Fedora 14 after a few weeks

It's been nearly a month now, and Fedora 14 is behaving quite well for the most part. There are still a few glitches, but a lot of the stuff that was irritating me has gone away, either through updates or fixing my own mistakes.

Anyway, I previously listed a few things that were causing problems, and here's how they currently stand...

Authentication
Still causing the same problems. This is surmountable, so I'm not really concerned that much, but I imagine that anyone who's unwilling to use or uncomfortable with the command line who finds themselves in similar circumstances will have problems; making oneself connectible for the purposes of torrenting, for example, can only be done as root.

Firefox
All the problems I mentioned still exist. I'm using the official flash plugin and it's been updated via Adobe's own repo, but the problem with fullscreen video still exists. The .gifs are still borked, too.

Themes
k3b is still acting up with regard to the theme I'm using; however, it's been known to work on occasion. Most of the time, though, it's just ugly. I haven't really bothered looking at this at all, as it's fairly trivial.

Missing Packages
These have mostly been resolved through my own efforts; specifically, I was trying to load non-existent packages, and I've figured out where I was going wrong.
midentify, for example, is part of the mplayer-tools package, and mediainfo has to be got by downloading the RPMs; it was never in the repos. Still no sign of avidemux, though, and I'm loath to confuse things by downloading the source and compiling it. I'll wait a while longer.

Nvidia
A little research has led me to believe that it's the fact that I'm using a composite cable rather than VGA that's the source of my woes here; I still can't get native resolution, but I've managed to convince the driver to at least give me 1280x720. It's not perfect, but it's in the right ratio, so it'll do for now.
This was done by playing with xorg.conf; I tweaked the screen1 section (the TV) so that it looks like this...

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Device1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TVStandard" "HD720P"
    Option         "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "TV: 1280x720 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Unfortunately, using a VGA cable isn't an option at the moment.

Artec Ultima 2000 Scanner on Fedora 14

Bloody firmware. We hates it, so we does.

The key to getting this scanner to work is the correct firmware file; it's called gt680xfw.usb. Unfortunately, there seem to be two firmware files with this name, one is 8192 bytes, the other 7343 bytes. The latter is the one that's needed in this case. If your scanner has a USB ID other than 05d8:4002, then you might need the other one. If you got a disk with your scanner, then this is hardly going to be a problem.

First of all (as root), create the directory /usr/share/sane/gt68xx if it doesn't already exist, and copy the firmware file into it. Next, edit the file
/etc/sane.d/gt68xx.conf

Look for the line
usb 0x05d8 0x4002
If there's a # at the beginning of the line, remove it; it marks the line as a comment.
Underneath that line, write
override "artec-ultima-2000"
firmware "gt680xfw.usb"

Save the file.

Now unplug the scanner and plug it back in again. All should now be well.

The Day After

I've been using F14 for a day now, and it's at a more advanced stage than previous incarnations of Fedora have been after an equivalent time. That's not to say it's perfect, though, and there are still a bunch of things that range from minor irritants to outright pains in the arse. I don't know how many of them are actual bugs that need to be reported; I'll have a better idea of that in the days to come.

X10 Wireless Tranceiver and Medion OR28V RF Remote in Fedora 14

Having the computer plugged into the TV is a wonderful thing, and it's very handy being able to use the remote control. Getting it working, though, was a little tricky.

I'm Using Fedora 14

That was quick; it took about twenty-five minutes to install Fedora 14 from scratch; less than half the time it took me to back up my home directory. Most of the stuff works; some doesn't.

Upgrading to Fedora 14

The point of this blog is to record my adventures in upgrading my OS to Fedora 14. I've been using Red Hat/Fedora since (I think) Red Hat 6.2, and every time I've upgraded, I've encountered a few problems. None of them was insurmountable, but over the years I've found myself researching the same solution more than once. This blog is in part a way of making it easier for me in future.

Of course, problems will exist in more than just upgrading, so herein you'll find any of the tweaks I've made to make my life easier.

As I write this, I'm downloading the DVD ISO from http://fedoraproject.org ; if the next post doesn't appear for a week, you'll know I couldn't get the internet working after the upgrade.

In case you're wondering, I'm using a Medion quad-core Intel-based PC with fairly standard hardware (except for an Hauppauge TV card that I never really got working properly). I've got /home on a separate partition, and will leave that alone during the upgrade. Everything else will be formatted.

I called this blog 'Mostly by Typing' because I prefer using the command line. I'll periodically try doing stuff via the GUI, but it's almost always easier to do it by invoking the the mighty bash.