Installation Guide: CentOS 5.1 Desktop - Page 7

7 Additional Software

7.1 Recommended

7.1.1 Adobe Acrobat Reader

Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/

With the Adobe Reader you can open PDF-documents.

If you want to use the acrobat reader, open http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2_allversions.htm within firefox and choose your language.

Click on "Download now" and install the package with the software installer.

The plugin for firefox will be installed automatically. If you want to check it, restart firefox and enter about:plugins into the url-field. Afterwards you should see this:

7.1.2 Adobe Flash Player

Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Adobe provides an own repository - install the repository-package (root privileges needed):

rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

Afterwards install the following package:

flash-plugin

The plugin for firefox will be installed automatically. If you want to check it, open firefox and enter about:plugins into the url-field. Afterwards you should see this:

7.1.3 Sun Java JRE

Homepage: http://java.sun.com/

Sun's JAVA JRE adds full Java support to your system.

If you want to use Sun's JAVA, open http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp within firefox and download the Linux self-extracting file - NOT the Linux RPM in self-extracting file.

The following steps require root privileges. Please note that you have to edit the following commands if your Java version is newer than the one I downloaded.

mv /home/%your_username%/Desktop/jre-6u3-linux-i586.bin /opt/
cd /opt/
chmod +x jre-6u3-linux-i586.bin
./jre-6u3-linux-i586.bin

Accept the license agreement and proceed.

rm -f jre-6u3-linux-i586.bin
ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_03/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

gedit /etc/profile.d/java.sh

It should look like this:

export J2RE_HOME=/opt/jre1.6.0_03
export PATH=$J2RE_HOME/bin:$PATH

Note: You have to add an empty line at the end of the file!

source /etc/profile.d/java.sh
alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jre1.6.0_03/bin/java 2
/usr/sbin/alternatives --config java

Select the new Java JRE

Now let's check if all went ok.

/usr/sbin/alternatives --display java

The first two lines of the output should look like this:

java - status is manual.
link currently points to /opt/jre1.6.0_03/bin/java

Additionally you have to install the following package to ensure that the firefox-plugin will work proper.

compat-libstdc++-33

Open firefox and enter about:plugins into the url-field. Afterwards you should see this:

7.1.4 NTFS-3G

Homepage: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

The NTFS-3G driver provides ntfs read/write support.

If you want to use the ntfs-3g driver, install the following packages:

fuse
fuse-ntfs-3g
dkms
dkms-fuse

7.1.5 Microsoft's True Type Core Fonts

Some fonts, including Arial, Times New Roman and Verdana for example.

If you want to use these fonts, open http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html#ttf within your browser and install the package with the software installer (simply click on it).

7.1.6 W32codecs & Others

Codecs needed to play MS and some other video formats.

If you want to use these codecs open a terminal and enter (root privileges needed):

cd /tmp/
wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2
tar xfvj all-20071007.tar.bz2
mkdir /usr/lib/codecs/
cp all-20071007/* /usr/lib/codecs/
ln -s /usr/lib/codecs/ /usr/lib/win32

7.2 Replacements

7.2.1 MPlayer (possible replacement for totem)

Homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu

MPlayer is a video player with many features - supporting nearly every known video format, e.g. MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ and PVA (the codecs from step 7.1.6 are needed to support some of the listed formats).

If you want to use the mplayer, deinstall the following package...