Documentation Desktop Beat

Fedora Desktop

This section details changes that affect Fedora graphical desktop users.

Better Webcam support

Fedora 10 comes with improved support for webcams.

This support follows on the improvements to the UVC driver first introduced in Fedora 9 that added support for any webcam with a Windows Vista compliant logo. Fedora 10 features a new v4l2 version of gspca, a USB webcam driver framework with support for many different USB webcam bridges and sensors.

Userspace support for webcams has also been improved by adding libv4l and updating all webcam using applications to use libv4l. This support makes these applications understand the often manufacturer specific and custom video formats emitted by many webcams, esp. by many of the webcams supported by gspca.

For a list of all webcams and applications with which Fedora-10's new webcam support has been tested see the BetterWebcamSupport feature page, for a list of all cams supported by the original version of gspca see the original gspca website. The v4l2 version of gspca in Fedora-10 supports all these webcams and more.

Plymouth Graphical Boot

For information about the new grapical boot mode read Docs/Beats/Boot#Plymouth_Graphical_Boot.

Echo Icon Theme

Echo is an icon theme developed for Fedora by the volunteer Fedora Art community. Echo inherits the isometric perspective from the classic Bluecurve theme while introducing a refreshing new look. It follows the freedesktop.org theme specification. The current version covers essential icons from the desktop menus and applications. Future revisions will bring broader coverage.

Currently, both GNOME and Xfce use the Echo icon theme by default. KDE continues to use the Oxygen icon theme. The next release of Fedora may introduce Echo by default for KDE for a consistent look and feel across different desktop environments.

Infrared remote support

New to Fedora 10 is the gnome-lirc-properties package with a new graphical front-end for configuring LIRC to use with applications supporting the protocol. For more information refer to Docs/Beats/Multimedia#Infrared_remote_support.

LIRC is routinely used in multimedia applications to implement support for infrared remote controls, and using it in Rhythmbox and Totem should be as easy as plugging the remote receiver into your computer, then selecting [Auto-detect] in the Infrared Remote Control preferences. Refer to the feature page for more information:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterLIRCSupport

Bluetooth: BlueZ 4.0

The Bluetooth support stack, called BlueZ (http://www.bluez.org), has been updated to version 4.x in Fedora 10. Most changes in this version are useful for application developers, but users can notice the new, easier to use wizard for setting up keyboards, mice, and other supported Bluetooth devices. There is also the ability to turn-off the Bluetooth adapter on most brands of laptops through the preferences. This new version will also allow better support for audio devices in the future, through PulseAudio.

Note that the default Bluetooth kernel driver was also switched to btusb, which cuts down power consumption compared to its predecessor hci_usb.

GNOME

This release features GNOME 2.24. For more details refer to:

http://www.gnome.org/start/2.24/

Empathy Instant Messenger

Empathy instant messenger is the new default replacing Pidgin in this release. It has support for multiple protocols including IRC, XMPP(Jabber), Yahoo, MSN, and others via plugins. It also supports video and voice in the XMPP protocol, with support for other protocols under active development. Empathy uses the telepathy framework that has a number of additional plugins:

• telepathy-gabble - Jabber/XMPP lugin
• telepathy-idle - IRC plugin
• telepathy-butterfly - MSN plugin
• telepathy-sofiasip - SIP plugin
• telepathy-haze - Libpurple (Pidgin) library connection manager provides support for other protocols such as Yahoo

Pidgin continues to be available in the Fedora software repository and is retained as the default for users upgrading from previous releases of Fedora.

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 is set to be replaced. For configuration changes, refer to:

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

Codec installation helper

The GStreamer codec installation helper codeina was replaced by a PackageKit-based solution for Fedora 10. When Totem, Rhythmbox, or another GStreamer application require a plugin to read a film or song, a PackageKit dialogue appears, allowing the user to search for the necessary package in the configured repositories.

More details are available on the feature page:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/GStreamer_dependencies_in_RPM

KDE

This release features KDE 4.2.2. As the kdevelop packages is not part of KDE 4.1 and kdewebdev is only partially available (no Quanta) in KDE 4.1, the KDE 3.5.10 versions of those packages are shipped. A kdegames3 package containing the games not yet ported to KDE 4 is also available.

http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.1.2.php

KDE 4.1 is the latest release of KDE 4 and provides several new features, many usability improvements, and bugfixes over KDE 4.0, the first KDE 4 release series. This new release includes a folder view desktop applet (plasmoid), improvements to Dolphin and Konqueror and many new and improved applications. KDE 4.1.2 is a bugfix release from the KDE 4.1 release series.

Fedora 10 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 Docs/Beats/BackwardsCompatibility section for more details about what is included.

Fedora 10 includes a snapshot of knetworkmanager, which works with the prerelease of NetworkManager 0.7 in Fedora 10. As it was not considered ready for production use, the KDE Live images use nm-applet from NetworkManager-gnome instead (as in Fedora 8 and 9). The gnome-keyring-daemon facility saves passwords for these encryption technologies. If you wish to try knetworkmanager, it can be installed from the repository.

As the native KWin window manager now optionally supports compositing and desktop effects, the KDE Live images no longer include Compiz/Beryl (since Fedora 9). 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.

Enhancements

• Plasma is more mature and panel configuration has been extended. The new panel controller makes it easy to customize your panel providing direct visual feedback. The Plasma folderview applet provides a view of a directory and thus allows you to store files on the desktop. It replaces other well-known icons on the desktop.

Package and Application Changes

• Fedora 10 ships kdepim 4.2.2 instead of 3.5.x.
• libkipi, libkexiv2, and libkdcraw have been obsoleted by the KDE 4 versions in the kdegraphics package. Accordingly, kipi-plugins, digikam, and kphotoalbum have been updated to KDE 4 versions.
• kpackagekit, a KDE frontend to PackageKit, is now available. (It may be made available as an update for Fedora 9 at a later time.)

In addition, the following changes made since the Fedora 9 release, which have been backported to Fedora 9 updates, are also part of Fedora 10:

• KDE has been upgraded from version 4.0.3 to 4.2.2.
• qt and PyQt4 have been upgraded from 4.3 to 4.4.
• kdewebdev, kdevelop, kdegames3, and the KDE 3 backwards-compatibility libraries have been upgraded from KDE 3.5.9 to 3.5.10.
• QtWebKit is now part of the qt package. The stand alone WebKit-qt package has been obsoleted.
• The new package qgtkstyle contains a Qt 4 style using GTK+ for drawing, providing better integration of Qt 4 and KDE 4 applications into GNOME.
• The phonon library, which was part of kdelibs in Fedora 9, is now a separate package. An optional GStreamer backend (phonon-backend-gstreamer) is now available, but the xine-lib backend, which is now packaged as phonon-backend-xine, is still the recommended default backend and is now required by the phonon package.
• The kdegames3 package no longer provides development support for the KDE 3 version of libkdegames because nothing in Fedora outside of kdegames3 itself requires that library any longer.
• The package okteta is now part of kdeutils.
• The package dragonplayer is now part of kdemultimedia.
• The program kaider has been renamed to Lokalize and is now part of kdesdk.
• The package ksirk has been ported to KDE 4 and is now part of kdegames.
• The package extragear-plasma has been renamed to kdeplasma-addons.

Sugar Desktop

The Sugar Desktop originated with the OLPC initiative. It allows for Fedora users and developers to do the following.

• Build upon the collaborative environment.
• Test out Sugar on an existing Fedora system by selecting the Sugar environment from their display manager.
• Developers interested in working on the Sugar interface or writing activities can have a development platform without needing an XO laptop.

Web Browsers

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'

If you are using Flash 10, you do not need libflashsupport anymore as the usage of ALSA has been fixed in this version.

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 after nspluginwrapper.i386 is installed:

su -c 'yum install libflashsupport'

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.

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