Fedora

Disabling the annoying system beeps in Fedora 10

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 11:16 by aravind

System beeps, or system bells as it is officially called, got activated automatically when I upgraded to Fedora 10. It is a nice feature especially when I receive new e-mails in my Evolution Inbox the system speaker makes a beep sound. But it becomes really annoying if you are using the terminal or if you get a lot of e-mails. For example I use the auto complete feature in the terminal quite often. When there are more than one option to auto complete the system beeps. This really annoys me. I also hear a lot of beeps when I use MATLAB command window. In the past (previous Fedora releases) I was able to disable this beep by changing the sound preferences.

Today it really got on my nerve and I decided to do some search to disable it. Apparently it is a bug. Fortunately there is an immediate solution. By typing the following as root the beep can be disabled.

# rmmod pcspkr
# echo "blacklist pcspkr" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

HP dv6500 laptop mic on Fedora 10

Posted Wed, 01/14/2009 - 14:32 by aravind

Just fixed a long standing audio problem with my HP dv 6500 laptop microphone in Fedora 10. The built-in microphone did not work ever since I started running linux on my laptop (Never had a chance to try an external microphone). I just found a fix for it. Followed the steps provided in this blog post with a few modifications. Used the following
options snd-hda-intel model=laptop-hp
instead of the one provided in the blog.

The fix is not flawless since every time I needed to use the mic I have to go to then volume control and remove the microphone mute (see the attached picture).

Fedora 10 Codenamed Cambridge

Posted Tue, 07/29/2008 - 12:37 by aravind

The voting for the Fedora 10 codename ended Yesterday and the results are out. ``Cambridge'' got 44 votes more than my first preference ``Nile'' to be the code name for F10.

My Openbox Desktop

Posted Sat, 07/26/2008 - 19:22 by aravind

Just wanted to share my desktop. I have been using openbox for a while. Openbox is a light weight window manager which uses a lot less resources such as memory and cpu compared to KDE or GNOME. As you can see from the screen shots below Openbox does not come with a panel or a desktop. There are lot of panels and desktops that can be used with Openbox but as you can see you really do not need them.




Fedora 10 Codename

Posted Fri, 07/25/2008 - 09:19 by aravind

Earlier this week the start of voting for Fedora 10 codename was announced. The voting ends 23:59:59 28 July 2008 UTC. Anyone part of the Fedora project can cast a vote. Take a look at the possible codenames below

In the past people voted on one of their choice so basically a radio button was used. But right now one can give a rating from 0 - 9 with 0 as 'least or no preference' and 9 as 'highest preference.

AMD/ATI Catalyst 8.7

Posted Wed, 07/23/2008 - 22:10 by aravind

AMD released the latest ATI Catalyst 8.7 Proprietary Linux driver a few days ago. As always I had no luck with the driver. This time it was because the latest release does not support X.org 7.4/Xserver 1.5 (or the release candidate) which comes with Feodra 9. I have been using the open source radeon driver for a while and I guess I better get used to it since (1) it is getting better each day and (2) I feel that the proprietary will always play catch up.

PackageKit UI

Posted Thu, 06/26/2008 - 17:21 by aravind

Richard Huges recently sent a message to the Fedora devel list about some of the updates to the PackageKit UI. One of the main updates is the support for multiple install and remove (which I ranted about in my earlier post). Check out the UI from git.

The message also triggered a thread on group install support in PackageKit. Looks like they are still in the planning stages of it and we may not expect to see it soon. The multiple install support should be available soon as indicated by Richard in his message.

PackageKit in Fedora 9

Posted Sat, 06/21/2008 - 16:51 by aravind

PackageKit is the new software manager in Fedora 9. It completely replaced Pirut and pup in Fedora 9. The main advantage of using PackageKit is that it provides a uniform fronted to some of the common package management systems like yum, apt, rpm, zypp etc. which are available across different distributions. You can read more about PackageKit here. Screen shots from the application is shown below.

Fedora 9 Name

Posted Fri, 01/25/2008 - 17:07 by aravind

Last week Fedora 9 name election was posted. I got a chance to vote on the Fedora 9 code name. Take a look at the screen shot.

MATLAB 2007a on Fedora 8

Posted Mon, 12/24/2007 - 21:38 by aravind

I recently installed MATLAB 2007a on a computer running Fedora 8. While installing I got an error which was something like
libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. Running the following command fixed it
su -c 'yum install libXp libXp-devel'

Fedora 8 on Averatec 2155 Notebook

Posted Sat, 12/22/2007 - 18:25 by aravind

I recently got an Averatec 2100 series notebook from my brother. This notebook is white in color and looks like a mac; it is very small, highly portable and includes a lot of features.

Fedora 8: My take on it

Posted Mon, 11/19/2007 - 00:02 by aravind

I have been using Fedora 8 for almost 10 days now and I like it. It has got some real good features under the hood which I am sure you can find it in a lot of places. So I am not going to talk about them. I am just going to talk about what are the features that I like the most and some problems (not necessarily a problem with Fedora 8).

Upgrading to Fedora 8

Posted Sun, 11/11/2007 - 19:39 by aravind

I upgraded my Fedora 7 installation to Fedora 8 (werewolf) on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop this weekend. Surprisingly it was not as smooth as I would have liked it to be. Nevertheless I made a successful upgrade.

Fedora 8 Werewolf unleashed into the wild

Posted Thu, 11/08/2007 - 10:10 by aravind

I am so excited about the latest Fedora release code named Werewolf. Few minutes ago the Werewolf was unleashed into the wild. You can find it here.

Fedora 8 is gold now

Posted Mon, 11/05/2007 - 10:01 by aravind

Fedora 8 reached the gold status last Friday and it is being mirrored to servers all over the world to be released as expected on November 8, 2007.

Upgrading to Fedora 8: Whats to keep in mind

Posted Sun, 11/04/2007 - 19:15 by aravind

Fedora 8 is going to be released in 4 days. That means its time to upgrade your operating system. Why? Because you get the latest and the greatest cutting edge technology with Fedora 8. What if you choose not to upgrade? That is fine as long as you are running Fedora 7. Why? Because Fedora releases are supported only for one future release. That means if you are running Fedora core 6 you will not receive updates for them after December of 2007.

Fedora 8 Codenamed Werewolf

Posted Fri, 10/26/2007 - 01:52 by aravind

Fedora 8 is codenamed as Werewolf after a recent voting. Nicu, one of the gifted Fedora artwork contributors, has been busy working on some kewl graphics for werewolf. The following images were from his blog entries.

Possible Fedora 8 counter


Fedora 8 Werewolf artwork

Fedora 8 Test 3 (7.92) Released

Posted Thu, 10/04/2007 - 10:04 by aravind

F8 Test3 (7.92) was released today. You can download from one of the mirrors here. Fedora 8 is expected to be released on November 8, 2007. Some interesting features of this test release include

Tutorials for Open-Source Graphics Software

Posted Thu, 09/27/2007 - 22:43 by aravind

Inkscape and GIMP are two open-source alternatives for Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator. Amazing most of the Fedora-Artworks are created using either of these software.

Fedora Electronic Lab

Posted Thu, 09/13/2007 - 18:51 by aravind

A recent development in the Fedora 8 release is the addition of a new live CD called the Fedora Electronics Lab (FEL). This live CD is intended for electronics, VLSI and embedded systems professionals, students and hobbyists.