoft Office XP	Open Office
Movie Watching	PowerDVD, Windows Media Player, VLC	Xine, VLC, Mplayer
DVD/CD Creation	Alcohol 120%	Gnome CD/DVD Creator, dvd::rip
Instant Messeging (IM)	Trillian	Gaim
Graphical SFTP Client	WinSCP	gFTP
Email Client	Microsoft Outlook	Evolution
Web Browsing	IE and Firefox	Firefox
Subversion Client	TortoiseSVN	kdeSVN and RapidSVN
Diagramming	Visio	Dia Diagram Editor
Music Cataloging and iPod Sync	iTunes	Amarok
Photo Management	Adobe Album	F-Spot
Automatic Updates	Microsof Update, Individual Product Updates	Pup

In addition to these applications, I have quite a few that I’m trying out, I found a comment where someone claimed that Amarok, Cinelerra, F-Spot and Audacity could compete head to head with iLife. We shall see. I’ll need a collaborator for that article as I don’t have a Mac.

Additional Resources

• Fedora Guide maintained by the University of Latvia
• Fedora Frog which does some of the configuration for you that is mentioned in this article. I have never tried it so I can’t speak to it at all.
• Wikipedia article that explains the File System Hierarchy Standard that Linux conforms too. This helped to fill in the blanks for someone who grew up using Dos and Windows

Looking Forward to Fedora Core 7

Fedora Core 7 is supposed to bring a number of improvements that will make it easier to access wireless networks, enable DMA and access your hardware. I waiting anxiously. I’ll write a follow-up article soon that discusses more about my experience in using Linux full-time.

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