Open Source Software vs. Commercial Software:
Migration from Windows to Linux
An IT Professional's Testimonial
Miscellaneous Additional (Optional) Settings / Software
Below is a list of miscellaneous settings that I put into place. They are somewhat
specific, but I decided to document them here since they all involved some setup
on top of the default installation of Fedora.
Set Key Shortcut for Gnome System Monitor
I did this incase an application freezes and/or I can't get to the Gnome System
Monitor in order to end or kill the right process. You can set a shortcut key
to open Gnome System Monitor directly. In this example, I chose Control+Shift+Escape.
Open gconf editor (Applications / System Tools / Configuration Editor), and
navigate to: /apps/metacity/global_keybindings. Edit “run_command_9”
(or any available one), and put in “<control><shift>Escape”
(without the quotes). Then navigate to /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands, and
edit “command_9”, and put in “gnome-system-monitor”
(without the quotes). Now, by simply pressing Control+Shift+Escape, you can
bring up the Gnome System Monitor.
Extra touchpad functionality (laptops only)
Install the “gsynaptics” package, if the touchpad is using the synaptics
driver (most do). On Fedora 10, you also have to do this to allow the program
to run:
in the file
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-synaptics.fdi, just after the line:
<match key="info.capabilities"
contains="input.touchpad">
A restart of hald and X (or a reboot) is needed after the change
Then you can modify all sorts of touchpad options by going to System / Preferences
/ Hardware / Touchpad. It also gives you the ability to disable the touchpad
while typing and other advanced options.
Configuring Firewire Video (bug in Fedora 7-10)
I came across a bug where any user that is not root, cannot access the device
to capture firewire video. This is documented at: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=441073.
The workaround is to set user permissions on /dev/fw0 like so:
- setfacl -m u:username:rw
/dev/fw0
Where you would put in your username. Also had to create a symlink for Kino
(used for doing video capturing via firewire):
- ln -s /dev/fw0 /dev/raw1394
Add both of these commands to /etc/rc.d/rc.local so they are executed on startup.
Note: After I published this, it has been fixed with the updated
package "raw1394". Upgrade this package and you do not need the fix
above.
Printer Sharing
- Sharing the printer via Samba: Enable Samba, and comment out the line in
/etc/samba/smb.conf, under the “printers” section: “allow
guest = yes;”. This will anonymous printing from Windows computers.
- Better option for Linux to Linux printing is the built-in “IPP –
Internet Printing” in CUPS. To do this, Open the Cups Admin panel on
the print server (host with the printer installed). Go to Server / Settings.
Enable the following settings:
1.Publish shared printers connected to this system.
2.Allow printing from the Internet
3.Allow users to cancel any job (not just their own)
On the client computers, open the Cups Admin panel and all printers should
be automatically detected from the host machine. That's it!
Voodoo5 Optimization
I found that by default, full support for my Voodoo5 5500 AGP card was not totally
working out of the box. So, I had to do the following to get it up to its full
potential:
- Install Glide3 package (NOT Glide3-libGL package – this is only for
Voodoo 1 & 2 cards). This adds glide support for the Voodoo cards only.
- Inspect /var/log/Xorg.log.0 and check for any “EE” lines that
contain errors. Had to do the following to get DRI enabled for the Voodoo5
card (FC10 is set for X to dynamically configure itself without a xorg.conf
file. It was using color depth of 32 which is too high for the Voodoo DRI
access to the card... making it very slow):
- Download and install "system-config-display" rpm
- Run system-config-display and select “Thousands of colors”.
This creates /etc/X11/xorg.conf and enabled DRI after X was restarted.
- Check OpenGL by running: glxinfo. Should see these lines:
- direct rendering: Yes
- OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Voodoo4 20061113 x86/MMX/SSE
- If you see anything related to software rendering, this means Mesa is
not able to render with hardware and is using software (not good).
HP LaserJet 1000 Installation
This was a little more challenging. I figured that this might work right out
of the box, but I found that this model of printer is a little strange. To get
it working, do this:
- Download: http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
- Untar with "tar xzvf foo2zjs.tar.gz"
- run “make”
- run “./getweb 1000”
- run “make install”
- run “make install-hotplug”
- Switch printer off and back on. Run the tool “config-printer-setup”
or “System / Administration / Printing” in Gnome. After you install
it, it should work like magic!
Microsoft Sidewinder Joysticks, Ensoniq AudioPCI gameport
- Check /proc/asound/card0/audiopci and make sure “Joystick enable:
on” is shown. If not, Edit /etc/modprobe.conf and make sure the entry
for the sound card is:
options snd-ens1371 joystick_port=1
- Reboot for the module to be inserted correctly (you could do a "rmmod"
and then "modprobe", but it's easier to reboot. Then do “modprobe
joydev” and “modprobe sidewinder”. You should see entries
in /var/log/messages finding the sidewinder joysticks. If so, add the above
modprobe entries to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file so they will be inserted at
boot time.
Next Section : Additional Options and Settings:
nVidia Video Card
Previous Section: Nintendo Wii Video Playback
Table of Contents |
- 1. Preface, People Are Habitual, A Little History
- 2. A Little Politics
- 2A. Open or Closed, Software
Editions, Market Usage
- 2B. Monopoly Game, Support Nightmares,
Competition, Piracy, Licensing, Activation, Developer Pool
- 2C. Web Browser Wars, Web Application
Wars
- 2D. Windows Failures, Windows
Jokes, Windows Problems, Behind Closed Doors, Windows Mutation to
Linux
- 3. Maintenance Headache of Windows
- 4. A Matter of Cost?
- 5. How About Standards?
- 6. Conclusion, Goodbye Microsoft
- 7. Migration Experiment
- System Settings / Tweaking
- Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and
Sunbird
- OpenOffice Office Suite (Microsoft
Office replacement), Dia (Microsoft Visio replacement), Gnome Planner
(Microsoft Project replacement)
- WINE (the Windows Emulator)
- Rsync (File Synchronization / Replication
Utility)
- CUPS PDF Writer (Adobe Acrobat
Writer replacement), PDFEdit (Adobe Acrobat Standard / Professional
replacement)
- FontMatrix, the X11 Window System
Font Manager (Adobe Type Manager, Font Navigator, Suitcase replacement)
- Kino and Cinelerra, the Video
Capturing / Editing tools (Adobe Premier replacement)
- Sun VirtualBox (VMWare Player,
VMWare Workstation, Microsoft VirtualPC replacement)
- Scribus (Adobe Pagemaker, Adobe InDesign
replacement)
- Gens (Sega Genesis Emulator)
- Miscellaneous Additional (Optional)
Settings / Software
- Nvidia Video Card 3D Support
- CDEmu (Mounting Virtual CDs, DVDs)
- Troubleshooting Tips
- 8. Additional Migration Considerations
|
|