Fedora, quickly
This page provides tips on getting things working quickly in Fedora (fedoraproject.org). The Quick Commands should get things working, but it's worth while reading the explanations so that you're aware of what you're doing. It should be obvious if you need to run these commands as root or not; installing packages for example.
The information on this page has been tested with Fedora 13. It may or may not work with older and newer versions of Fedora. This information is checked and updated (if necessary) as soon as possible after every Fedora release.
How do I play multimedia files? (DVDs etc.)
How do I rip DVDs?
How do I enable spell-checking in Firefox?
How do I install flash in Firefox?
How do I install flash in Firefox on my 64-bit PC?
How do I enable auto-login?
How do I play multimedia files? (DVDs etc.)
VLC media player can play many multimedia formats including DVDs (with libdvdcss). When installed, VLC can be found under "Applications, Sound & Video, VLC media player". To play a DVD, choose "Media, Open Disc, Play". You can set VLC as the default player by right-clicking a media file such as a .mp4 and choosing "Properties, Open With, VLC media player"; this will accociate all other files with the same file extension to open with VLC by default.
Quick command
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 http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm && yum update --skip-broken && yum install libdvdcss vlc
Explanation
Two extra repositories, RPMFusion and Livna, are needed for DVD (and other) multimedia playback. Because Fedora ships with only free and non-paintent software, these software packages are not available in the main Fedora repository. The Livna repository only contains one package; libdvdcss, which RPMFusion are warey of hosting due to leagal concerns.
The first part of the command installs these repositories. A system upgrade is then performed as the RPMFusion repositories need to be upgraded to the latest version before proceeding; a --skip-broken is passed in case there are other packages waiting that cannot be installed at this time. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to import GPG keys the first time you install a package from the repositories; answer "y" each time. The final part will install the libdvdcss package (needed for most commercial DVD playback) and VLC player; a very popular multimedia player. VLC can adjust the audio/video syncronisation with the J and K keys as well as skip through audio and video with Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys (provides different sized jumps) while pressing Left or Right. A reboot is not required.
How do I rip DVDs?
You can use vobcopy to rip a DVD to your hard drive, but I've always had better success with dvdbackup; a cousin of vobcopy.
Quick command
yum install gcc libdvdread-devel && wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dvdbackup/dvdbackup-0.4.1.tar.gz && tar -xf dvdbackup-0.4.1.tar.gz && cd dvdbackup-0.4.1 && ./configure && make && make install
cd ~/Videos && dvdbackup -M
Explanation
The first command downloads and installs necessary software to run dvdbackup. The final command is what you would run for each DVD backup. This will dump the contents of the DVD to your hard drive; ready to watch, or transcode.
How do I enable spell-checking in Firefox?
Even though "Check my spelling as I type" may be selected in Firefox, you need to install a dictionary for it to work.
Quick command
yum insall hunspell-en
Explanation
This will install the English dictionary. For a full list of available dictionaries, run "yum search hunspell- | grep dict".
How do I install flash in Firefox?
Visit get.adobe.com/flashplayer/thankyou/?installer=Flash_Player_10.1_for_Linux_(YUM) which will prompt you to download and install the Adobe repository which hosts the flash software.
yum install flash-plugin
Your flash player will then be kept up-to-date with your software updates. Restart every web-browser session.
How do I install flash in Firefox on my 64-bit PC?
Adobe have stopped development of the 64-bit Linux Flash Plugin, leaving security holes unpatched. It is not recommended to use it; instead, install the 32-bit version by following the instructions below. It will work on a 64-bit operating system by using nspluginwrapper.
Quick command
yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 libcurl.i686 -x adobereader*
adobereader* (approx 50MB) must be excluded or it will try and install itself with Flash (only on 64-bit); -1 for Adobe. Approximately 60 i686 (32-bit) packages need to be installed for Flash to work on 64-bit. Restart every web-browser session. See fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash for further information.
How do I enable auto-login?
For someone with an encrypted hard drive, you may not see the point to put in two passwords before you are logged in. To enable auto-login, substitude "username" with your username and run the following command.
sed -i '/daemon/ a\TimedLoginEnable=true\nTimedLogin=username' /etc/gdm/custom.conf
This will add two lines to your /etc/gdm/custom.conf file under "[daemon]"; "TimedLoginEnable=true" and "TimedLogin=username".
Note that your GNOME keyring will not be unlocked automatically, so you will be prompted to enter your password once you have logged in if your computer needs to connect to any security enabled wireless networks for example.
Further Study
The Unofficial Fedora FAQ
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