FEDORA 12 LXDE SPIN

After reading about super effecient lxde and having xfce earlier, I was glad that fedora came up with lxde spin. After some trial and errors and lot of googling here is my personal installation guide for my dell xps 1210

-Download and install lxde spin for fedora 12. I used the 64bit spin on my dell xps 1210

-setup sudo
login as root and execute following
echo 'loginname ALL=(ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

-disabled selinux. Though this provides great security, sometimes it is very irritating for home use.
sudo vi /etc/selinux/config
Change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=disabled

-setup rpmfusion and fastestmirror
sudo rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
run 'sudo yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror'

-install apps that i like to use :-)
sudo yum install firefox mplayer gecko-mediaplayer mencoder gnome-mplayer java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin pidgin audacious audacious-plugins-freeworld* gpicview brasero

-Firefox tweaks
Installed following add-ons
firebug
firecookie
codeburner for firebug
colorzilla
downloadhelper
fastdial
http resource test
jsview
live http headers
measureit
modify headers
refcontrol
screengrab
Also set following params in about:config for better performace
network.dn.disableIPv6=true
network.http.pipelining=true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests=8
network.http.pipelining.ssl=true
network.http.proxy.pipelining=true
ui.submenuDelay=0
nglayout.initialpaint.delay=0

-install flash plugin
For 32 bit sudo yum install flash-plugin should do it, but since I have 64 bit dual core, I downloaded http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.42.34.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz and installed the plugin manually.
sudo tar -zxvf libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz -C /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
[Well, make sure you get the latest version of the flash from this page http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html]

-install chromium instead of googe chrome
Download following rpm from http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F12/
v8-2.0.0-1.20091118svn3334.fc12.x86_64.rpm
chromium-4.0.252.0-0.1.20091119svn32498.fc12.x86_64.rpm

sudo yum install minizip nss-mdns
sudo rpm -ivh v8-2.0.0-1.20091118svn3334.fc12.x86_64.rpm chromium-4.0.252.0-0.1.20091119svn32498.fc12.x86_64.rpm

-install opera - seriosly page loads are faster than firefox
sudo yum install qt3
Download opera-10.10.gcc4.shared.qt3.x86_64.rpm from http://www.opera.com/download/
sudo rpm -ivh opera-10.10.gcc4.shared.qt3.x86_64.rpm

-install microsfot fonts.
Download the rpm created by at Mauriat. Many thanks to Mauriat Miranda for the rpm and notes at http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f12.html
run 'sudo rpm -ivh msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm'

-remove unwanted apps
run 'sudo yum remove midori gxine lxmusic xmms2 abiword iok osmo'
I also removed lot of unwanted font packages. eg. I dont read arabic, chinese, japanese and many more so why install the fonts.
run 'package-cleanup --leaves' and uninstall the listed packages
run 'sudo yum update' to update all the installed packages.
Once done reboot system

-webcam, worked out of the box with cheese application
sudo yum install cheese


-Install skype
sudo gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 0xD66B746E
sudo gpg -a -o /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-skype --export 0xD66B746E
Add following to /etc/yum.repos.d/skype.repo and then call yum installed skype
[skype]
name=Skype Repository
baseurl=http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/fedora/updates/i586/
#gpgkey=http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/rpm-public-key.asc
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-skype
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

Unfortunatly I found that this is the old version of skype. So I downloaded the new version from http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-fc10 and manually installed it
sudo rpm -Uvh skype-2.1.0.47-fc10.i586.rpm
Good thing with using the repo first was that the dependencies got installed and I need not manually hunt for those rpm packages.
Unfortunatly again, the new skype had issues with my webcam so i reverted back to the repo based skype version.

-Install Virtual box. I have win xp virtual machine in VirtualBox which I used for windows specific use eg. office apps.
Visit virtualbox site and check instructions for repo installation. But before that make sure you have following installed.
sudo yum install dkms gcc kernel-headers

-issue with touch pad. Scrolling and clicks did not work out of the box. I enabled click using following
sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-synaptics
cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/10-synaptics.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/
vi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi
Remove the comments around the match section in the file.
Either reboot or run following to see if touchpad click works
synclient TapButton1=1
Now for vertical scroll To verify if it's on or off, do the following
synclient -l | grep -i vertedge
If it reports VertEdgeScroll = 0, try to manually enable it
synclient VertEdgeScroll=1
If above works then add following merge line in /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi
<merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge>
Many thanks to Walter Francis for his post http://fedorasolved.org/Members/khaytsus/configuring-synaptics-using-hal/?searchterm=None

-issue with keyring. When I setup my wireless, keyring popup asked me for password and I set up one. Then on every reboot if promted me to enter it which was annoying. So went and deleted /home/bhupendra/.gnome2/keyrings/default.keyring. Next time I logged back in, left keyring password emty and chose unprotected keyring settings.

-remove wallpaper, modify slim background
Slim's login screen wallpaper is background.jpg in /usr/share/slim/themes/default. I removed the symlink and dropped my own plain wallpaper.
Next to remove wallpaper on desktop, I right clicked desktop, click desktop settings and unchecked wallpaper. Instead set background color to #1B144D which was close to my login screen background image.
I wanted to remove use of wallpaper to minimize system resource use.

-disable plymouth boot screen
The plymouth graphical boot in fedora is nice but I wanted to remove it and see the conole log.
Removed rhgb quite from /boot/grub/grub.conf to achive this.
If you just want to try out other plymouth theme eg. solar (I was using this for a long time even in F11)
sudo yum install plymouth-theme-solar
plymouth-set-default-theme solar
/usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd

-easy vpnc setup
I need to use cisco vpn to connect to office network. Originally I was using vpnc package and configured the setup in /etc/vpnc/default.conf. But F12 comes with nice gui setup via network manager. Make sure you have following packages for cisco
sudo yum install NetworkManager-vpnc vpnc

-bluetooth
Since lxde does not have it's own bluetooth manager, I installed bluez and hoped it would work. It did work but few gnome specific packages were also installed. Atleast I was able to see my nokia n80's bluetooth.

-minor issue with gmixer and volume control buttons on laptop
Gmixer is good but by default it sets control buttons to my mic instead of speaker. I have to manually select HDA intel alsa mixer in the selection and then change volume

-connecting to tv
Miss the gnome system-config-monitor. Using monitor settings in lxde i.e lxrandr I could only change screen resolution. I wanted to replicate my laptop screen to tv when connected with svideo and came up with following scripts.
#tvconnect
xrandr --auto --output LVDS1 --mode 800x600
xrandr --auto --output TV1 --mode 800x600 --same-as LVDS1

#tvdisconnect
xrandr --output TV1 --off
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1280x800

I had to change the resolution from 1280x800 to 800x600 since that was the correct fit for my big non hd toshiba tv.

With all of the above changes, my cpu usage has seldom crossed 20% and memory usage was always under 500mb under normal use. Think my F12 lxde xps 1210 is faster than better high end laptops running bloted win* :-)