Documentation Desktop Beat

Fedora Desktop

This section details changes that affect Fedora graphical desktop users.

GNOME

This release features GNOME 2.24

.
 

The GNOME splash screen has been disabled upstream intentionally. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command:

 gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-session/options/show_splash_screen --type bool true

The lock screen dialog theme is not connected to the selected screensaver in this release. To enable it, use gconf-editor or the following command:

 gconftool-2 --set  --type string /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_dialog_theme  "system"

Blinking cursors are enabled by default in this release, and are centrally managed via a gconf setting. To turn it off, run the following command:

  gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blink false

Gvfs

GNOME 2.22 features the new Gvfs, a userspace virtual filesystem with backends for sftp, ftp, dav, smb, obexftp, and others. The Gvfs system is the replacement/successor of gnome-vfs.

Gvfs consists of two parts:

• GIO, which is a new shared library that is part of GLib and provides the API for gvfs
• Gvfs itself, a package that contains backends for the various file system types and protocols

The Gvfs system runs a single master daemon, gvfsd, that keeps track of the current gvfs mounts. Most mounts are run in a separate daemon process. Clients talk to the mounts with a combination of DBus calls (on the session bus and using peer-to-peer DBus) and a custom protocol for file contents.

A few filesystem types previously supported by gnome-vfs may not be yet supported by gvfs. Work continues to provide completed solutions for all these types.

Gvfs backends have been split to separate packages in Fedora 10. Although they're included in standard set of packages when doing clean Fedora installation, users upgrading from Fedora 9 will experience missing backends. We suggest to install these packages manually:

su -c "yum install gvfs-archive gvfs-gphoto2 gvfs-obexftp gvfs-smb"

GNOME Display Manager

The GNOME Display Manager (gdm) has been updated to the latest upstream code, which is a complete rewrite driven by Fedora developers. !PolicyKit can be used to control shutdown and reboot. The configuration tool gdmsetup is missing currently, and set to be replaced. For configuration changes, refer

http://live.gnome.org/GDM/2.22/Configuration

New features available on the login screen include:

• power management and monitoring on the login screen, so the laptop hibernates or shuts down when the battery gets low
• smarter user list
• common default background between the login window and the desktop session, with no intermediate flicker

For more information on this feature:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NewGdm

Other notes:

• ~/.Xclients and ~/.xsession are no longer read automatically at login time. If you use either of these files, install the xorg-x11-xinit-session package.
• Due to a bug introduced at the end of the development cycle (bug 445631 ), users will be unable to select their language the first time the login screen appears. Users should log in once, and then logout again to get language selection. Unfortunately, this bug also effects the LiveCD.
• The shipped version of GDM does not support old style theme formats, and is considerably plainer than the version shipped in Fedora 8. A priority for Fedora 10 will be greeter aesthetics.

KDE

This release features KDE 4.2.2

. As the kdepim and kdevelop packages are not part of KDE 4.0 and kdewebdev is only partially available (no Quanta) in KDE 4.0, the KDE 3.5.9 versions of those packages are shipped.
 

KDE 4.0 features upgrades to core components such as the port to Qt 4. It also introduces a number of brand new frameworks such as the Phonon, a multimedia API; Solid, a hardware integration framework; Plasma, a re-written desktop and panel with many new concepts; integrated desktop search; compositing as a feature of KWin; and a brand new visual style called Oxygen. KDE 4.0.3 is a bugfix release from the KDE 4.0 release series.

Fedora 9 does not include the legacy KDE 3 Desktop. It does include a compatibility KDE 3 Development Platform, which can be used to build and run KDE 3 applications within KDE 4 or any other desktop environment. Refer to the Backwards Compatibility section for more details about what is included.

Since knetworkmanager does not work with the version of NetworkManager available in this release, the KDE Live images use nm-applet from NetworkManager-gnome as a replacement. The gnome-keyring-daemon facility saves passwords for these encryption technologies. (The dummy knetworkmanager package from Fedora 8 that only called nm-applet is no longer used.)

As the native KWin window manager now optionally supports compositing and desktop effects, the KDE Live images no longer include Compiz/Beryl. The KWin compositing/effects mode is disabled by default, but can be enabled in systemsettings. Compiz (with KDE 4 integration) is available from the repository by installing the compiz-kde package.

Workspace Changes

• Plasma replaces the old Kicker and KDesktop. Plasma manages both the panel and the desktop, and it is now possible to place the same Plasma applets (plasmoids) on both the panel and the desktop if the applet supports the size restrictions imposed by the panel.
• The old KDE Control Center (KControl) has been replaced by System Settings (systemsettings).
• The KDM login manager uses a new theme format. Therefore, KDM themes written for KDE 3 do not work with the KDM in KDE 4. KDM now includes support for theme configuration, thus the external kdmtheme tool is no longer needed.

All the above applications can be found in the kdebase-workspace package.

Package and Application Changes

• The packages qt, kdelibs, and kdebase now represent the KDE 4 version, obsoleting the qt4, kdelibs4, and kdebase4 packages in previous releases of Fedora.
• The Qt/KDE 3 versions have been renamed qt3, kdelibs3, and kdebase3. Fedora 9 only includes parts of kdebase3. Refer to the Backwards Compatibility section for details.
• Upstream KDE has split the kdebase module into three modules: kdebase-runtime, kdebase (sometimes called kdebase-apps to distinguish it from the old monolithic kdebase), and kdebase-workspace. This split is reflected in the Fedora packages.
• Fedora 9 adds a kdegames3 package containing the games not yet ported to KDE 4.
• Dolphin, which is part of kdebase, replaces d3lphin.
• The kdebase-workspace package now includes support for KDM theme configuration, and therefore obsoletes kdmtheme.
• Okular replaces KPDF, KGhostView, and KFax in kdegraphics.
• The package kaider replaces KBabel, which used to be part of kdesdk.
• The okteta package replaces KHexEdit, which used to be part of kdeutils.
• The packages kalgebra and marble are now part of kdeedu.
• The ksudoku package is now part of kdegames.
• The package gwenview is now part of kdegraphics.
• The kiconedit and kcoloredit packages, which used to be part of kdegraphics, are now separate packages.
• The package kmid, which used to be part of kdemultimedia, is now a separate package.
• The Fedora KDE team has decided to drop the -extras subpackages, which contained deprecated or unstable applications, because those applications have been either fixed or dropped in KDE 4.
• The package kdeadmin-kpackage has been split out of kdeadmin because KPackage now depends on smart.
• KDE 4 dropped the kdeaddons module. Therefore, there is no kdeaddons package in Fedora 9. The Atlantik Designer, for use with kdegames3, is still available as kdeaddons-atlantikdesigner. The ksig application and the konq-plugins Konqueror plugins are now their own packages, and extragear-plasma replaces the Kicker addons.

PackageKit

PackageKit is the new, default distribution-neutral package management framework and frontend. Refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageKit for further details.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth feature in Fedora 9 (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BluetoothFedora9) has several enhancements specific to this release. The future generations of this feature are covered with greater detail at:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureBluetooth

File sending to a Bluetooth device is now handled with the bluetooth-sendto program from the bluez-gnome package, which replaces gnome-obex-send. Send a file in Nautilus from the Send to... function in the right-click context menu.

Pulling files from a Bluetooth device is now included in gnome-user-share, which has ObexFTP and ObexPush support built-in. Share files via System > Preferences > Internet and Network > Personal File Sharing > Share Public files over Bluetooth (ObexFTP support), or pull files using ObexPush with Personal File Sharing > Receive files in Downloads folter over Bluetooth.

Files on the remote Bluetooth device can be viewed directly in Nautilus through GVFS, which supports Bluetooth devices. Synchronizing a Bluetooth device with a personal information manager (PIM) device is done using gnome-pilot

Browsing of Bluetooth devices is done via the right-click context menu from the Bluetooth icon on the desktop panel.

XULRunner

Applications that require the Gecko engine have had to depend on the entirety of Firefox. XULRunner is the Mozilla effort to split the browser engine for applications that require only that functionality, and no user interface parts. This split provides more API/ABI stability and a cleaner build environment for applications using Gecko. Many of the applications in Fedora that previously used Gecko now are built against XULRunner.

For a current status, visit [1] . To help with development, visit [2] .

For full upstream documentation, refer to [3] .

Web Browsers

This release of Fedora includes version 3.0 (beta 5) of the popular Firefox web browser. Refer to http://firefox.com/ for more information about Firefox. The nspluginwrapper package is included by default even on 32-bit systems since it separates the plug-ins to run in their own address space, which increases security and reliability of the browser.

For information about Firefox in Fedora, refer to this feature page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Firefox3

NSpluginwrapper

nspluginwrapper is now installed by default, which makes web browser plug-ins run in a separate memory address. This increases browser stability, as plug-in crashes will not affect the web browser itself. As well, this increases security, as Fedora 9 has optional SELinux policies to sandbox plug-ins, to decrease the impact of security issues.

Enabling Flash Plugin

Fedora includes swfdec and gnash, which are free and open source implementations of Flash. We encourage you to try either of them before seeking out Adobe's proprietary Flash Player plug-in software. The Adobe Flash Player plug-in uses a legacy sound framework that does not work correctly without additional support. Run the following command to enable this support:

su -c "yum install libflashsupport"

Users of Fedora x86_64 must install the nspluginwrapper.i386 package to enable the 32-bit Adobe Flash Player plug-in in Firefox, and the libflashsupport.i386 package to enable sound from the plug-in.

• Install the nspluginwrapper.i386, nspluginwrapper.x86_64, and libflashsupport.i386 packages:

su -c "yum install nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} libflashsupport.i386"

• Install flash-plugin as shown above after nspluginwrapper.i386 is installed.
• Run mozilla-plugin-config to register the flash plugin:

su -c "mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v"

• Close all Firefox windows, and then relaunch Firefox.
• Type about:plugins in the URL bar to ensure the plugin is loaded.

Mail Clients

The mail-notification package has been split. The Evolution plug-in is now in a separate package, mail-notification-evolution-plugin. When the mail-notification package is updated, this plug-in is added automatically.

Fedora 9 includes Mozilla Thunderbird version 2.0, which has numerous performance improvements, folder viewing enhancements, and enhanced mail notification support. For further details, refer to the Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 release notes:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/2.0.0.0/releasenotes/

Disabling PC Speaker

PC speaker is enabled by default in Fedora. If you do not prefer this, there are two ways to circumvent the sounds:

• Reduce its volume to a acceptable level or completely mute the PC speaker in alsamixer with the setting for PC Speak.

• Disable the PC speaker system wide by running the following commands in a console.

su -
modprobe -r pcspkr
echo "install pcspkr :" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

International Clock Applet

The new clock applet in the GNOME panel has expanded to support additional international timezones in the display, as well as weather information for each configured timezone displayed. This work, which involved merging intlclock with the GNOME clock applet, provides all the functionality of system-config-date and the weather applet. Additional features include: users can choose arbtirary locations instead of principal timezones; UI enhancements for new and old functions; and full weather information shown in a tooltip.

Read more about this feature:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureClockApplet

Dictionaries Consolidated

There is a new default spell checking back-end, hunspell, for both the GNOME and KDE desktops, as well as applications such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and other XULRunner-based applications. This common back-end includes a set of shared, multi-lingual dictionaries for use with hunspell. This feature uses a single set of common dictionaries regardless of the application, which gives consistent suggestions for misspelled words and uses less diskspace by eliminating duplicate dictionaries.

Details on this effort are here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureDictionary

Pilot Link

The pilot-link package has been updated to use PackageKit and HAL for setting sync file permissions. For more information, refer to the pilot-link note .

Compiz

Fedora 9 ships with Compiz 0.7.2, which improves multi-display support, adds KDE 4 support, adds a configurable middle and right-click button, and mouse wheel actions for GTK Window Decorator. Compiz 0.7.2 adds many improvements and bug fixes.

For further details, refer to the Compiz 0.7.2 release announcement:

[4]

vmmouse Driver

Due to a bug in the shipping xorg-x11-drv-vmmouse driver, the mouse position may not be correctly positioned on a virtual machine guest's display. As a workaround until an update, add Option NoAutoAddDevices to the ServerFlags section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the guest machine. Create the section if necessary:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option      "NoAutoAddDevices"
EndSection