Fedora 8 comes with FireFox 2.x.x out the box. It seems policy of whoever decides these things is that yum should be restricted to the same major version of software as first installed. So it's FireFox 2 only on FC8.
Unless... Some kind sole creates a repo for FC8 that includes FireFox 3.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=192162&highlight=firefox+fedora&page=2
So.... as root...
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/remi-release-8.rpm rpm -Uvh remi-release-8.rpm yum whatprovides firefox
At this point I get a list containing only FireFox 2.x.x versions. Quick check in /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo and set enabled=1 instead of 0.
Retry yum whatprovides firefox this time it picks up both ver2 and 3.
Now I can install Firefox 3.x.x from this remi.repo:
yum install firefox-3.0.5-1.fc8.remi.i386
A quick restart and add-on check and we're away, all FF3'd up :)
Friday, 19 December 2008
Monday, 8 December 2008
Upgrading FedoraCore8
My Linux distro is Fedora.
I am currently running 8 on my main machine which, now that 10 is out, is coming to end of supported life.
I've been running FC9 on my experimental machine (laptop) for a while and quite happy with the stability, so have decided that the main machine can be moved to FC9. FC10 is still a bit young yet to go on my main machine!
So I get hold of the handy preUpgrade GUI thingy that should allow me to select a Fedora version and auto magically install a new version. Unfortunately it seems that tool only gives the option to move to the newest and shiniest version (10) not any version you want.
So back to the drawing board and find another way to upgrade while specifying I want FC9 not 10.
I am currently running 8 on my main machine which, now that 10 is out, is coming to end of supported life.
I've been running FC9 on my experimental machine (laptop) for a while and quite happy with the stability, so have decided that the main machine can be moved to FC9. FC10 is still a bit young yet to go on my main machine!
So I get hold of the handy preUpgrade GUI thingy that should allow me to select a Fedora version and auto magically install a new version. Unfortunately it seems that tool only gives the option to move to the newest and shiniest version (10) not any version you want.
So back to the drawing board and find another way to upgrade while specifying I want FC9 not 10.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
As per previous post, Banshee wasn't showing my USB thumb drives properly (well, at all really!).
Added a file called .is_audio_player to the root of the drive, unmount it. Re-insert it in the USB slot and presto, like magic I can now drag/drop tunes in Banshee between my library and the thumb drive :)
Added a file called .is_audio_player to the root of the drive, unmount it. Re-insert it in the USB slot and presto, like magic I can now drag/drop tunes in Banshee between my library and the thumb drive :)
Monday, 20 October 2008
mp3 stuff sorted but file write oddness
I now have an mp3/music manager that I can use to encode mp3s while automagically downloading track/artist details AND it saves the info tags correctly!
Rather than fight with RythmBox I tried (at someones recommendation) another system called Banshee. Seems to do everything I want wight now, though it did take a bit of tweaking to get it behaving as I want. So that's my music sorted.
The plan originally was to use mp3s for compatability with car stereo, so got a fistful of USB thumbsticks for that. Oddly Banshee doesn't seem to pick up the drive when I plugin it in. I had expected it to appear as a device the same as my Nokia phone did when I plugged that in and Rhythmbox was running (not tried phone yet with Banshee). I could then use drag/drop to write to the drive.
Solution?
Select the tracks in the trak listing ctrl-c, and ctrl-p into USB drive open in a file explorer window. That seems to work.
The first time I tried this approach it didn't quite work. With Windows, once the 'copying files' dialog had gone I could pull the USB drive and it would be fine. Seems with Linux if I don't explicitly unmount the drive (in one of the file explorer menus) it doesn't complete the file write properly so I cannot use the files that had apparently been written to the device.
A recent system update has now caused a warning dialog to open after writing files though reminding me I need to unmount properly before unplugging the device. That will be useful for peeps like me moving to Linuxas a full-time desktop solution from 'doze.
Rather than fight with RythmBox I tried (at someones recommendation) another system called Banshee. Seems to do everything I want wight now, though it did take a bit of tweaking to get it behaving as I want. So that's my music sorted.
The plan originally was to use mp3s for compatability with car stereo, so got a fistful of USB thumbsticks for that. Oddly Banshee doesn't seem to pick up the drive when I plugin it in. I had expected it to appear as a device the same as my Nokia phone did when I plugged that in and Rhythmbox was running (not tried phone yet with Banshee). I could then use drag/drop to write to the drive.
Solution?
Select the tracks in the trak listing ctrl-c, and ctrl-p into USB drive open in a file explorer window. That seems to work.
The first time I tried this approach it didn't quite work. With Windows, once the 'copying files' dialog had gone I could pull the USB drive and it would be fine. Seems with Linux if I don't explicitly unmount the drive (in one of the file explorer menus) it doesn't complete the file write properly so I cannot use the files that had apparently been written to the device.
A recent system update has now caused a warning dialog to open after writing files though reminding me I need to unmount properly before unplugging the device. That will be useful for peeps like me moving to Linuxas a full-time desktop solution from 'doze.
Friday, 12 September 2008
Ryhthmbox and ID3 tags
So I have Rythmbox creating mp3s at last :)
When I stick a CD in, off it goes to the magical interweb and fetches loads of meta data about the CD it has found in the drive... artist, album, track names year etc etc.
"Lovely" says I, assuming the work was done. If only it were that simple.
Turns out that while creating the mp3 files, from a CD that the software has found meta data for, the metadata is 'lost' and does not get written to the ID3 tags of the mp3 files. So I have to go back and edit them after ripping with EasyTag.
Now Easytag is a nice piece of software that makes writing the mp3 tags easy indeed, but that's not the point. I shouldn't have to use another program to fill in the tags when Ryhtmbox has already retrieved the appropriate data.
Apparently there is a flag that is available for use with Rhythembox (--enable-tag-writing) but it's a compile time tag. As Rythmbox was installed out-the-box at install time with Fedora I have no idea at all wether that flag is switched on and Rhythembox FAILs or whether the option is off and how to switch it on.
Daft.
When I stick a CD in, off it goes to the magical interweb and fetches loads of meta data about the CD it has found in the drive... artist, album, track names year etc etc.
"Lovely" says I, assuming the work was done. If only it were that simple.
Turns out that while creating the mp3 files, from a CD that the software has found meta data for, the metadata is 'lost' and does not get written to the ID3 tags of the mp3 files. So I have to go back and edit them after ripping with EasyTag.
Now Easytag is a nice piece of software that makes writing the mp3 tags easy indeed, but that's not the point. I shouldn't have to use another program to fill in the tags when Ryhtmbox has already retrieved the appropriate data.
Apparently there is a flag that is available for use with Rhythembox (--enable-tag-writing) but it's a compile time tag. As Rythmbox was installed out-the-box at install time with Fedora I have no idea at all wether that flag is switched on and Rhythembox FAILs or whether the option is off and how to switch it on.
Daft.
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Thursday, 11 September 2008
It lives!
Really exciting mp3 encoder that is!
I have been trying to get Rhythmbox to rip CDs to mp3 for use in the car for a good few hours sans-fortune.
After numerous attempts to manage audio profiles through the gnome interface, everytime I try to encode to mp3 all I would get was .flac files. Could encode to Ogg fine, but doubt that would work with the portable devices Iwant the music for.
With some help from these guys:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=198761
I got to understand what should be happening... rythmbox uses gnome audio profiles to encode audio, those audio profiles refer to software on the machine to do the encoding.
In order to encode mp3 I needed to get hold of a library or two for gstreamer and make sure Lame was installed. I still couldn't persuade the system to play nicely for me.
I now had two sets of profiles, one under the /etc tree and one under the ~/ tree. Which does what? I assume the user profiles would override those define in the system tree.
Ultimately that is correct, though only proven once I followed some instructions here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=329106
That is now stored as a shell script in case it all goes south again!
Thanks due to this guy.
http://xxxdan.com/weblog/
Stuff that worked for me:
I have been trying to get Rhythmbox to rip CDs to mp3 for use in the car for a good few hours sans-fortune.
After numerous attempts to manage audio profiles through the gnome interface, everytime I try to encode to mp3 all I would get was .flac files. Could encode to Ogg fine, but doubt that would work with the portable devices Iwant the music for.
With some help from these guys:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=198761
I got to understand what should be happening... rythmbox uses gnome audio profiles to encode audio, those audio profiles refer to software on the machine to do the encoding.
In order to encode mp3 I needed to get hold of a library or two for gstreamer and make sure Lame was installed. I still couldn't persuade the system to play nicely for me.
I now had two sets of profiles, one under the /etc tree and one under the ~/ tree. Which does what? I assume the user profiles would override those define in the system tree.
Ultimately that is correct, though only proven once I followed some instructions here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=329106
That is now stored as a shell script in case it all goes south again!
Thanks due to this guy.
http://xxxdan.com/weblog/
Stuff that worked for me:
mkdir ~/.gconf/system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb
gconftool-2 -t bool --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb/active 1
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb/description "Encodes at 128Kb (variable bitrate) via LAME MP3 encoder"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb/extension "mp3"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb/name "LAME MP3 128Kb"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@128Kb/pipeline "audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc vbr=0 bitrate=128"
mkdir ~/.gconf/system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb
gconftool-2 -t bool --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb/active 1
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb/description "Encodes at 192Kb (variable bitrate) via LAME MP3 encoder"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb/extension "mp3"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb/name "LAME MP3 192Kb"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles/MP3@32@192Kb/pipeline "audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc vbr=0 bitrate=192"
gconftool-2 -t list --list-type string --set /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/global/profile_list "[MP3@32@192Kb,MP3@32@128Kb,voicelossy,voicelossless,cdlossy,cdlossless]"
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
IE (Internet Explorer)
In my enthusiasm to move full-time to Linux I missed a crucial element of my system: IE! 
Kinda useful to have for testing my sites (as I discovered recently when I used another machine to check the notoriously awkward in IE float properties of <img>!).
Yes, I know IE is a MS/Windows product
I've now got IEs4Linux running now on FC8 sans-problem.
Had a few issues to start with, first off IE7 crashed the installer. Untick the option for IE7 and it installed no problem.
Launch it from command line, and I get some version of IE seeming to appear.
Apparently IE4linux runs IE5 & 6.
Couple of issues though -
Seems to open a window with no address bar/menus/navigation buttons, is that normal?!
How do I specify which IE to launch?
No IE 7 (is 8 out yet?).
I need alternative way of using IE7+. Is the only option a windows box (kinda defeats the whole point of moving to Linux!) or is there some other option?
VM of some sort running windows?
Ideas on a postcard please!
Kinda useful to have for testing my sites (as I discovered recently when I used another machine to check the notoriously awkward in IE float properties of <img>!).
Yes, I know IE is a MS/Windows product
I've now got IEs4Linux running now on FC8 sans-problem.
Had a few issues to start with, first off IE7 crashed the installer. Untick the option for IE7 and it installed no problem.
Launch it from command line, and I get some version of IE seeming to appear.
Apparently IE4linux runs IE5 & 6.
Couple of issues though -
Seems to open a window with no address bar/menus/navigation buttons, is that normal?!
How do I specify which IE to launch?
No IE 7 (is 8 out yet?).
I need alternative way of using IE7+. Is the only option a windows box (kinda defeats the whole point of moving to Linux!) or is there some other option?
VM of some sort running windows?
Ideas on a postcard please!
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