Linux Beginner

Fedora 10 was released on November 25, and I finally installed the i386 KDE 4.1 version on an old Dell desktop. Mostly it’s pretty slick. I like that it finally gives a default install of KDE4.1 instead of the nearly nonfunctional KDE 4.0, like Fedora 9 used.

Installing Fedora is a breeze, as it is now with most Linux distributions. I used the manual partitioning to keep the system as a triple boot. Fedora still seems to have issues with recognizing other Linux partitions. I told GRUB to recognize Windows XP on sda1 and Kubuntu on sda3, but on restart, I would only get an error if I attempted to boot Kubuntu.

To fix this, you need a copy of the old menu.lst. you will find this in the file path /boot/grub/menu.lst (make sure you are typing “ell ess tee” not “one ess tee”) Fortunately, I was prepared for this. Scroll down in the menu.lst and copy the information on booting the old partition. Paste it into the new Fedora menu.lst and save the file.

Open the terminal/konsole/bash and use this command exactly to paste a file into menu.lst

su -
(enter your root password)
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

alternately you can use
gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Paste in the new boot information, and save the file. In nano ctrl+x then type “y” in response to the question. In Gedit, just save with the save button.

On reboot, Kubuntu booted fine, but I don’t understand why Fedora can’t seem to want to allow other Linux partitions to work. Other linux distributions recognize the preexisting partitions fine, but Fedora just doesn’t seem to ever get this straight. Fedora recognized XP, but it wouldn’t boot Kubuntu without having to manually edit grub.conf/menu.lst..

I installed the Windows codecs, or at least I thought I did, but it is not playing videos properly. It plays mp3s but in both cases SELinux is giving me some sort of policy error. I will have to track this issue down. I won’t feel ready to put Fedora 10 on any of my other computers until I resolve this issue.

admin Linux Fedora 10 Review

I like KDE4, especially once it got past the infancy stages of KDE4.0, but there is a definite problem I am having with Kwrite and Kate saving text files. I have encountered the issue with Kubuntu Hardy, Fedora 9, Fedora 10, and maybe something else. I don’t remember what distributions I have used.

I open the text editor. Write something, Save it as a txt file, and it seems to be fine. But when I open it, I have nothing but a blank page. I don’t have a solution to this, but it almost made me give up on KDE4 altogether. Instead, I have decided to install Gedit as my solution. Gedit works fine. Once a file is saved, there is no issue using Kwrite or Kate, it is only the initial period of saving the file.

I think it is not properly saving the encoding, or something. It handles text files fine, unless it is a new file, and you are trying to save it.

Gedit is a good text editor. There’s also the added bonus that many of the command line tips that are available on the internet include Gedit in their commands for editing files. I had been changing them to Nano in any place that Gedit was part of the command, since I couldn’t trust Kwrite, but using Gedit makes it easier because now I can just copy and paste, instead of having to edit the command to Nano.

admin Linux Fedora 10, Fedora 9, Gedit, Kate, KDE 4.1, Kubuntu Hardy, Kwrite