Fedora 15 XFCE Spin

After using Xubuntu for a while, I noticed some hardware issues with my wireless keyboard and mouse. Mostly, it would not recognize keystrokes and mouse clicks. Annyoing as this was, I decided to jump to another distribution, thinking it was a (X)ubuntu problem. As Fedora 15 just had released, and I have not had a go at it since 8, I figured it was probably the best bet (also because I could not really connect to my wireless network using Arch Linux, which was my number 1 choice).

Hardware issues (?)

After an install, I went ahead with the usual procedure of setting up my WLAN USB dongle. What I usually have to do is to blacklist some modules so that the correct one are used. However, for some reason or another, Fedora is the other way around. My USB dongle does not work at all when I blacklist the wrong modules, but works perfectly with them loaded. All in all strange, but it didn’t take me long to figure out.

What was a bit more annoying was that I had to add a 3rd party repository for the nVidia proprietary driver. After some Googling and reading, I figured this was a trusted repository, but still was not the perfect solution for me. However, Fedora are one of the more “fundamental” distributions, where focus on using FOSS alternatives are much stronger and more dominant than in other distributions. I also figured out that my keyboard / mouse problems were more of an XFCE problem than an (X)ubuntu problem, as they persisted in Fedora. It might also be a problem with my hardware, as it comes and goes, and even changing batteries does not help at all.

Default desktop

Unlike Xubuntu, the default desktop of Fedora doesn’t look good at all in my eyes. So I went ahead, and tried making changes, only to hit a wall at each theme I tried from xfce-look.org.

Not pretty

What always happened was that the new theme was installed OK, but some applications would not follow the system theme for some reason. When I finally figured it most likely was a GTK problem, and checked the versions of the applications, I figured I would have to start finding alternative software. The problem was that Fedora 15 XFCE ships with allot of GNOME software as standard, and all of these use GTK3, while XFCE4 is still on GTK2.

Customizing the desktop

So, when my theme troubles were figured out and to some degree solved (there are 2 applications I can’t replace; networkmanager and PackageKit), I started customizing my desktop. I ended up with using my standard icon theme, Aw0ken Icon Theme by alecive, and Greybird theme by The Shimmer Project (yes, it is the default Xubuntu theme, and yes, I like it). Unfortunately, the version I downloaded of the Greybird theme does not include GTK3 theme, however, it supposedly do include this now.

Customized desktop

PackageKit

As Fedora has started using the official GNOME Package manager GUI, PackageKit, this is the default for the XFCE spin as well. Of course, most people well versed in Fedora use the command line tool, yum, however I am still not used to Fedora package naming scheme, so I still need a GUI for finding and install packages. Unfortunately, PackageKit is probably one of the slowest package managers I have ever used. Additionally, it has some strange quirks, as being unable to find any packages after first launch, cause the repositories are not refreshed. This also happens later on, so if you at first don’t succeed, try refreshing repositories and search again.

PackageKit

Another thing I reacted to was the fact that updating packages do not need root access. This at first scared me, as I was thinking “WTF, this has full access to my filesystem, and I don’t have to enter a password before it makes changes to it?”. But after reading some on it, I saw that this was actually a compromise from Fedora 14, where you could install ANY signed package WITHOUT root access! I am not sure if I like the way this is heading, but with the rate of upgrades being released in Fedora, it is sure nice to not having to type in my password each time I update my computer.

My impressions

After using Fedora for a few weeks, I am actually very impressed with it. It is easy to use, easy to configure and stable. However, there are some annoyances, like the several GNOME applications needing to be replaced from a default install, and the freakishly slow GUI for the package manager. Also, for some reason Firefox defaults to using nautilus as a file manager, instead of Thunar. This is annyoing when you don’t have a GTK3 capable theme, as nautilus 3.0.1 is installed by default. However, if you can look pass these few annoyances, Fedora is definitely a keeper.