Thứ Tư, 23 tháng 1, 2013

Fedora 18 Installation Review

When Fedora 18 was released there was alot of negative reviews about it.
I have to agree with a lot of these opinions.
The LiveCD was badly done.
The installer was pure rubbish. In making the UI Touch Friendly a lot of core features for customising the installation was removed.
To me it was like hell freezing over for Linux. During installation I have to think 5 minutes before clicking to the next screen because I am never sure if the installer will nuke my second dual bootable partition, luckily I cautiously made it by double checking every process.
Finally I got it pretty usable after getting through the hellish installation process.

Stop making stupid UI and pissing off the loyal users!
People who continue to use Linux started as noobs and learn it because it is logical not because of stupid UI that works like crap but looks good.

I downloaded and installed KDE Spin, GNOME is crap.

KDE understands that Tablets are in nature different from Desktops.
They do have a Tablet Mode (it is called plasma) but it is hidden when you select the Desktop Mode.
They do not do stupid things like unifying Touch UI and Desktop UI when their input devices and nature are completely different.

So this post will give a general idea of how to survive Fedora 18 installation.

Things to note:
1) ALWAYS REVIEW the partition layout or the chance that it will nuke all other partitions is very high!

2) Add "nomodeset" to the end of the kernel booting parameter if you are using Nvidia Drivers on computer with a Nvidia Graphics Adapter otherwise it will hang during booting.

3) Remember to install the akmod for nvidia if you are using the Nvidia Graphics Adapter otherwise a kernel update will hang the booting process. The akmod acts as a backup nvidia kmod driver when the kernel was updated before the nvidia driver. You should install kmod-nvidia and akmod-nvidia together.

4) Add RPMFusion repository and if you want you can install steam repository if you want to game on it

5)Edit the file /etc/default/grub and add the following lines to get a pretty boot screen that matches your resolution.
In this example my resolution is 1366*768 (if your resolution is different just change the values accordingly):
GRUB_GFXMODE=1360x768x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1360x768x32
Then run grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg as root/sudo
Also run dracut -f as root/sudo

6) Finally the following software are recommended:
  • freetype-fonts
  • vlc
  • libreoffice
  • chrome
  • firefox
  • adobe-flash
  • elementary icons for a professional look
  • You can also change the plymouth to use fedup animation instead of the default. (Use plymouth-set-default-theme)
Other than that all is well. The great thing about Linux is NO ONE can force a crap UI on you.
If GNOME screws up go KDE etc.
KDE allows you to configure everything to your preference, cuts your screen nicely into 4 if you need to compare different windows. An absolute joy to use.

Note that this guide isn't an installation guide, it is more of an advice to existing Linux users about the gotchas of Fedora 18.

Fedora 18 can be an awesome OS to use, provided you managed to get through the crappy installation. And avoid GNOME.

Thats it hope this can help you get through to enjoy Fedora 18!