Fedora Core 5 and KDE
So, I just installed Fedora Core 5 (final) the other day. Did it make me happy? No.
Why? Because I prefer KDE over GNOME. And KDE isn’t really “FC5 ready”.
There is no bluetooth support in KDE when using FC5. KDE bluetooth worked just fine in FC4, but now there are no binaries available, and I just didn’t manage to compile it myself (it requires Qt 4?).
Also, I would like to synchronize my mobile phone with Kontact. There’s a fantastic project going on called opensync, but it just isn’t finished yet, and there is no support for the KDE PIM - yet.
So why am I so disappointed? Because it all is working so well in Fedora Core 2. I have a Linux box at work running FC2 with multisync, kbluetoothd and the Opera 9 Preview 2 - stable as hell.
With FC5, GNOME 2.14 is able to put my Dell Latitude X1 into sleep - and wake it up again without any problems. In KDE I need to hack the ACPI scripts manually. In KDE even the windows key stopped working as a modifier key (put “add mod4 = Super_L” in /etc/X11/Xmodmap to fix it). I was so eager to get FC5 started that I didn’t have time to include all packages in the initial install, but when I logged in to GNOME and tried to add packages from the DVD it was not possible without a network connection… Jesus…
The Fedora Project is planning to remove KDE from core, which pretty much means that I have to remove Fedora from my laptop. What will be my next distro? Kubuntu? Nee, I don’t think Kubuntu is any more pro KDE than what a “KFedora” would be. openSUSE? Mandriva?
More on KDE vs GNOME here…
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:30:09
Hi Martin,
I feel exactly the same. I was thinking about installing FC5, but after reading your experiences, I’ll take a wait. I too prefere KDE for the desktop. I don’t care much for synchronisation though.
Perhaps you should provide Fedora with feedback on the situation. Here’s a cool blog that does just that: http://fitzsim.org/blog/
Esp the modifier key and acpi scripts would be useful i’d think.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:36:05
Just another comment: they plan to remove KDE _and_ Gnome from the core and put them on separate CD’s.
March 23rd, 2006 at 13:17:59
Had a look at Kubuntu again here - maybe Kubuntu is what I want after all? KDE Bluetooth and KLaptopDaemon sounds nice. Any Kubuntu on Dell X1 users out there? Does it work out of the box? (I’m prepared for some tweaking, just not rebuilding the entire distro to make bluetooth work in KDE…)
March 23rd, 2006 at 14:21:08
So, would you recommend FC5 for Gnome loving X1 owner? I have been using Ubuntu, but since Dapper is not coming out anytime soon, I’m thinking about installing Fedora 5. How much tweaking is required to get everything running smoothly, or is it ready out-of-the-box for Gnome?
The new buble theme looks nice and Network Manager alone is worth a reinstall.
March 23rd, 2006 at 14:34:04
For Gnome I guess FC5 is what you want for your X1. Suspend to ram worked out of the box, NetworkManager works after you pull down the ipw2200 firmware ver 2.4 and put it the right place, and I even managed to get aiglx work for the Gnome desktop following the instructions given here (I do not recommend using aiglx if you don’t really really want it - it slows down the system…)
You also need the 915resolution script to hack the BIOS.
But these are quite easy steps, you shold be done in 20 minutes. Good luck - feel free to report back problems or success
March 24th, 2006 at 08:50:28
Fedora installation was a piece of cake with minimal tweaking compared to previous attempt. Most of the time was spent installing yum repos and the missing multimedia support. I hope gstreamer is finally usable or it’s totem-xine time again. Fedora should have a tool like Easyubuntu, which automates all the usual post installation tasks.
http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/
March 24th, 2006 at 11:17:44
Well, I’m happy with SuSE 10.0 although suspend/resume does not work out of the box. Also switching between LAN and WLAN is a pain. Apart from that I’m happily using it. For KDE fans, SuSE is still great.
When 10.1 comes out I’ll try that and report on it.
March 25th, 2006 at 01:14:03
Great, my SanDisk 128MB Compact Flash card will no longer mount automatically. It worked in FC4… I tried to read all about
udevandhal, but just can’t understand it. When I plug the card, the KDE Storage Medium helper pops up and ask what I want to do - I choose “Open in new window”, but get “Permission denied”… Not very strange, ’cause there is no directory made in/media/like there used to be in FC4. The card shows up in Konqueror’s “media:/”, but no entry is made in/etc/fstab.dmesg:
pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 0
pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia0.0
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: SanDisk SDCFB-128, CFA DISK drive
ide1 at 0x100-0x107,0x10e on irq 3
hdc: max request size: 128KiB
hdc: 250880 sectors (128 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=980/8/32
hdc: hdc1
ide-cs: hdc: Vcc = 3.3, Vpp = 0.0
Well, mounting as root the old way works, but hey, I that isn’t very slick. It turns out that FC5 no longer use automatic updating of
fstab, and no longer use hotplug.So how the hell can I make udev mount my devices? Or, how can I give KDE Storage Media permission to mount CF cards? Geeee….
March 28th, 2006 at 14:21:16
Okey… the crisis is over. I installed Kubuntu 5.10 (by mistake - I should have tried Kubuntu 6.04 Dapper Drake Flight 5), but although I had bluetooth working out of the box, there were other issues. My usb pendrive wasn’t recognised correctly, and I was a bit uncomfortable with Debian. Don’t get me wrong, Debian is great, it’s just that I’m more familiar with the fedora way of doing things. I’m back with FC5 and pretty happy. From what I read on the kde-bluetooth-devel list,
kbluetoothdwill be out soon.Anyway, if you are using KDE on FC4, I wouldn’t rush for an update to FC5. But if you’re using Gnome, I would upgrade at once to get the newest, smoothest everything.
Kubuntu is probably great also, it’s just too much for me to learn how to tweak a Debian system.
April 9th, 2006 at 12:23:53
Have you tried http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/ repositories? I agree that FC5 and previous versions does not properly supports KDE, but I these repositories really improve the support on my running FC5 (and previous FC).
I’m testing bluetooth on my Dell D610 and I was able to transfer files, but using the gnome’s manager I think.
About the multisync, at least for me ‘extras’ yum repository does include it. I’m installing it and I’ll try.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:55:46
Luis: Great - tried the kde repository yesterday and seems to have quite a few nice packages - thanks!
About multisync (opensync), I don’t think it supports KDE PIM (Kontact) yet.
April 19th, 2006 at 01:11:20
On the card reader not automatically mounting: I had the same problem with a SanDisk 6-in-1 PCMCIA card reader which used to mount automatically in FC4. I banged my head against Google for a while, then realized it was because I didn’t have gnome-volume-manager running.
You might check both to see that you have gnome-volume-manager installed, and that you’ve started it at least once during your desktop session (ie it’s registered as part of your session so it starts up automatically every time). Then you can run gnome-volume-properties to control what events it does and doesn’t respond to (this should show up in your preferences menu as “Removable Drives and Media”).
I was frustrated and annoyed until I figured out what was wrong… Now I’m impressed with how smoothly and quickly it works.
April 19th, 2006 at 08:38:12
Thanks Bret! This actually does the trick. But I’m using KDE, and now when I insert the card, and wait a few seconds, the usual KDE card manager asks me what to do - I choose open in new window, and then BOTH Konqueror and Nautilus starts… And I don’t want nautilus. I guess there must be some corresponding application for KDE that I should run instead.
But hey - it works - thanks!
May 3rd, 2006 at 04:24:50
klaptop is in the system tray by default i believe. if you enable it (might need to restart) then it will put your laptop to sleep - at least it did mine - a dell latitude d600. works like a charm. i set it up to suspend to ram when i close the lid and it works great. the processor scaling works great too.
and the ipw2200 support is there - you just need to install the firmware…
May 16th, 2006 at 23:30:30
Installed FC5 but NetGear MA101 USB (Atmel chipset) fails to install! Hardware is recognized (/sbin/lsusb) but can not find right driver of procedure! Is there any idea or suggestions? The Atmel chipset driver source codes are for upto FC3 only!
May 20th, 2006 at 11:56:12
Bharat: Have you tried the ndiswrapper? Your card seems to be listed here.
June 18th, 2006 at 19:59:39
Madrivia seems to be VERY pro-KDE.
I think that the whole reason it started was that RedHat 9 (later became Fedora Core) pretty much had really cruddy KDE support and the Madrivia guys didn’t really like GNOME too much. So they made a clone of Red Hat, but instad of GNOME everything used KDE.
Mandrivia pretty much was made for people like you.
June 24th, 2006 at 09:20:33
Ahmer: Thanks for the suggestion. At the moment I’m pretty happy with my FC5 installation - the kde repository suggested by Luis works great. But if the Fedora project is moving away from KDE, I’m definately giong to try Mandriva.
July 10th, 2006 at 02:22:30
Oooo, Mandrivia..
I’d be careful of them - it’s screwed up my hard disk not too long ago.
Messed around with the heads/cylinders/sectors and made my hard disk 10G larger, making me loose one partition.
Never had any problem like that with FC/RH.. I’ll have to try Suse out soon - as they’ve said they’re continuing with both KDE and Gnome…
July 12th, 2006 at 12:48:59
Martin,
I’ll be picking up a Dell D600 this weekend, so I started researching ahead of time, to mentally prepare myself for anything I may encounter. Thank you for your site, as it came in useful (and to all the other replies). I’ll be installing FC5 and ONLY KDE, no Gnome components at all (minus the limited FC Gnome/GTK required apps), and I’ll keep in touch to let you know how everything is working out. From what I gather, the biggest issue is the ACPI/Suspend, but that’s a KDE issue, not an FC5 issue. If you want to contact me as well feel free to ping me at cyberspy [at] fedoraproject [dot] org or cyberspy [at] fedora [dot] redhat [dot] com
July 12th, 2006 at 12:55:19
CyberSpy: Great! Looking forward to get some more KDE oriented stuff here.
September 3rd, 2006 at 13:17:23
Opensuse 10.1, works out the box on the X1 (minus modem and SD slot). Don’t forget to select direct rendering on during installation.
-mt