How To Install Fedora 12 KDE

This is a very brief howto on installing Fedora 12 KDE on 64 bit machines. I installed it on my laptop, tweaked it and still tweaking. So here goes.....

1. Download the 64 bit DVD from the Fedora website.

2. Go through the installation process (partitioning, setting up root etc.). When you reach the software area, seect 'Customize software now'... click next.

3. Deselect Gnome and select KDE. Also from Audio/Video deselect brasero and select k3b. I don't need evolution so  I deselected it too.

4. Once the installation is complete, reboot, create a user name and password as prompted.

5. I disabled kpackagekit update. Open the application kpackagekit, go to settings and in the window marked "check for updates" select never.

6. Connect to the Internet. Make sure you have a connection and then update Fedora from terminal. 

7. Now you need to install 2 things:

  • fastest mirror plugin. This will look for the fastest mirror when updating yum. 
    yum install yum-fastestmirror
  •  Presto Plugin. This will save you downloading a full upgrade of 551mb down to 100mb.  
    yum install yum-presto

8. Done! Now update your Fedora:

yum update

Wait for some time. Can take 20-30 minutes to update and install.

Then REBOOT!

9. Okay now the real fun begins.

Enable Additional repositories (rpm fusion). 

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

then type

yum update

Ok done! Now let's start the fine tuning!

  • Yakuake - is a KDE terminal emulator. Its design was inspired from consoles in computer games such as Quake which slide down from the top. I like it.
  • mc - GNU Midnight Commander is a visual file manager used in terminal/yakuake.
  • Pavucontrol - PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple GTK based volume control tool ("mixer") for the PulseAudio sound server. Skype mic refused to work and I had to use this tool.
  • htop - an interactive process viewer for Linux.
  • unrar - unpack RAR archives
  • checkgmail - says it all. Alerts you when you have mail in your gmail account.
yum install yakuake mc pavucontrol htop unrar checkgmail
  • To play mp3's and videos type 
    yum install mplayer smplayer vlc mencoder gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-ffmpeg xine-lib-extras xine-lib-extras-freeworld
  • Skype

    Download Skype Fedora 10+ from

    http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/choose/

    Now for 64 bit users, Skype has not made any 64 bit sofware for F12. No worries. Just install the following 32 bit libraries first (which cause no system problems) 

    yum -y install libXv-1.0.5-1.fc12.i686 libXScrnSaver-1.2.0-1.fc12.i686 qt-4.5.3-9.fc12.i686 qt-x11-4.5.3-9.fc12.i686 pulseaudio-libs.i686 pulseaudio-libs-glib2.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686

    Then go to the folder where you downloaded Skype and install it.

    yum install skype-2.1.0.47-fc10.i586.rpm --nogpgcheck

    I would test it using Skype voice test if mic is working. If not use pavucontrol.

  • Change the default boot screen. The Fedora logo which loads slowly is the so called "charge theme". I changed it and installed the solar theme which is really cool.
    This is what you do to change: 
    yum install plymouth-theme-spinfinity.x86_64 plymouth-theme-solar.x86_64

    Command below will show you the available plymouth themes.

    plymouth-set-default-theme --list

    Change to the solar theme

    plymouth-set-default-theme solar

    Then update plymouth:

    /usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd

    Then reboot and solar is what you will see!

  •  Download using rapidshare

    Due to copyright issues, I can only give 2 good links to this.

    Link 1

    Link 2

    My favourite is aria2. Though it exposes your rapidshare password, so use it in personal pcs only:)

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