Preparing for Installation

Eee PC has no CD-ROM, so that you can not install Fedora 12 from a Live CD disk. The best way for you is to download a Fedora 12 Live ISO and write this iso image to your flash drive, and then install F12 with this usb flash drive.

liveusb-creator is a cross-platform tool to do this job, it has an easy-to-use GUI which can ensure the Fedora 12 live CD iso you downloaded is correct, and, it can also ensure you write to the right USB disk. What you need is a 2GB USB disk.

During Installation

It’s quite easy and I think you can handle yourself, but here’s some points you’d pay special attention to.

1) At the screen choosing your time zone, make sure the “system clock users UTC” option is unchecked, in order to keep your two systems both Fedora 12 and Windows XP clocks are the same time.

2) When partitioning your hard drive, please be careful not erase your Windows partition which has some of your personal data. Please mark “Review and modify partitioning layout” optioned checked, so that you will be able to know which partitions will be formatted.

3) You’d better give your /home directory a single partition so that your data will not be lost when you fresh-install your system to upgrade your machine to the future Fedora release.

When partitioning my hard drive, I chose to cover my exiting Ubuntu 9.10 Linux system, and everything is correct when I check my partitioning layout, but I lost all data on my Ubuntu /home directory… this isn’t a matter as these data has been backed up on my laptop.

Another problem I met is when installing bootloader, the installation script says it has a bug, it maybe caused because Ubuntu 9.10 uses Grub2 and Fedora installation script can’t cover it’s files on MBR. I installed the system again and this problem was solved.

Post-installation

The first thing you need to do is to add rpmfusion software repositories when you log into your system. You can find insturtions on how to add both free and non-free repositories on RPM fusion website.

After RPM Fusion enabled, you need to update your system immediately to update all your software to be the lasted. You can do this job by clicking System/Administration/Software Updates.

(Enable Chinese Input)

Chinese Fedora users need a input method to input Chinese words.

Fedora has both ibus and ibus-pinyin preinstalled, a good news is that, I installed an English environment, and ibus-pinyin can be enable on clicks, no need more configuration.

Wireless Driver

Fedora 12 comes with no Eee PC 1000HE’s Ralink RT2860 wireless card driver, I am lucky because I have a G-Sky WIFI adapter, so that I can use it to connect my neighbour’s WIFI network (Fedora has G-Sky’s Reatek wireless chipset drivers by default) and install Ralink’s driver by running the following command in the terminal.

yum install kmod-rt2860

Configure your Mouse and TouchPad

Click System/Preferences/Mouse, and under the “Touchpad” tab, check “Enable Mouse Clicks with touchpad”, this will enable you to double-click an item on your system with our using a mouse, and Eee PC comes with no mouse at all.

Check “disable touchpad while typing” this will be helpful when you’re typing while touchpad always make you annoying.

You can also check “Enable scrolling”, this will enable you to scroll up/down when you move your finger at the right side of your touchpad edge.

Desktop 3D Effects

If you enabled RPM Fusion, and you updated your system to be latest, you should have the latest graphic card driver updated.

Go to System/Preferences/Desktop Effect, and choose Compiz, and mark both “Windows Wobble when Moved” and “Workspaces on a Cube”, then some basic 3D effect will be enabled, try to move a windows or click other workspace to give a try? I know this is only basic effects, but it’s enough, because you don’t have a mouse to operate your system to be more eye-candy

Anything more? Uhhh, I forgot, this is all… If you have any problem, give me a comment below.

It’s been so long a time since I switched to Ubuntu 9.04 before the release of Fedora 11, but now I finally switched back again and installed Constantine on my Eee PC 1000HE netbook. Fedora becomes better, and it works well on this little machine.

I still remember that Red Hat 9 is my very first Linux distribution that I tried when I was on college, although I knew how to install it after reading so many Linux books and magazines in our library, I had a very bad experience, because it doesn’t have a good browser. But things changed after my graduation when I installed a Ubuntu 6.06+Windows XP dual boot system on my office computer, this is the first time I started to use Firefox browser, it worked fine and most of the webpages could be displayed perfectly, and Linux systems left me a good expression since then.

One year later after I had my own job, I bought myself an HP Compaq Presario V3805AU laptop, I always planed to use a Linux distro so that I chose this one, it’s Linux-friendly enough because it has a Red-flag Linux desktop preinstalled. But Red-flag is based on KDE with a cloned Windows interface, and it’s hard to use, so I disliked it so much.

I installed Fedora 9 in my entire hard disk after erased Red-flag, because at that time I didn’t have a broadband internet connection, I had to connect to the internet with a China Mobile EDGE wireless router, so I spent a lot of time to looking for a Linux distro that supports mobile broadband, and finally I found Fedora 9, with GPRS/EDGE internet connections as it’s new features.

Both Fedora 9 and 10 worked perfectly on my laptop, but, it always has some small problems which drove me crazy as I only have some limited Linux knowledges, and can’t solve these problems myself, I switched to Ubuntu 9.04, Ubuntu is more stable as a desktop system, and, what I liked most is its new notify system.

Sometimes I blame myself a lot why I didn’t learn computer science and technology or something related as my major at university, I am so regret about that, because I can’t solve my own Linux computer problems, and I also don’t know what can I do for this amazing operating system.

With so many people’s hard work, Linux is becoming better than ever, especially Fedora Community, they contributed a lot to the Linux kernel and brought us new technology and new features to the Linux world one after another, I can do nothing to help them, but, I use their product, and, I can share my using experience with others, in a hope that they finally start to use it too. That’s what I can do to thank the Fedora community and all Linux developers, that’s why I am back.

1. jUploadr

jUploadr is a cross platform, cross-site Photo uploader. Currently it runs on Windows Linux and OS X and supports both Flickr and Zooomr. It allows you to set all properties of a photo before you upload it. It also supports batch editing, so you can make short work of uploading a bunch of files. It is Flickr officially recommend photo uploading client for Linux.

Latest version of jUploadr is 1.1.2, and you can downlaod jUploadr-1.1.2-linuxGTK-i386.tar.gz (for Linux i386)  here. jUploadr is a java-based program, no installation required, decompress the downloaded package, and double click the executable  “jUploadr” to run.

2. Postr

Postr is another Flickr uploadr for GNOME desktop, which aims to be simple to use but exposing enough of Flickr to be useful. It isn’t finished yet, but its a very capable uploader already.

To install in Fedora 10 is quite easy too, just type yum install postr in the terminal, it will automactially installed.

Postr has the same fuctoins which jUploadr has, but it doesn’t not support Zooomr, and UI more hardly to use. Which one do you prefer?

Shutter (former named Gscrot) is an open-source feature-rich screenshot program. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

Shutter has a .deb package officially, which allows you very easy to install in Ubuntu Linux, but it had no .rpm package available, so things are quite difficult if you want to run it in Fedora 10 system. I tried to install months ago, but failed to install its depencies.

Last night, I finally got to know how to install it in Fedora 10, because @liusuilong and Gcell compiled a rpm package for Shutter, it’s quite convinient now…

1. For 32 bit desktop

Download the following .rpm packages:

perl-Gnome2-Wnck-svn20090118-1.fc10.i386.rpm
perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-1.fc10.i386.rpm
shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm

and then install them like below:

$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Gnome2-Wnck-svn20090118-1.fc10.i386.rpm –nogpgcheck
$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-1.fc10.i386.rpm –nogpgcheck
$ sudo yum localinstall shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm –nogpgcheck

2. For 64 bit desktop

First download the following packages:

perl-Gnome2-Wnck-0.16-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm
perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm

and type and run the following commands:

$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Gnome2-Wnck-0.16-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm –nogpgcheck –enablerepo rawhide
$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm –nogpgcheck –enablerepo rawhide
$ sudo yum localinstall shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm –nogpgcheck

Enjoy!

Hello, guys, I started a program recently on Twitter since Mar. 21st this month called “1 Linux Software 1 Day“, which is aim to recommend ONE linux software ONE day to the CHINESE linux users. I think this is a good idea to introduce others a perfect linux application they would like so as to promote Linux as a lot of people still think there’s not as many software as Windows or Mac (I think a lot of people refuse Linux just because of this).

I read articles on tuxmachines.org almost everyday, and a lot of applications are introduced, but I don’t have enough time and energy to translate or forward them on my blog, but Twitter is a good place to do such things, it’s convenient engouth for me.

At very first, I just tweeted in Twitterfox the software I like in Chinese language, but I found it’s hard to be archived every software that I recommended, and other people who didn’t follow me can hardly have a chance to know them too, so I added every tweet a tag “1soft1day“, this tag is currently unique, so, when you try to search this tag on Twitter Seach, you can get all softwares I recommended before.

Well, now, I brought this “1 Linux App 1 Day Program” to English-speaking Linux user too, with another tag “1app1day”, when you type this tag name and search on Twitter, you will be able to see all of my recommended software, and all  in English. You can also visit this url directly: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%231app1day

In general, please seach #1soft1day for Chinese, well, #1app1day for English. Please help me and keep these two tags unique (you’d better use another tag if you have related program), and, please don’t post this tag in your tweets (so there’s no waste)

I suggest you follow me @pengjiayou on Twitter, so that you’re be able to know what I recommend at an early time, and, to recommend me the software that you like by @ replies. Thanks.

As for many Linux users should have known, Mitter is one of my favorite open-source, and cross-platform client for Twitter, it’s a Linux native application runing both PyGTK and on a console/terminal.

The latest version of Mitter is 0.4.5, you can download it here or run yum install mitter in the command line to install it in your system.

I registered and begun to use Twitter last year, Mitter was my favorite Twitter client for a very long time since then in my laptop (running Fedora 10). It has the basic feature which any Twitter client should have, especially the latest 0.4.5 release, I had been using this version for quite a long time, although this version meets my needs and requirements, but it has a little problem: some Twitter followers’ profile images are displayed very large, which made the whole interface very ugly, see my previous screenshot for an example:

I know Mitter is open-sourced, but I know nothing about programming, and know nothing how to solve this problem as well.  However, one of Chinese bloggers and Linux fans solved this problem finally on his blog post, whom I know latter is also a Twitter user @shengbo, he hacked Mitter 0.4.5 and made my twitter experice much more better!

This hacked Mitter improved the following features including:

0, Resoved the bug of displaying large profile images
1,  Removed “What are you doing” above the input area, this line takes up too much spaces
2, Word count instead of the “Add” button
3, Hide menu bar, just press Alt+9 to hide the menubar to release more space
4, Refresh button at the left of input area
5, Alt+X to hide the whole Mitter window
6, System tray icon: click to toggle windows visibility

Thanks @shengbo, who made Mitter more amazing. To install this hacked Mitter, please run  git clone git://github.com/albert748/hacking-mitter.git in your terminal. Or you can download it directly from here.

BTW: A latest Linux (Ubuntu) Twitter and Identi.ca app

Today, I found a new Twitter project called wallDent. wallDent is a script that turns your desktop wallpaper into an identi.ca or Twitter timeline.

What a cool interface. Can anyone tell me how to compile and install in Fedora 10? Thanks in Advanced. (Source code is here https://code.launchpad.net/~nhandler/walldent/trunk)

Fedora 11 (Leonidas) Final will be released

Days later.

Put a countdown widget on your blog or website. Anxious waiting for the final release of Leonidas.

Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK. It supports Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and RSS, it has much more great feature than another of my favorite and frequently used Twitter-only client called Mitter.

I always launch Mitter when I log in my system, because I’m a heavy user of  Twitter. And Mitter requires all my demands, simple and fast to load friends’ tweets under my EDGE mobile broadband. But, recently, I always met some large avatars of some twitter users, twice as it should be. It made my Mitter window very ugly.

Although I knew and installed Gwibber for so long a time, I seldom used it, it has an default theme which I dislike, and, it loads and sents my tweets very slowly. But I can’t bare the large avatars problem any longer, what I can do to solve that problem, is to unfollow that large-avatar twitter user, that’s what I don’t want.

Thanks Google Reader, I saw a nice-looking Gwibber theme by chance, downloaded Gilouche 0.2, untared it ~/.local/share/gwibber/ui/themes/ , and actived it, so nice. I like this dark theme so much.

Well, in the Fedora software repositories, we have 3 choice of a Twitter clients that you may like. Try to install by run yum install gwibber mitter twitux, there will be one that fits you.

I remembered Fedora 10 was released in the nighth of Nov. 25th, 2008 at 22:00 pm Beijing Time, as soon as it’s available for download, my-guides.net published it’s great tutorial Fedora 10 Installation Guide, which I learned a lot from its Fedora 9 Installation Guide when I tried Fedora (Fedora 9, this is the first Linux distro I tried and installed in my entire hard disk) for the 1st time, it’s really helpful for a Linux and Fedora newbie. I didn’t sleep all the night but translated it into Chinese, to do my best to help others who wants to try the latest Fedora distro. Although I keeped translating this great guide for a whole night, but only finished its first 8 chapters, with 2 Fedora fans’ help the second day, we finally submited to my-guides.net a Chinese version.

Although Alex named his work “Fedora 10 Installation Guide”, but he taught us almost all things about Fedora 10 system configration (these are all things needed to do after Fedora 10 installed) and Fedora frequently-used software installation and configration, it’s not good enough as someone didn’t know how to install Fedora 10 in his hard disk at all, and, what’s the most important, was, he knows nothing about Chinese, and Chinese-language opensource software, so he didn’t write any howtos about that.

In the next few days after Fedora 10 released, I compiled another free PDF guide. I read the Fedora 10 realse note, and collected lots of other information about their fed back or guides after they tried Fedora 10 from BBS or forums together, and published my own PDF to the public, and updated it for 2 times.

Those days after this PDF was published to the public, my Chinese blog attracted hundreds of visitors a day for the download address, and many Fedora users helped me to spread in other forums. I didn’t ever know this kind of document is in a so large demand, but I think it’s useful for them.

Today when I visit Google Code fedora-zh project again, I found my PDF was download over 35,000 times in all after I moved it here, and this number is still counting that is to say, tens of thousands of people downloaded my PDF,  I think I did a good job.

I got to know these days Fedora 10 Nears 1 Million Users Mark (here’s the official statistics), I am really happy to hear this news, as I tried to promote it in China and Chinese-speaking countries. Fedora is the distro I’d always trust, as so many people worldwide chose it, spread it, and get involved in.

BTW: I have moved my Feedburner account to a Google Account, so please re-subsribe my blog RSS feed: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/charlespeng , thanks.

The Pagico team is focused on developing a useful, flexible and easy to use knowledge base software for both Mac and PC. Its mission is to deliver a better solution to make people’s work done easily, quickly and smoothly, thereby saving their time.

Pagico Software provides you a whole new way to see and arrange your schedule, that’s its Visualized Schedule Flowchat feature, which I like most. This flowchart helps you concentrating on what’s in the near future, what needs to be done at present, and what’s already overdue, in a completely new better way!

Pagico is also a personal database that helps you archive everything efficiently. Rather than throwing information away when they’re done, archiving them properly will save you tons of time in the future.

It also provides you a very clean and efficient way to store and organize your information. You can write your Todos and Tasks and even notes, and it helps you to orangize and manage your schedule in a very powerful tag based system very efficiently.

Pagico is released only for Windows and Mac officially, but with the author of Ubuntu Tweak, TualatriX’s effort and help, Pagico 3 was officially released for Ubuntu in Jan. 20th, 2009. Pagico 3 is now a standard Linux program and run in Linux smoothly and natively.

With my strong request, TualartiX finally released its RPM package for Fedora system, and now it’s available for download and test. This RPM package is unofficial, for testing only, if you’re interested in it, please download it here http://downloads.imtx.cn/fedora/pagico-3.2.2.625-1.fc10.i686.rpm

Before you launch this software, please disable SELinux and restart your computer. (This is a very 1st release for Fedora 10, and it may conflicts with SELinux, although it’s not harmful for you system, you’d better disable SELinux first before lauching this software after installation. But I strongly suggest you re-enable SELinux ater your test). It runs perfectly under Fedora, If you lauch this software with SELinux enabled, if any problem occured, please feedback to TualariX, thanks.

As I told above, Pagico is NOT a free and open source software, and it’s NOT an official RPM too, you can download and test, but 15 day free trial only, for more information, please visit its website http://www.pagico.com/linux .

Thanks again, TualiariX.