Back to Fedora it is, then.
Posted: November 5, 2011 Filed under: Fedora | Tags: fedora, fedora 16 Leave a comment »Okay, now my curiosity is satisfied. I now know for a fact that Fedora is the best distro around for now – Ubuntu is headed downhill faster than a rolling marble, and openSUSE’s KDE version didn’t even let me install it.
But the title of this post is a bit incorrect. I didn’t go back to Fedora 15, which is the version I was using before I switched to Ubuntu. I installed the beta version of Fedora 16.
So, how did it go? Installing it from the live CD went smoothly, as always. No boot problems after installing, which is only expected from a 2011 distro. Driver installation went well. Chrome (yes, the nonfree browser) installed with only a minor SELinux hiccup, which was easily fixed by following the troubleshooter’s instructions. Configuring everything else (fonts, codecs, zsh, Dropbox…) was easy and trouble-free, at least for me. Fedora just keeps evolving for the better…
As for problems? Well, this is a beta release. For one thing, Dropbox doesn’t have a repository for it, which leads to yum errors. (Chrome apparently does have a repository.) Renaming /etc/yum.repos.d/dropbox.repo to something like dropbox.repo.disabled seems to fix it, though.
That’s the only problem I encountered so far. So although something else is bound to be right around the corner, so far I’m pleased.
The final version of Fedora 16 will be released on the 8th of November, and will be available for download from the Fedora Project website. You can get the beta right now, though. Spread the word!
On an unrelated note: today I also screwed up really badly. Usually, after restoring an OS from a backup, I have to also restore my home folder. And when I do, all the files end up with root set as their owner, instead of andy. And to fix that, I usually run chown --recursive andy /home/andy.
Well, today I ran chmod +x --recursive /home/andy instead of that. Yeah, I am stupid sometimes. The result was a total disaster, as you could imagine.
So, how did I fix it? I first tried with chmod -x --recursive, but that affects directories as well. And, if you didn’t know by now, directories that are not executable can’t be accessed (i.e. not even cd works on them anymore). Enter obvious solution number two, the find command:
find -type f -exec chmod -x {} \;
That recursively lists every single file under the current folder and runs chmod -x on it. Thanks to the helpful folks in the #fedora channel (on freenode) for helping me out with that!
Ubuntu 11.10: dissapointing as usual
Posted: October 15, 2011 Filed under: Ubuntu | Tags: fedora, ubuntu 2 Comments »Is it just me, or is Ubuntu getting worse with each release? I’ve just installed Oneiric on my laptop and, suffice to say, I’m typing this from Fedora now.
The first thing that I noticed was that Unity decided to get rid of the last bit of consistency it had. That is to say, the Dash button. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to move it to the dock and give it that horrible CRT shape. It’s completely inconsistent, and completely ugly.
Then, ignoring that minor issue since I planned to replace Unity with Gnome Shell anyway, I tried installing it. Whoops. After two tries I ditched the USB drive, burned a CD and installed Ubuntu from that. It was really just an annoyance for me, but I think a newbie might not have the same reaction upon seeing “Hard Disk Error” on boot…
After installing, I explored it for a bit, took a look around the completely disorganized (it has magazines grouped with apps?!) Software Center, upgraded the system, decided Unity wasn’t for me, and proceeded to install Gnome Shell…
It was a pain. Obviously, the Ubuntu developers are so caught up with Unity that Shell was completely overlooked. It looked horrific (a mix of Adwaita and Ambiance), it used ugly fonts, Chromium didn’t integrate at all, it… well, let’s say it wasn’t a pleasant experience, and I’m happy to be back to Fedora. It might be a pain sometimes, and it might downright refuse to let my battery last more than one hour, but it works well. And it looks awesome. 
Make Fedora 15 connect to wireless networks faster
Posted: August 6, 2011 Filed under: Fedora | Tags: fedora, gnome 3, networkmanager 2 Comments »Here’s an exceptionally short HOWTO (for Fedora 15 with Gnome 3):
- Open System Settings (click your name in the top-right corner to see it).
- Click “Network”.
- Click “Wireless” from the networks list.
- Click the “Options…” button. If it’s greyed out, connect to a network.
- Go to the “IPv6 Settings” tab.
- From the dropdown box, select “Ignore”.
Ah, the old IPv6-breaks-my-network-connection problem. How nice. You’d think modern distros fix it, but apparently not.
About F15 itself, all I can say is that it’s buggy as hell. Newbie-unfriendly. Seriously, I can’t imagine a newbie ex-Windows user seeing an error when he first tries to update his system, decyphering the error message and then going through the package list to deselect one of them.
Gnome 3 is quite likable, in my very humble opinion, except for some minor wrong design decisions (like not having an “invisible” option for online presence, hiding the shutdown button, being incompatible with Ubuntu indicators, forbidding customization, using hinted fonts by default and not having an option to change that…).
Still the best: Xubuntu 10.04
Posted: October 3, 2010 Filed under: HP ProBook 4510s, Xfce, Xubuntu | Tags: dropbox, fedora, ram, xfce, xubuntu 1 Comment »So here I am, coming back from Fedora to Xubuntu 10.04. It’s not that I don’t like Fedora, but it has one deal-breaking usability issue: it can’t resume from standby properly on the HP, forcing me to manually shutdown and lose anything that I have opened. Whoops.
Xubuntu, on the other hand, is one of the best distros I have ever used. It includes a really nice default choice of software and gives me the full power of Ubuntu’s repositories. The only thing I replaced so far was Totem (with GNOME-Mplayer). It’s fast, efficient and it looks good (I didn’t even have to change the theme, Albatross is beautiful). RAM usage is currently 336MB with Firefox (6 tabs), Pidgin and Exaile open, totally pawning GNOME.
I have also succeeded in configuring Dropbox as detailed here.
Hello, Fedora!
Posted: October 1, 2010 Filed under: Fedora, HP ProBook 4510s | Tags: compiz, fedora, networkmanager Leave a comment »Yesterday I installed Fedora 13 on the HP and configured it a little. It’s a pretty good distro if you ask me, although it comes with a lot less software than Ubuntu. I have two things to complain about, though: the “Desktop Effects” program and NetworkManager’s behaviour on resuming.
First, the Desktop Effects program really sucks. It overrides CCSM’s configuration, which means I can’t fine-tune Compiz’ behaviour. But I just don’t see any option to switch from Metacity to Compiz while using the configuration I want. I don’t want a cube, just a 2×2 desktop grid.
On resuming from standby, NM takes up to a minute to reconnect to the home wireless, which is unacceptable. Also, it just doesn’t have an option to rescan for networks, nor an option to set the time between scans.
Oh, and Kupfer isn’t in the repositories. So now I’m stuck with the Mono-plagued GNOME Do, because I just can’t live without a keyboard-based launcher. I might just go back to Ubuntu or Mint. Or maybe openSuSE, and try to remove Mono from it. 
