Fedora 12 - a quick review

Fedora 12 was officially released on Wednesday(Nov 18th) and I installed it on my office desktop today. The installation took less than 45 minutes(of which I spend 15 minutes to clean my two hard disks and select packages). Within 1 hour I was able to login to the fresh Fedora 12 desktop. As per the Fedora Project Wiki, there were lots of new features and changes. Some of them caused minor issues, but I was able to quickly overcome those and return to normal work within another 1 hour.

Here is a list of some quick changes in Fedora 12:

1. Gnote is the default note taking application.
2. Empathy is the default Instant Messenger.
3. Enhanced PackageKit for installing new software
4. The Download folder in the desktop is renamed to Downloads. (Of course the word Downloads makes more sense).

However, I had some issues with the new desktop. The most disturbing issue was about the screen resolution - I was able to get only a resolution of 800x600. The desktop had a Intel Original Motherboard and LG Flatron L1730S monitor. I have to install system-config-display from the yum repository to manually configure the display, but it didn't succeeded. After some quick search in Fedora Wiki, I tried the nomodeset option in boot parameters and I was able to get 1024x768.
Reference: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F12_bugs

The second issue was not that much important - missing menu icon for Epiphany Web Browser. This was not a big issue, but it will surely affect the look and feel of the desktop.

Last but not least, I took some screenshots while installing the OS, but unfortunately I couldn't find the images after logging to the desktop. I found a folder named anaconda-screenshots in /tmp, but it had only one screenshot of the 15 screenshots.

Overall, the desktop is really good and is performing very well. There are yet more features to be explored, and I will update this post as I progress.

Update 1:
The Epiphany icon problem was solved after updating the gnome-desktop package(gnome-desktop.x86_64 0:2.28.1-3.fc12)

Update 2:
The screen resolution issue was reported in redhat bugzilla and it is fixed:
See the bug here #538761

ഗൂഗില്‍ വാര്‍ത്തയില്‍ കണ്ടതു്

രാഷ്ട്രീയവും ഒരു തരത്തിലുള്ള കളിയായതു കൊണ്ടായിരിക്കും ഗൂഗിളിനും ഇങ്ങനെ തോന്നിയതു.

Goodbye Tomboy

Today is my last day with Tomboy, the note taking application in GNOME. I have been using Tomboy for the past few months and was impressed by it's features. However, there has been two issues which annoyed me. The first is Tomboy's performance - the time taken to launch the application is considerable. I have 1GB ram in my PC, but Tomboy hangs whenever I have some potential applications(Firefox, Thunderbird) running in my desktop. Secondly, Tomboy is based on Mono, a patent trapped implementation from Novell.

Thanks to Hubert Figuiere, who has ported Tomboy to C++ and released it as Gnote. Gnote is a lightweight application which is superior to Tomboy in terms of speed and has all the basic features of tomboy. The earlier version doesn't have applet support and hence we may have to start it from the Applications menu in GNOME.

The latest version(0.3.1) has fixed this and now you can launch the application right from the panel. It also supports printing via an add-on. Another interesting feature is that you can add bug reports from bugzilla using the bugzilla add-on. The latest news is that the developers are working on a feature which do automatic import from Tomboy.

Gnote is a budding application and have gained applause for it's speed and usability. I'm sure Gnote will surely reduce the dependency of GNOME on Mono.

Update:
An useful Tip : To import all your Tomboy notes to Gnote run the following command and re-login:

$ cp .tomboy/*.note .gnote/

Gnote may be slow when you first open your old notes, but it won't be an issue afterwards.

Stop Automount of Fixed hard drives

Fedora(9 and 10) shows all device icons for all the fixed drives on the GNOME desktop, which is annoying, especially if you have another distribution/operating system installed. The following links provide a useful tip to hide the unwanted device icons from your desktop.

Remove only HD-Partition-Icons from Gnome Desktop and keep the Hotplug-Icons

Hiding unwanted device icons on your Fedora desktop

An advertisement

A funny advertisement as seen on www.irctc.co.in.


Not sure what would be the exiting prize :-)

Save Trees in Eranakulam District Court Campus

The Eranakulam District Court authorities have decided to cut down some decades old trees claiming that they are dangerous to people and property. In addition the authorities have also decided to remove some of the trees in the Maharajas College Campus. This news was reported in the city edition of Mathrubhumi daily on Saturday(6th February). There has been a strict protest against this anti-environmental act from the Town Planning Committee and various other organisations.

The authorities have found that some of the branches of the "accused" trees are fatal to the property and life. Instead of removing only the "fatal" branches, they have decided to remove the entire trees. The Social Forestry Division immediately issued the consent and the Public Works Department also acted quickly.( It would be nice if this enthusiasm was also shown in repairing the roads and bridges also. )

The District Court campus and Maharajas College campus are some of the remaining greenery spots in Kochi. The lush green in the city have been replaced by huge and colourful concrete mansions. Almost 60% of the roadside trees have been cut down by the public and government in the last 3 years. The temperature and the climatic conditions of the city is turning extreme. But still, people are not at all aware about the significance of trees in maintaining our environment and nature.

If you feel that this move is an anti-social and anti-environmental act, then join this cause in facebook

News Update:

KOCHI: The seven trees on the Ernakulam district court premises that were marked for cutting down have been saved from the axe for the time being.
The decision to cut down the trees has been put on hold following protest from environmental groups and the Town Planning Standing Committee of the City Corporation.
The fate of the trees will be decided after a spot visit by Kurian Joseph, judge of the Kerala High Court, on Wednesday

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2009/02/09/stories/2009020955330900.htm