Fedora Linux Distribution Reference
Fedora Core is Red Hat's free hobbyist version of Linux, designed to mature technologies quickly for use in the premium Red Hat Enterprise Linux product and to sate developers' appetite for new features. The Fedora foundation was announced by Redhat in in June of 2005.
In April of 2006 Redhat announced cancellation of the Fedora Foundation. This doesn't mean the distribution has been cancelled, but rather the body that maintains it will change. They moved the governing of Fedora Core from the foundation to the Fedora Project Board. The board includes five Red Hat employees and four outsiders. This move was a means for Redhat to keep the Fedora developers focused on initiatives more in line with Redhat's overall agenda.
The Fedora distribution lives on. Fedora 9 will be (or has been depending on when you are reading this) released by the Fedora Project in May, 2008. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.
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Administrative Tasks
Note: the System menu is not in the traditional place, it is a seperate menu, from the left the 4th over on the task bar.
Screensaver and Screensaver Password
Change your screen saver by going to System, Preferences, Look and Feel, Screensaver.
Changing the display resolution and color depth
From the System menu choose System, Administration, Display. On the resulting Screen Resolution Preferences window, use the Resolution drop-down box to choose the resolution that you desire.
If you can't see all of the resolutions supported by your monitor it is probably due to an install time issue. You can change this configuration by going to System, Administration, Display to change the system system-wide display settings. When you open up certain applets from the System menu, Fedora prompts you for the root password, since these tools require administrative access to the machine. Once you provide the root password, the "Display settings" dialog window opens. From this menu, select the resolution that you would like to use.
Software Package Management
Fedora Package Collection List
yum
The yum utility is used to manage software packages on the Fedora Linux system.
- To install new software from package repositories
- To install new software from an individual package file
- To update existing software on your system
- To remove unwanted software from your system
Usage: yum [options] < grouplist, localinstall, groupinfo, localupdate, resolvedep, erase, deplist, groupremove, makecache, upgrade, provides, shell, install, whatprovides, groupinstall, update, repolist, groupupdate, info, search, check-update, list, remove, clean, grouperase >
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-t, --tolerant be tolerant of errors
-C run entirely from cache, don't update cache
-c [config file] config file location
-R [minutes] maximum command wait time
-d [debug level] debugging output level
-e [error level] error output level
-q, --quiet quiet operation
-v, --verbose verbose operation
-y answer yes for all questions
--version show Yum version and exit
--installroot=[path] set install root
--enablerepo=[repo] enable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
--disablerepo=[repo] disable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
-x [package], --exclude=[package]
exclude package(s) by name or glob
--disableexcludes=[repo]
disable exclude from main, for a repo or for
everything
--obsoletes enable obsoletes processing during updates
--noplugins disable Yum plugins
--nogpgcheck disable gpg signature checking
--disableplugin=[plugin]
disable plugins by name
Get yum ready by configuring it: (as root)
yum -y install yum-priorities
Edit the yum config file
vi /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf
Add the following line:
check_obsoletes = 1
Important Commands:
- To see a list of available software:
yum list available > /tmp/packages.txt vi /tmp/packages.txt
- To install some software, you type:
yum install packagename
- To update some software, you type: (If you leave out "packagename" yum will update all your software.)
yum update packagename
- To see what updates are available, you can do:
yum check-update
- To search for a package, you can do:
yum search word
yum package installation example: vncserver
For this example we will install vncserver. Here's what it looks like:
yum install vnc-server.i386 Loading "priorities" plugin Setting up Install Process Parsing package install arguments Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package vnc-server.i386 0:4.1.2-24.fc8 set to be updated --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ============================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ============================================================================= Installing: vnc-server i386 4.1.2-24.fc8 updates 1.8 M Transaction Summary ============================================================================= Install 1 Package(s) Update 0 Package(s) Remove 0 Package(s) Total download size: 1.8 M Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: (1/1): vnc-server-4.1.2-2 100% |=========================| 1.8 MB 00:12 Running rpm_check_debug Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction Installing: vnc-server ######################### [1/1] Installed: vnc-server.i386 0:4.1.2-24.fc8 Complete!
The VNC Server now must be configured, see VNC Server Setup In Redhat Linux for more details.
Livna: Get Important Packages Missing From Fedora
Livna, rpm.livna.org, is a repository of add-on packages for Fedora. It provides many useful packages that can not be distributed in Fedora (previously known as Fedora Core and Extras). Typically, they cannot be distributed with Fedora due to licensing issues. Livna solves this problem by making the missing packages available to Fedora users.
To use with yum you need to install the rpm repository list. For Fedora 8, as an example, do the following:
wget http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm rpm -ih livna-release-8.rpm
The ffmpeg package is missing from Fedora 8. After adding livna packages to the database a simple execution of:
yum install ffmpeg
downloads and installs ffmpeg along with dependencies on your Fedora system.
