I'm a big fan of Fedora and It's been my desktop of choice since version 1 - but the default desktop for me is, well, boring...

I don't want lots of wizz-bang flying features all over my desktop, but I do want it to look attractive and must be functional.

I've settled on this rather basic setup - it works for me.

Ok, first install the Rpm Fusion repository - specifically the rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
and then rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm repository configurations.

This enables all the non licence happy things like propriety display drivers, media codecs, etc

To install the required applications use [System->Administration->Add/Remove Software]

Step 1 - Your video card - hardware accelerated 3D

If you've got an nVidia or Ati card you will most likely want to install the propriety drivers - these have always worked best for me.

To find out what video card you have, from a terminal, run: lspci | grep VGA

On machines with nVidia or ati cards I install the propriety drivers as these have always worked best for me. If you have an nvidia or ati card install the correct kmod package. For nVidia, one of: kmod-nvidia, kmod-nvidia-173xx or kmod-nvidia-96xx and for Ati: kmod-catalyst

Note the different nvidia modules are for the different generations of nvidia cards - most new cards will just want the kmod-nvidia module.

Step 2 - Installing required packages

Once you have your video capable of 3D, install the following packages:

• compiz-fusion
• fusion-icon
• emerald
• emerald-themes
• cairo-dock
• avant-window-navigator
• awn-extras-applets

Then reboot to make the new video driver take effect (for 3d acceleration).

Step 3 - Starting Compiz with the Fusion Icon

Start the fusion-icon [Applications->System Tools->Compiz Fusion Icon] - this will start compiz-fusion - The Fusion Icon will give you access to all the configuration you'll need for compiz.

If compiz starts fine, then add fusion-icon to your startup programs [System->Preferences->Statup Applications] then drag and drop the app from [Applications->System Tools->Compiz Fusion Icon] into the Startup Applications window to have them start at startup. This will start compiz at login.

Step 4 - Move the top gnome panel

I keep the top gnome panel collapsed sitting in the bottom right corner of my screen (just in case I need it).

Right click on the top panel and select Properties and change the Orientation to Right and select Show hide buttons. Click close.

Step 5 - Using Cairo for our Application launcher

Start cairo-dock [Application->System Tools->GLX Dock (Cairo dock with HW 3D)] and configure it to be at the top of the screen and turn off it's task bar behaviour. Position=Top, Taskbar=None.

You can drag and drop applications from the Applications menus onto the Cairo dock to add them to the launcher.

Add GLX Dock to your startup applications.

Step 6 - Using AWN Avant Window Navigator for the taskbar

Then start [Applications->Accessories->Avant Window Navigator] and configure it to be at the bottom of the screen, and remove the applets the are already added (this we use just as a taskbar) I change the look and theme to make it look sexy...

Right click on AWN and select Preferences

Either select "Start AWN Automatically" in the AWN preferences or Add AWN to your startup applications.

Now remove the bottom taskbar... (Right click and select "Delete this Panel")

Collapse the top sidebar that was moved to the right...

Then you can use the fusion-icon to configure compiz, select the window decorator (emerald is a good one) and choose window decorations.

No Application menu icons?

If you find you have no icons showing in your Application menus follow the steps in my post here: Fedora no icons in menus - fix to show menu icons

Suggested compiz plugins

Launch the compiz configuration tool (via fusion-icon) and turn on Cube, Cube rotate and wobbly windows (and any other crazy effects you want)..

Done!

The Dell 9400 / e1705 is a nice laptop - great combination of high res 1920x1200 17" display and a dual core 2 duo processor - the ideal desktop replacement. Except - There exists a serious design flaw with this laptop - the video card gets very hot causing it to eventually fail.

The symptoms (any of these):

• Flickering video
• Graphic corruption on your screen (lines, stripes, dots, squares, jumbled mess)
• Laptop won't turn on - on light flickers for a second and off again.

Cracked Solder Joints

It is most likely that your nVidia 7800/7900gs is failing due to the stress of heating up and cooling down.

This usually leads to cracked solder joints.

Shake 'n Bake

Shake 'n bake is a term I use for this method - shake the bits off and bake it!

Yes, that's right- we're going to bake the card in our kitchen oven at 200c for 10min.

This will melt the solder and repair the card.

Important Notes

• The GPU on the video card is connected to the heat sink and requires thorough cleaning and high quality thermal paste (or similar) - I have used Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste.
• To improve the cooling and life of this fix, you can purchase special 'copper shims" from eBay that aid with better cooling.
• Be sure not to let your oven rise above 200c and limit the exposure to 10min.
• If the first attempt is not successful, repeat. I have read that other people have required two or three roastings to fully repair their cards.

  I have done two and each only required one bake for 10min.

The two laptops I fixed have been working great ever since.. I'll post if they ever fail again.

Here's a video of my repair effort.

Getting the Intel Matrix RAID working on my P6X58D Premium took a bit of searching and good luck despite how simple the solution.

Update: This works for Fedora 13 also.

My Configuration:

Primary OS - 64GB SSD: /dev/sda

Storage - 2 * 1GB Sata: /dev/sdb & /dev/sdc - Configured as Raid 0 with the Matrix Storage Manager bios setup.

Symptoms:

No device present in /dev/mapper/

dmraid finds my raid 'device' but:

[root@xxx xxx]# dmraid -ay
RAID set "isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01" was not activated
ERROR: device "isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01" could not be found

Hmmmm!

[root@xxx xxx]# dmesg
device-mapper: table: 253:2: mirror: Device lookup failure
device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table
device-mapper: ioctl: device doesn't appear to be in the dev hash table.

Hmmm...

Solution:

After a lot of searching and digging I finally found that I need to disable a kernel module/feature/whatever by editing my /boot/grub/grub.conf by adding the noiswmd option to the end of the boot options like:

After the modifications and rebooting I now have:

[xxx@xxxx ~]$ ls -la /dev/mapper
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 2010-05-23 13:24 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4180 2010-05-23 14:34 ..
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 62 2010-05-23 13:23 control
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 0 2010-05-23 13:24 isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 1 2010-05-23 17:39 isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01p1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 2 2010-05-23 13:24 vg_xxxxxx-lv_root
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 253, 3 2010-05-23 13:24 vg_xxxxxx-lv_swap


Done - now just mount your drive like any other (or partition, or what ever) eg:

I can mount it like:

mount /dev/mapper/isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01p1 /data

Or add to your /etc/fstab:

/dev/mapper/isw_ebibiffebg_DataVolume01p1 /data ntfs-3g rw,defaults,umask=0000 0 0

Hopefully you don't have to search as hard I as did to find this solution.

Now go and enjoy that raid!

I've finally got the popcorn hour toolchain to compile on fedora 10.

Here I'll present a step-by-step how-to.

Step 1: Get the toolchain source

First you'll need to get the toolchain source: Syabas NMT (SMP8634) toolchain.

I used the version smp86xx_toolchain.20080505.tar.bz2.

Step 2: Ensure some dependent packages are installed

Next ensure that the following packages are installed, you can use Add/Remove software if you prefer:

Given that Fedora has made it so easy to put a live cd image onto a usb or other external drive to provide a bootable take anywhere OS.

First off, you'll need the Fedora Live CD or DVD iso image, they can be found on the Fedora home page http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

You'll also need to install some other packages available in the standard repos.

Install livecd-tools with your package manager.

Console mode is great for some tasks, but why live with 80x25 when by adding vga=775 to your grub line will give you 160x160 mode (using 1280x1024)... Simple and sweet.

Fedora 9 (F9 Sulphur) has been released. Here I will record my personal setup. Note, this is a work in progress and will be updated as I (slowly) configure my system.

My setup: Dell Inspiron 9400 (E1705)

• Audio device: Intel 82801G High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
• IDE interface: Intel 82801GBM/GHM SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
• Video: nVidia Corporation GeForce Go 7900 GS (rev a1)
• Ethernet: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
• FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
• Network controller: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)