Fedora 15 and Gnome 3

My main machine(s) are now all running Fedora 15, complete with the Gnome 3 desktop interface. After a few niggles to get things running (getting latest nvidia drivers for one machine, issues with NTFS formatted disk on another) I can happily say if feels quicker and more responsive than my Fedora 14 experience and that was pretty good.

Installed on Fedora 15 launch day (yesterday, 25 May 2011) I've not pushed things yet but a few things to note:

Gnome 3 is going to take some getting used to! Everything seems to be hidden away behing the (prettily animated) menu system. Ok, this keeps things tidy, but finding an application I want can be frustrating as it seems to involve more clicks with the mouse than in Gnome 2. I've not yet found a real way to customise menus either except for adding icons to favourites meaning they appear in a single list on the left after clicking on the 'Activities' button of the panel.

Talking of the panel (the bar at the top of the screen that houses the clock and open programs), it seems I no longer have an "add to panel" option. So I can't easily add the system monitor tool to the top of my desktop as I like to do.

Not having an option to minimise windows seems odd too. I don't think I used it much before, I tend to alt-tab between windows, but now I have noticed the minimise button has gone I miss it for some inexplicable reason!

Libre Office is now the default office suite in Fedora from Fedora 15 onwards. Libre Office was forked from Open Office when Oracle (new Java owners) announced they wouldn't be actively developing it further. In the quick half hour of playing with a spreadsheet that I've had with Libre Office so far, I have been impressed with it's speed and feel compared to Open Office it replaces.

However it does seem in the spreadsheet I had opened I am going to have to work out all those date calculations again as a lot of the formulae that worked in Open Office seem to be less than functional in Libre Office. I can only assume that some syntax has changed slightly.

Fedora 15 conclusion after a few hours
Fedora 15 has been on my main machine and in use for only a few hours and so far feelings are mixed. The move to Gnome 3 means a big change in the way you interact with your desktop, the jury is out IMO on whether this is for the better or worse.

Having said that, Microsoft took a bold step when they introduced the 'start' button menu system in Windows 95 and that seems to have worked out ok.

Speed and responsiveness of the machine feels much better than 14 and I didn't have any significant complaints there anyway. Fedora 15 certainly looks a lot better than earlier versions.

Helping other people...

Times they are a changing.

I've considered myself a Linux user for quite a number of years at a basic level, but since moving to a fulltime Linux setup on all my machines I've learnt so much more as a user of course but more still about the Linux world in general and sysadmin side of things.

Even to the point where I have become the goto person for Linux (Fedora) help for a few folks now. Now I am not only using Linux but helping support others coming into the Linux world and growing the community :)

Reinstalling X? :(

Seems the graphics driver thing has caused more than just the odd yum glitch...
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-February/msg01178.html

In short, because of the way ATI bundled the driver, I will probably have to reinstall the X server and stuff that goes with it. That doesn't sound like it will be a fun job at all. :(

Some of the update issues sorted...

Turns out switching on the rpmfusion-free-update repository sorted out a lot of the issues with doing a yum update.

Now left with ....
[root@yeti yum.repos.d]# yum update
Loaded plugins: dellsysidplugin2, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Update Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
--> Processing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 for package: iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586
---> Package libnetfilter_conntrack.i586 0:0.0.100-1.fc11 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
[root@yeti yum.repos.d]#

To sort out.

kmod-fglrx issues

Recently ran through the upgrade process of Fedora 10-11. Preupgrade went smoothly but no upgrade, so had a look at grub.conf and discovered I had to select the upgrade option there during boot. Duly done and complete, kind of.

A $yum update gives me a bunch of dependency issues, here are a couple....

Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686 is needed by package kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686-9.3-1.fc10.15.i686 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Straight away I can see a package is from fc10, so not a big suprise that causes issues. Turns out kmod-fglrx-2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686-9.3-1.fc10.15.i686 is from the ATI proprietry drivers I installed, so....

[root@yeti yum.repos.d]# yum remove kmod-fglrx
Loaded plugins: dellsysidplugin2, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Remove Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-fglrx.i686 0:9.3-1.fc10.14 set to be erased
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

...now at least I only have fc11 packages whining at me....

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: libass.so.3 is needed by package gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libass.so.3 is needed by package gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.11-4.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libnetfilter_conntrack.so.1 is needed by package iptstate-2.2.1-5.fc11.i586 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libxcb-keysyms.so.0 is needed by package vlc-core-1.0.0-0.11rc3.fc11.i586 (installed)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

The gstreamer and VLC packages are packages I want to keep for my video/mp3 collections so I need to work out why these are failing. Clearly (?) they have missing dependacies, but I need to know where to get those from and equally why can I not get them from the repos I have enabled? Dropped from Fedora 11 possibly? In which case I need to find out what replaces them in 11.

New Evolution build, still no mobile sync

My hunch anout Evolution recurring appointment bug being the problem seems incorrect. Opened Evolution today, it has been updated to 2.6.3 which fixes that bug.

Tested and indeed I can now create recurring appointments without a crash, but it hasn't sorted my mobile phone sync issues. Back to the drawing board :(

Battling with syncing

Time has come to try to figure out synchronising my mobile with my Fedora desktop calendar program.

For no reason other than it's the default in Fedora, I'm using Evolution as my local calendar program. I have a Nokia N85 and a Google calendar.

Somehow I want to get them all talking/synchronised with each other.

Using open sync and some other stuff (http://www.dafoot.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63:fedora-nokia-n85-sync&catid=39:linux&Itemid=66) I successfully got my N85 talking nicely to my FC11 64bit machine, even managed to do a sync of calendar. Once.

More recently I have been consistently getting an error on running the sync tool (see page linked above) rather than a successful sync. Started playing with google calendar, that has a similar but not identical error which makes me think something might have been confused (corrupted) with Evolution.

More so as when I tried to modify a new appointment in Evolution to be weekly with no end date Evolution crashed. And continued to every time I tried to modify that event to be repeating.

Which leads me to think that maybe the sync error is actually evolution getting confused by appoinments in my phone that repeat indefinately. Though that wouldn't fit with not being able to sync with Google unless the Evolution state is so messed up it can't transmit it's data because it got busted on that original (apparently successful) sync.

Seems this bug in Evolution with repeating appts is known and should be fixed in next minor release.... 2.26.3 (I'm on 2.26.2 now). So it's a matter of wait and see now to see if that new version sorts it once it hits the Fedora repositories.