The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 18 XFCE - Page 2

3 Update The System

Now it's time to check for updates and install them. This is done using YUM Extender (Administration > YUM Extender):

Type in the root password:

Make sure that the Updates radio box is selected. After YUM has updated its package list, it will show you all available updates. Click on Select All to install all updates, then click on Apply:

YUM Extender will now download the updates:

Click on OK to start the update:

Afterwards, leave YUM Extender:

The system is now up-to-date.

4 Disable SELinux

SELinux is a security extension of Fedora that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only SELinux was causing the problem). Therefore I choose disable it, although you might prefer to go with it. I haven't tested this setup with SELinux enabled - it might well be that it works without problems, but if it does not, you can try to turn SELinux off and see if the problem is gone.

To disable SELinux, open a terminal (System > Terminal).

Open /etc/sysconfig/selinux as root:

su

leafpad /etc/sysconfig/selinux

... and set SELINUX to disabled:

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#       enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#       permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#       disabled - SELinux is fully disabled.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= type of policy in use. Possible values are:
#       targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
#       strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

To make the change effective, we must reboot the system:

reboot

5 Inventory Of What We Have So Far

Now let's browse all menus to see which of our needed applications are already installed:

You should find the following situation ([x] marks an application that is already installed, whereas [ ] is an application that is missing):

Graphics:
[ ] The GIMP
[ ] Shotwell Photo Manager
[ ] Pinta

Internet:
[x] Firefox
[ ] Flash
[ ] FileZilla
[ ] Thunderbird
[x] Transmission
[ ] Skype
[ ] Marble
[x] Pidgin
[ ] Dropbox
[ ] Gwibber Social Client

Office:
[ ] LibreOffice Writer
[ ] LibreOffice Calc
[x] ePDFViewer
[ ] GnuCash
[ ] Scribus

Sound & Video:
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[ ] dvd::rip
[ ] VLC Media Player
[x] Xfburn
[ ] Multimedia-Codecs
[ ] Winff

Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Eclipse

Other:
[ ] VirtualBox
[ ] TrueType fonts
[x] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
[x] leafpad

So some applications are already on the system. NTFS read-/write support is enabled by default on Fedora 18.

Java is already installed, as you can see in Firefox (type about:plugins in the address bar, and you should see the IcedTea-Web plugin):