Integrating Pidgin and Gnome 3

Pidgin has always been my favourite chat program, and I've stuck with it even after Gnome switched to Empathy, partly out of habit, but also because it has the ability to block messages from people I don't know, and the ability to show email messages from web email applications and quickly go to the email page.
I've moved to Fedora 15 because I want to use Gnome 3, and I'm giving Empathy another go. I'm using Gmail to check my old and little-used web email accounts like Hotmail, and unless I get start getting annoying spam with Empathy, I might stick with it.
Empathy uses Gnome 3's new bottom-of-the-screen notification system. Apparently Pidgin doesn't, but there's a Gnome 3 extension that allows Pidgin to integrate. Hubfolio has a guide. I may be checking it out if the spammers find me.

Opera in Fedora

It may not be open source, but I like Opera, and like to install it on Linux. I'm using Fedora 15 at the moment, and Opera is a manual install, and must also be updated manually when updates become available, but it's not hard to do. If Not True Then False has a guide.

MP3 in Fedora 15

I've been using a Fedora 15 Live USB to test Gnome 3, and also looking at how easy Fedora 15 is to do everyday task. Probably one of my most common everyday tasks on Linux is listening to MP3s and watching rips of TV shows and films. I was able to do this on Fedora 15 without much trouble, by following a series of notifications and advice links. Today I came across a review of Fedora 15 where the author (a person with lot more IT experience than me) has gone down the same road as me but somehow failed to reach the end.

Movie player is default application for MP3 files and it suggests to search for MP3 plugin. Of course I want to search. And search is... unsuccessful. Manual search in Package Manager is also unsuccessful. You probably know that MP3 support in Fedora is famous topic.

This has inspired me to write a walk-through for anybody struggling to listen to MP3s or play a movie in Fedora 15. (I've chosen a video file for this walk-through because I get video and MP3 working in one swell foop.)

The review writer has done what I did, tried to play a file and seen a notification about missing plugins and an option to search for them:


Here we go with the search:


And my search is also unsuccessful:


(I think that notification should really say Failed to find plugin.)

However, if the review author had clicked the More information button, he would have found the answer. The button launches the Fedora Project Wiki page:

If you're seeing this page, it is probably because you tried to search for something in PackageKit, but it could not find what you were looking for in the Fedora repositories. Look at the contents below to find information about specific issues you might encounter.

Scroll down the page and you'll find that the decoders you need are actually codecs which cannot be included in the Fedora repository because they are "patent encumbered or under an unacceptable license", and that you need to get them from a third party repository. Follow the link and you'll be offered several. I've used rpmfusion.org before, so I clicked on that, and then on the Enable RPM Fusion on your system link. I opted for Graphical setup via Firefox web browser, and selected Fedora 15. This brings up the option to open an rpm file:


After the download, there's a prompt to install the file:


A request for additional confirmation:


[Update: Repeat the process for the nonfree repository.]

Now we go back to our media file and try to play it again. We get the same notification about missing plugins- but don't be disheartened:


This time the search finds the plugins we need (in the third party repository we added, of course).


And we get another request for additional confirmation (and a chance to look at the packages that are going to be installed).


Then we are asked if we trust the source of the packages. (This is important! In this case, we can trust the signed packages from this trusted source, but clicking through confirmation dialogues like this without being sure is not a good habit to get into.)


And finally we can watch our film. (And listen to MP3s too, as the film required the MP3 codec.)



Update: Tried this procedure myself after a clean install of Fedora 16, and although video worked, MP3 coded audio in video (or indeed, just MP3 files) wouldn't.
In the end the solution was to manually install the GStreamer  streaming media framework "ugly" plug-ins and the Non Free GStreamer streaming media framework "bad" plug-ins.

Printing and scanning with HP Deskjet 3050 on Fedora 15

I've been running Fedora 15 from a Live USB drive, primarily to test Gnome 3, but I've also been wondering how easy it would be to do all the things I need to do on my computer on Fedora 15.
Today I tried to use my printer to print and scan. It's an HP deskjet j610 wireless printer/scanner which I'd previously configured in Debian and now connects to my router. In Debian Squeeze I'd had to manually install the latest version of the HP printer software hplip, because new versions of the software come out regularly to support new printer and Squeeze came with a version in the repositories that was too old to recognise my printer. Fedora 15 has just been released, so I hoped it would come with HP software up-to-date enough to work with my printer.
I managed to print fairly easily. I went to Applications>Other>Printing and my printer was listed as a Network printer. Adding the printer prompted for the download of an HP driver, and after tinstalling the driver, I was able to print a test page.
Scanning was more of a problem. Simple Scan was installed but couldn't see my scanner. I reckoned I would need hplip again, so I installed that [from the Fedora repository, not from HP]. I found I also needed hplip-gui. However, the hplip GUI disn't automatically discover my printer, and I had to add the printer's IP address (look in the router's DHCP Client List or print the report in the wireless section of the printer menu) using Manual Discovery.


After the manual discovery, hplip recognised my printer and I could do a scan in Simple Scan. However, I also found the HP Deskjet 3050 was listed twice in Printers now, so installing and setting hplip might be the best way to set up the printer- hplip can also check ink levels which is useful.

[I did this from a Live USB- in an actual install, I had to enter username root and the root password  to add the printer.]

Fedora 15 Live USB

I've been trying Fedora 15 (and Gnome 3) from a Live USB. I've had a Live CD since the beta but my CD is failing and read errors mean programs fail to launch even if the OS does load. I'd tried a USB installation a year or so ago when I was distro hopping, but without luck. This time the USB boot worked, with only a minor hitch.
I downloaded the Live image from Fedora,and copied it to my USB drive using these instructions. I then bumped up the USB drive in my BIOS boot options and let the computer reboot... to see this message:

isolinux.bin missing or corrupt

I'd made a small error in the device name of the USB. After copying the Live image correctly, I could boot into Fedora.
The USB boot is stable and fast, and fun to play with.
I'm tempted to install it and get used to it, but this is my "production environment" as computers you occasionally do some work on from time to time are described nowadays, and I don't want to be scrabbling to install a printer or scanner or get email working on a new system.
I haven't used Gnome 3 long enough to say anything other than I'm enjoying it so far, except, why did Fedora make the Gnome icon set the default? The Gnome icon set is dull. The icons look like they were created around the same time as Windows 95.

Fedora 15 has Gnome 3

DesktopLinux.com has the story (although they're too dumb to realise they've posted a screenshot of Fedora 13 running Gnome 2. Epic fail, I believe the appropriate colloquial comment on the interwebs).
DesktopLinux.com also reports that Linus Torvalds doesn't like Gnome 3.
I've tried Gnome 3 on the Fedora live CD, and I would love to install Fedora and try it for longer, maybe as a dual boot with Debian Squeeze, but my CD drive is failing and keeps crashing while running live CD's or install disks.
I had to make do with this in-depth trial report from Adam Craig (actually of the Fedora 15 beta). It pretty much sums up my impressions of Gnome 3, and my feeling that people should try out Gnome 3 for a couple of weeks before condemning it. Something that's been round for a long time and we're all used to is not always the best way of doing things. After all, Gnome 2 is basically a Windows 95 paradigm.

Best Newbie Linux Distro

I'm been taking a look at some of the alternatives to Ubuntu, the Linux distribution I've been using for two and a half years now. Ubuntu tends to grab all of the attention as the distro for first-time users, but that could be unfair to several other alternatives. How do some of the alternatives compare?

I've taken a look at Debian, Mandriva and Fedora. (I might have tried Suse too, but the LiveCD has never worked on my computer.) After first trying a LiveCD, I installed all three distros and gave them a good try-0ut.

The core Linux philosophy is Free, as in Freedom, but I'm also interested in Free, as in Beer, so I took a look at how each distribution handled multimedia- Flash and MP3's in particular.

Debian was easy to install. It used to have a reputation for being difficult to install, but the new graphical installation interface was perhaps the easiest of all three to use. Debian is very strict about including only free and open source software, and the installation gave me an message about missing firmware. I made a note of the message, and in the end, all I had to do was enable Debian's non-free repository and install some firmware for my wireless card- not a big issue, but it could be tricky for new users, and no other distribution I tried was this strict, and installed the firmware without asking.
Debian is the distribution upon which Ubuntu is based, but its priority is more stability than latest features, and it is not targeted at new Linux users like Ubuntu. Using Debian reminded me of Ubuntu when I first started using it three years ago- a lot of the packages are old. They're stable of course, but they lack the latest features, and sometimes contain performance bugs that Ubuntu users will not be pleased to see again.
The look of the installation was austere- and I soon realised that desktop effects were not installed, as was the case when I first used Ubuntu three years ago. I'm not a fan of desktop cubes and wobbly windows, but a series of concentric boxes when closing a window takes me back to.... Windows 3.1, probably. The driver for my video card installed by Debian just doesn't support desktop effects, which came as an option with the other two distros and worked when enabled.
There's no equivalent of Ubuntu's restricted-extras package in Debian, which makes enabling multimedia less of a breeze. I got Flash and MP3's playing without too much trouble, but playing Flash files I'd saved to my hard drive resulted in an error message. With a bit of Googling, I found I just needed to install a Gstreamer plugin. Not too much of a big deal, but just another issue that would be off-putting for a newbie.
Debian generally doesn't go out of its way like Ubuntu to be user friendly or attractive- a lot of features that are enabled by default in Ubuntu are not present in Debian. They can be enabled, but it takes some Googling, some head scratching and some delving into system settings. Debian is in fact probably more designed for system administrators to use, rather than home users, and many of the system settings and messages reflect this.
Debian is a utilitarian distro. Which suits some users, but it's probably not the distribution to recommend to first-time Linux users.

Mandriva was another easy installation. Immediately after installation I noticed an update message for Mandriva 2009- strange, considering I'd installed 2010. Doing a update removed the message- but still, not a good first impression.
The Mandriva installation was up-to-date, attractive and fully-featured.
I'd installed Mandriva One, which comes with some proprietary components- notably Flash which is pre-installed. Mandriva has a unique approach to proprietary software- particularly multimedia codecs- among Linux distos I've tried. Clicking on an MP3 file for example, pops up a message about the nature of the MP3 format, and gives two options- installing the required proprietary codecs, or installing reverse engineered Linux alternatives. A very reasonable and honest approach, but unfortunately neither option worked for me, and the install button was positioned below the bottom of the screen on my laptop. Mandriva has a utility called Codeina which is supposed to "provide and install codecs for playing multimedia files in formats for which a codec is not already available on the system". By signing up, I was able to install the MP3 codec for free, but other codecs required a fee. Clicking on a downloaded Flash video file produced another message about installing proprietary codecs or Linux version from Mandriva- again it didn't work. I tried enabling a third-party repository of proprietary software for Mandriva, but again, no luck. (This seems to be a recognised bug.) Maybe paying to licence the codecs through Codeina would have worked. Maybe this actually the most ethical thing to do anyway, but I'm afraid this is where I gave up on Mandriva.
In summary, an attractive and user-friendly distro, if it weren't for the problems with multimedia.

By now I'd done half a dozen Linux installs on this laptop, dual booting with Windows, without any problems. However, I must have done something wrong with the Fedora installer, because I couldn't get either Fedora or Windows to boot, even after repeated attempts. Ferdora 13 (out in a week from now) is set to have a new graphical installer- I hope it's easier to use. In the end I just let Fedora use the whole disk (haven't used Windows in years). Fedora 12 at least is probably not the distro to choose if you're thinking about trying Linux alongside Windows.
Booting into my new installation, I hit a major bug- there were a lot of updates ready for the system, but the update process failed. I had to do a Google search and apply a Terminal command to get updates working: I think most newbies would have been lost here.
As with Mandriva, the Fedora installation was up-to-date, attractive and fully-featured.
The installation came with AbiWord, and I've always used OpenOffice. Installing open office wasn't too much of a trauma- I made the mistake of installing the entire package, which is a 800MB download, rather than the base package, which is 120MB- and anyway, Fedora 13 is set in come with OpenOffice.
Fedora comes with a security feature called SELinux. Google SELinux and the first hit tells you about it. (The second hit is how to disable it.) A lot of experienced Fedora users seem to dislike it. Within minutes of installing Fedora, it was blocking things I was trying to do and telling me I was possibly being hacked. If you've ever used an over-enthusiastic security program (HIPS or intrusion protection) on Windows, you'll be familiar with the experience. It probably something new users of Linux would not want to be trying to get their heads round while adapting to a new operating system.
Like Mandriva, and unlike Ubuntu, Fedora does not have a repository of software that is not available under a completely free license, or is not free. As in Mandriva, you have to enable a third-party repository. This is easy to do- just click on a link in a web page, enter your password, accept the source as trusted.... Anybody familiar with windows malware might be a little worried by this- if Linux becomes more popular, and fake repositories start appearing, and users are used to accepting third-party sources of software and giving their passwords... The Ubuntu system, where non-free software is available from Canonical itself inspires a lot more confidence.
The good news is that, once the third-party repository is installed, clicking on an unknown file format will bring up a dialogue asking if it's OK to install the necessary codec, and, if accepted, do it automatically.
I'm actually quite pleased with Fedora, and will certainly be keeping it long enough to try out Fedora 13. (A plus point for me is that the Gnome 3 shell preview works better in Fedora than Ubuntu, and I'm interested in seeing how that goes.)

In summary, it's easy to see why Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros with new users- it's easy to install and set up for everyday use, it's user-friendly, up-to-date with features and attractive. The three distros I tried all had disadvantages, or what I would see as disadvantages, for new users.
That's not to say a new user could not set up an installation to their liking- especially if they had support from a friend or colleague already using that distro. There are other user-friendly distros that I didn't try- Suse, PCLinuxOS etc., but Ubuntu remains one distro that can always be recommended to someone who wants to try out Linux with some confidence that they won't run into (for them) insurmountable obstacles either during or immediately after installation.