Published: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:03 +0000 
Inspired by an old post by Rui Moura, I’ll maintain here the plain commands needed to setup a freshly installed Fedora or Red Hat system, to include essential softwares they don’t ship by default due to legal issues.
These instructions are currently optimized for Fedora 9, 10 and 11, but most of it should work on any other Fedora and modern Red Hat Enterprise Linux too. Good suggestions provided as comments bellow will be added to this guide.
Terms highlighted in red should be changed to match your system.
Permissions Setup
This step will allow you to issue some administrative commands without having to be all the time logged in as root — the system administrator.
bash# echo 'your_plain_loginname_here ALL=(ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers
Note that this is the only command throughout this guide that shows a root prompt (bash#). All other commands are indicated to be run as a regular non-root user (indicated by bash$).
After configuring sudo, every time you execute an administrative command with its help, a password is requested. This is your password (the regular user’s password), not the root password.
Keeping System Updated
After all the steps bellow and from time to time, update all software installed on your system with the following command:
bash$ sudo yum update
Repositories Setup
RPM Fusion is a repository of many essential multimedia and general purpose software for Fedora and Red Hat systems. It is a good idea to have it configured so you can easily install players for DVDs, MP3s amongst other useful things.
bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
Install Adobe Flash Player Globally
bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm bash$ sudo yum -y install flash-plugin --exclude=AdobeReader\*
On 64bit systems (x86_64) use this:
bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm bash$ sudo yum -y install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.x86_64 nspluginwrapper.i386 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 libcurl.i386 --exclude=AdobeReader\*
Restart your browser to activate the plugin.
For reference: Flash Player for Linux home page.
Access LAN Hosts by Name Without a DNS Server
You can access servers and machines on you LAN by name, instead of using their long IP address using the Zeroconf standard (implemented as Avahi in Linux). This is so useful and works out of the box in Ubuntu. The setup in Fedora is easy too, but not automatic.
bash$ sudo yum -y install avahi-tools nss-mdns
Now, instead of accessing local hosts by their IP, you can use the .local domain appended to their names. Just like this:
bash$ ssh 10.0.0.5 # stop using the IP address of dbserver bash$ ssh dbserver.local # start using its hostname
Evnetually this will only work if you correctly configure or disable packet filtering (firewalling). To disable:
bash$ sudo service iptables stop bash$ sudo service ip6tables stop bash$ sudo chkconfig --del iptables # disable even for next reboots bash$ sudo chkconfig --del ip6tables # disable even for next reboots
Tip grabbed from Fedora Project wiki.
Keep Date and Time Correct and Precise
Your system can have 100% correct time and date everyday, synchronizing with atomic clocks across the Internet.
bash$ sudo yum -y install ntp # install time sync tools bash# ntpdate 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org # make the first time sync with a Fedora clock mirror bash# chkconfig --level 2345 ntpd on # enable the synchronization service to run on every boot bash# service ntpd start # run the service so you don't need to reboot
Read more in the official Linux Time Precision HOWTO.
Dramatically Improve Fonts
bash$ sudo yum install freetype-freeworld
Logoff and login again your graphical environment to this update take effect.
To understand why you need this update read this section on the Linux Font HOWTO.
The freetype-freeworld package uses a technique described in this bug report.
Install Web Standard Fonts
These packages include popular fonts as Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Verdana, as well as new Windows Vista and MS Office 2007 fonts. Learn more.
bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh \ http://avi.alkalay.net/software/webcore-fonts/webcore-fonts-3.0-1.noarch.rpm \ http://avi.alkalay.net/software/webcore-fonts/webcore-fonts-vista-3.0-1.noarch.rpm
Then, configure your desktop as described in the Linux Font HOWTO, for KDE or Gnome.
MP3 Support
For Gnome and GStreamer:
bash$ sudo yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-ugly libmad libid3tag id3v2
For KDE:
bash$ sudo yum -y install kdemultimedia-extras-nonfree id3v2
Amarok: The best audio player for Linux
bash$ sudo yum -y install amarok-extras-nonfree
DVD Player
bash$ sudo yum -y install vlc
General DVD and DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.264 Movie Player and Browser Plugin
bash$ sudo yum -y install mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayerplug-in
General Digital Video Authoring and Editing tools
bash$ sudo yum -y install mencoder mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui ffmpeg avidemux subtitleripper
Correctly install Java
Fedora 8 includes what will be the new Sun Java 1.7 JVM that was open sourced in late 2006.
This JVM (codename Iced Tea) is still beta and may not fulfill all your needs, but it is now extremely easy to install:
bash$ sudo yum -y install java-1.7.0-icedtea # installs the JRE only
Other subpackages you can install with similar command are java-1.7.0-icedtea-devel (JDK), java-1.7.0-icedtea-plugin (browser plugin), java-1.7.0-icedtea-demo, java-1.7.0-icedtea-src, java-1.7.0-icedtea-javadoc.
If the 1.7 does not fulfill your needs, I wrote another similar tutorial on how to correctly install traditional Java that will become obsolete as soon the Iced Tea project is final, but may be enlightening about how to install other Java related libraries and packages.
Access Windows NTFS Partitions From Linux
bash$ sudo yum -y install ntfs-config
Then run the ntfs-config-root graphical tool and configure your partitions to be writable and mountable.
bash$ sudo /usr/sbin/ntfs-config-root
An example of my system:
After you configure the tool and quit, your NTFS partitions will be mounted in the specified place. In my case /media/Windows and /media/Work.
Configure text console in high resolution and smaller fonts
This tip is for the text console.
bash$ sudo echo 'SYSFONT="lat0-08"' >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n # set a ISO-8859-15 font
bash$ sudo echo 'fbset 1024x768-60' >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local # set console resolution to 1024x768 @ 60Hz
These settings will take effect after a reboot, but you can test them before rebooting executing the following commands:
bash$ sudo setfont lat0-08
bash$ sudo fbset 1024x768-60
Note that you can set different resolutions than 1024×768 if you have a video card and monitor that will accept it. A full list of modes can be listed with the command:
bash$ grep "mode " /etc/fb.modes
Avi on 
Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:03 +0000 | Tags: 
hCard/vCard
Wow man that was some real help.. awesome.. thanks a ton..
thanx a ton……:)
Thank you so much ^^
Fedora: DVD, video, fonts, usability improvements…
An interesting post on how to setup some of the missing things that will make your Fedora a nice multimedia desktop….
[...] On Linux: use MPlayer or Xine (or variants as Kaffeine, GMPlayer, KPlayer, KMPlayer) available from your Linux distribution’s package repositories. For example, see the instructions to get them on a Fedora installation. [...]
Usefull link regarding a better use of yum
Font a rather recent guide that has a Centos5 section.
Might help others…
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=925868&postcount=1
Good howto, with a little skill, it can be adapted to any system… almost.
Right now I need some help on installing freetype-freeworld on CentOS5.1 if possible.
I would appreciate some guidance on that
Once I managed to find a newer EL5 freetype package and to rebuild it with BCI support, but now I’m stucked.
[...] Zeroconf got my attention when I installed Ubuntu Linux in one of my home PCs and it automatically started to show hostnames instead of IPs of my other home computers on the same DNS-less network. On my other Fedora Linux hosts, I had to manually install the avahi-tools and nss-mdns packages and I got the same functionality — as described in the Fedora Post-Installations Configurations. [...]
[...] chociaż ja polecam standardową czcionkę Fedory. Jeśli ktoś jest zainteresowany to na stronie można znaleźć czcionki z visty oraz parę innych pomocnych drobiazgów oraz porad. Pokój (No [...]
[...] chociaż ja polecam standardową czcionkę Fedory. Jeśli ktoś jest zainteresowany to na stronie można znaleźć czcionki z visty oraz parę innych pomocnych drobiazgów oraz porad. [...]
Thank you very much for your help. The advices I found in your website helped me a lot.
I am an orthopedic surgeon in Jerusalem – Hadassah University Hospital – but I am working a lot with computerized stuff, trying to acquire more skills in linux.
Happy new year
[...] See also Fedora post-installation configurations. [...]
I think yuo had to enable freshrpm repo!!!!
Do not use livna & freshrpm togheter!!!
I install vlc and Mplayer only disabling livna repos with kyum.
FSSGI, packages were upgraded and some dependencies were broken.
Let me investigate and I’ll update this page in the next days.
Hi ,
When:
yum -y –disablerepo=livna install mplayer mplayer-skins mplayer-fonts mplayerplug-in
I get the following:
Loading “installonlyn” plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
fedora 100% |=========================| 2.1 kB 00:00
updates 100% |=========================| 1.9 kB 00:00
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package mplayerplug-in.i386 0:3.40-1.fc7 set to be updated
—> Package mplayer-skins.noarch 0:1.8-1 set to be updated
—> Package mplayer-fonts.noarch 0:1.1-3.fc set to be updated
—> Package mplayer.i386 0:1.0-0.34.rc1try2.fc7 set to be updated
–> Processing Dependency: libx264.so.55 for package: mplayer
–> Restarting Dependency Resolution with new changes.
–> Running transaction check
—> Package x264.i386 0:0.0.0-0.3.20070529.fc7 set to be updated
filelists.sqlite.bz2 100% |=========================| 60 kB 00:00
–> Processing Dependency: libx264.so.54 for package: ffmpeg-libs
–> Processing Dependency: libx264.so.54 for package: vlc
–> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: libx264.so.54 is needed by package ffmpeg-libs
Error: Missing Dependency: libx264.so.54 is needed by package vlc
Any idea how I can fix this?
Thanks.
FS.
Thanks for the very helpful howto on Fonts.
I recently installed Fedora 7 and on resolution of 1440 * 900 the fonts were looking very ugly till I visited this page
Fedora 7 already includes a set of fonts that are metrically equivalent to the MS Web fonts, but big-F Free. Just “yum install liberation-fonts” if they’re not already installed.
You can get more info about ‘em here: http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/05/09/liberation-fonts/
Please apply the freetype-2.3.4-ttf-overflow.patch security fix from the official freetype-2.3.4-3.fc7!
Avi,
You are assuming too much technical skill and linux know-how from your target audience… the linux user that actually needs your help. These users will probably keep both repos enabled and screw up their system.
Fred, this is why I’m showing which package to get from each repo.
The commands above are certified to work. At least for now.
Mixing Freshrpms and Livna can lead to a world of pain.
Definitely NOT recommended.
Hi, yesterday one fedora installation here went wrong and the cause was using livna and freshrpms repositories at the same time. Steps to reproduce are: install f7, add both those repos and install mplayer using yumex. After that mplayer can’t start and is missing a tons of dependencies and is very very hard to fix. Using just freshrpms is enough for multimedia, at least here. Thanks for the font tip.
The kmod-ntfs doesn’t do read-write safely. ntfs-3g is a far better option.
For NTFS, ntfs-3g is installed by default. All you need to install is ntfs-config (it is unsigned atm, so you will have gpgcheck=0 until it is updated…) and run it. It can set up both read and write support for internal and external ntfs disks depending on what settings you use.
The kmod-ntfs method does read only as far as I know.
I’ve been searching everywhere for a way to make my linux fonts look as good as windows, Thanks so much for the link to the BCI freetype RPM.
Ugly fonts was the one thing that keeps turning me off Linux.