Themes

Fedora 8 Test 3 aka Fedora 7.92 is out now and available for download from Fedora mirrors. I downloaded the Test 3 Live CD iso and just tested in Virtual Machine qemu. Believe me, Fedora 8 is going to be a huge improvement in basic graphics in Fedora. The graphical interface is far better than the previous release and it’ll be a delight to work on the new default Gnome theme called Nodoka especially designed for Fedora 8.The new release has got glassy/glossy looks everywhere from buttons to icons to menus.The login screen has come a long way. The electronics spin of Fedora 8 will definitely be a gift for people studying electronics at engineering level as they have introduced some packages related to circuit design and all.

I am happy to see that eclipse will be back in Fedora 8. Also, Fedora 8 comes with codecBuddy which will help to guide people to use free alternatives of audio/video codecs. A better network support is guaranteed for sure 🙂 Also, developes are trying to limit the use of desktop environment as root. In Test 3 if you try to login as root, the gdm will display a warning.

If you want to browse complete feature list for Fedora 8 Test 3, it is available here.

More about Fedora 8 Test 3 in pictures below or you can browse these pictures here.

PS1 : Waiting for 8th November eagerly.

Well, finally I realized the power of my onboard graphics card … too lazy to realize even this (it took me a year to realize this obvious fact). I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers from here and also upgrade to the kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6. You can get it from any site which provides rpms or you can install is using yum. Not to forget I did it on Fedora Core 6 – Zod. So, here goes the exact procedure.

Warning: Take a backup of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file before experimenting with 3D desktop. It help in case of X server crashes.

1. Download the latest nVidia drivers from here.

2. Upgrade to kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6

(a)Download rpms kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.i686.rpm and kernel-devel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.i686.rpm and install using

[root@zod saini] rpm -ivh kernel* [Enter]

OR
(b)

[root@zod saini] yum install kernel-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6 [Enter]

3. Reboot and switch to the newly installed kernel.

4. Login as root and delete the temp file for xserver

[root@zod saini] rm -f /tmp/.X0.lock [Enter]

5. Install the nVidia drivers

[root@zod saini] bash NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1.run --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.20-1.2944.fc6-i686/ [Enter]

A user interface(I don’t know what to call it, graphical user interface on command line) will appear, answer the basic questions and you are done.

6. run this command

[root@zod saini] nvidia-xconfig [Enter]

7. Open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in you favourite(Vim) editor and edit it as follows …

Add these lines to the “screen” section

1 2	Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"

and Add this line to the “Device Section”

Option         "TripleBuffer" "true"

or you can use my xorg.conf with appropriate modifications.

8. Now install Beryl + emerald or compiz

(a) Get rpms from any site which supplies rpms for packages in fedora and install

[root@zod saini] rpm -ivh beryl-* emerald-* [Enter]

[root@zod saini]  rpm -ivh compiz-* [Enter]

(b) There is always a short cut

[root@zod saini]  yum install beryl* emerald* [Enter]

[root@zod saini]  yum install compiz* [Enter]

9. Now logout and login again and run command beryl-manager or compiz and you are done with installing beryl/compiz with latest nVidia drivers. Enjoy the 3D desktop.

10. If in the above process your X-server crashes, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and login as root, replace your existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with the backup you took in the beginning and do startx.

I installed the above packages on Fedora Core 6, the Hardware is Nvidia Ge Force 6100 onboard.

Here are some screenshot of my 3D Desktop ( They can also be seen here ).