Fedora Core 5 - "Fully Loaded"

This is a step-by-step guide for installing Fedora Core 5 in my "Loaded" configuration, as described in: Moving from Gentoo to ... SUSE, Ubuntu, or Fedora Core?

Fedora Core defaults to a GNOME desktop, however, I'm not counting that against it since you can easily choose a KDE installation instead.

Quick list of pros vs. cons:

Pros:

  1. Easiest NVIDIA configuration of the three distributions.
  2. Uses YUM for easy package management.

Cons:

  1. This was the hardest of the three distributions to turn into a fully-loaded configuration, lacking support for Java, Flash, win32codecs, and RealPlayer, even from third-party repositories.
  2. Uses LVM by default for disk partitioning. While I'm sure LVM has a lot of good points, the fact is that I already have a seperate /home drive, and I don't want to have to learn something new just to hook it into my setup.

Note: Several of the steps below have a tag "[HAND-EDITING]" beside them. To have a fair comparison between openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora Core, I have to disallow these, since they violate the "easy to install" principle. However, I've kept them in the procedure so you can see how to install them if you'd like.

You could make an argument that some of the other steps amount to hand-editing, however, if they are simple and required on at least one other distribution, then I've allowed them. It's fairly subjective, I know.

Instructions:

  1. Install from CD, accepting all defaults, except for:
    1. During package selection, I chose "Customize Now" and selected KDE instead of GNOME as the desktop.
    2. SELinux: SET SELINUX TO "DISABLED". Else, a slew of things won't work (NVIDIA drivers, Flash, possibly more).
  2. Add the Livna third-party repository (run as root):
    rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
  3. Remove a few troublesome packages by running (as root):
    yum remove rhythmbox totem HelixPlayer
  4. Install additional packages by running (as root):
    yum install mplayer-gui mplayerplug-in xine libdvdcss
    yum install kmod-nvidia rpm-build cabextract

    [Answer "Yes" when it prompts you about importing GPG keys]

    Reboot now so that the NVIDIA driver will be enabled (a simple "init 3; init
    5    " does NOT do the trick). After rebooting, make sure that "glxinfo|grep direct" says "direct Rendering: Yes"

  5. [OPTIONAL] Install KDE digital camera tools:

    yum install digikam digikamimageplugins kipi-plugins
  6. [OPTIONAL] Install Bittorrent GUI (ktorrent not available!)
    yum install bittorrent-gui
  7. [HAND-EDITING] Install the win32 codecs:
    1. Download the "Essential Codecs Package"
    2. Run (as root):
      mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/win32
      cd /usr/local/lib/win32
      bzip2 -dc /root/essential-20060611.tar.bz2 |tar xvf -
      mv essential-20060611/* .
      rmdir essential-20060611/
  8. [HAND-EDITING] Installing Java:
    1. Download Java Runtime Enviroment (JRE) from Sun's Java Downloads (get the .bin file, not the RPM).
    2. Assuming you downloaded it to /root/jre, run (as root):
      chmod +x jre-1_5_0_07-linux-i586.bin
      cd /usr
      /root/jre-1_5_0_07-linux-i586.bin
      rm /usr/bin/java
      ln -s /usr/jre1.5.0_07/bin/java /usr/bin
      cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
      ln -s /usr/jre1.5.0_07/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so .

      Now, restart Firefox, type "about:plugins" into the address bar, and you should see the Java plugin installed.

  9. [HAND-EDITING] Installing the Flash player:
    1. Download the player from the Abobe Flash Download Page
    2. Run (as root):
      tar zxf install_flash_player_7_linux.tar.gz
      cd install_flash_player_7_linux
       ./flashplayer-installer

      Enter "/usr/lib/mozilla" when prompted for the Mozilla install directory.
      When it finishes, restart Firefox, type "about:plugins" in the address bar, and you should see the Flash plugin.

  10. Installing MS Corefonts:
    1. Download: msttcorefonts specfile
    2. Run (as root):

      rpmbuild -bb msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec
    3. Run (as root):
      rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm
      /sbin/service xfs reload
    4. See if the fonts are installed by doing:

      xlsfonts | grep ^-microsoft

      You should see a list of the corefonts displayed.

    5. Test the mscorefonts installation here: MS TTF Display Test. You should see a different font displayed by each name (starting from "Andale Mono"). NOTE: You have to restart Firefox before it will see the new fonts.
  11. [HAND-EDITING] RealPlayer:
    1. Download RealPlayer from real.com (it should be named something like "RealPlayer10GOLD.bin").
    2. Run (as root):
      yum install compat-libstdc++-33
      chmod u+x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin
       ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin

      When prompted:

      1. Enter "/opt/RealPlayer" as the installation path.
      2. Answer "Y" to it installing system-wide symbolic links.
      3. Enter "/usr" as the path for the symbolic links.
    3. When viewing sites/streams that should be opened with RealPlayer, tell Firefox to open them with /opt/RealPlayer/realplay.

Extras:

  1. jEdit:
    1. Download the Java-based installer
    2. Install (as root):

      java -jar jedit42install.jar
  2. Wings3D: "yum install wings"
  3. wxPython: "yum install wxPython"
    Make sure NOT to install wxPythonGTK2 since it doesn't work (if it wants to pull in a lot of "compat-wxGTK" libs, then you've got the wrong package).
    OPTIONAL:
    1. Download the wxPython source code
    2. Unpack and run wxPython/demo/demo.py
  4. sshfs:
    1. yum install fuse-sshfs

Next: Installing openSUSE 10.1 "Loaded", with YUM