Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fedora 15 – The Good, Bad and Ugly

At the outset, I'll have to tell all the readers out there, that this article is a not-so-techie stuff ! I might drop in a few details here and there but I'm making sure not to get too technical (Coz, I myself don't know much ! Lol. Laughing out loud )

 

Fedora 15 has come in for a lot of praises world over for its improvement in desktop interface changes. It has incorporated into it the newly introduced Gnome3 Desktop that has lot many features to offer. It also has many a faults (that can however be overcome). On the whole, I felt that Fedora 15 is great and its worth migrating to.

The Good

Some of the features that impressed me was the Desktop graphics and usage interface. Gnome 3 has all the ingredients to make the people say 'Wow, blimey.' I read in an article that Gnome programmers wanted to try out new interface paradigms. This Gnome3 has been really great to work with.

Some features you'll find appealing is the, yet-to-come Apple OS X Lion like App-center. The workspaces which could be shifted in sideways in the earlier versions of the gnome as default, have been made to a top-to-bottom shifting type in this version.

 

The notification area that earlier used to be in the top-right corner of the gnome desktop has shifted downwards where the taskbar used to be there. This has come in for a mixed response. Some like it and some won't. But I personally feel it as a good move. You got the app-center to compensate for the taskbar thingy. Another good news that comes in with the gnome-3 desktop is that, a lot more things can be done just with the notification area. Like in empathy, you can chat directly from the notification area. The same goes with the IRC client's chat notification.

 

There seems to be a minimal hardware-acceleration support given to this version of Fedora. Another good thing about the app-center is the desktop search feature. Just as you type file names in the search bar of the search applet in the app-center, you see the recently accessed file lists popping up. Also, you have an option to search Wikipedia and Google in the app-center.

 

Fedora Desktop's Customization has never been so very easy with the UAC settings put up just on the menubar of the gnome3 desktop. It comes with Firefox 4, empathy 3.0 and transmission etc.

All the more great is the graphics, as i said earlier. Its fun to work with.

The Bad and overcoming the Ugly

Apart from the good, there are a lot many bad things about fedora I find . Especially for a person moving from Windows to a Linux like me, using Fedora can be a lot more annoying.

No-Auto mount feature for the NTFS Drives

As in Windows, where the drives auto mount in the Windows startup, drives doesn't get mounted automatically. You gotta click them, and the Os prompts for a admin password and only then you get to enter the drive. This makes you even more angry when directly after log on you try to access you files or playlists.

One way to overcome this issue is to edit the /etc/fstab file that tells the Fedora Boot to initialize the drives just after logon.

One way to overcome is to use the gui ' ntfs-config ' utility

install it in command line using :

su -c 'yum -y install ntfs-config'

you cannot just run it from the application menu. You run it only from command line as root. If you ever encounter a problem in fedora 15 installing it, like

OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy'

just create the directories hal and fdi inside etc and a blank file policy and it will work.

No Compiz !

Starting this version, Fedora has stopped its default window manager Compiz and shifted to the Mutter. That means, no more wobbly effects and bubbly graphics henceforth. But, there seems to be a way out of that, I guess though to replace mutter with compiz.

No Shutdown or Hibernate Menu !

OMG ! This is really frustrating. I was not able to shutdown and hibernate my PC directly from the menu given in the Menu. All I gotta do is to logout and then use the Shutdown option provided there. But, there is a workaround.

Try to install the

gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

package from terminal that brings back the original back !

 

No Minimize

No minimize keyboard shortcut, Alt-F9 does nothing. But you can alter the keyboard shortcuts in the keyboard settings to bring it back ! Other way is to use the gconf-editor.

No Desktop Icons !

This is something glaring right straight at us, that we cannot use the Desktop user interface from now on. Especially for Windows users and Gnome 2 users. We can bring that back using the Gnome-tweak tool that can be installed from command line in terminal.

 

No Weather Applet !

Gnome3 also doesn't ship with itself the weather applet. It was always my favorite thing about the gnome desktop. Now, that it doesn't appear anymore is kinda irritating. One thing you can do is to install the alternative gnome desktop applet like the one I have.

 

Dowload this pakcage :

https://github.com/simon04/gnome-shell-extension-weather/tarball/master

Extract it in suitable place and type in the following commands in the terminal as root :

./autogen.sh –prefix=/usr

make

make install

If you encounter a problem like,

Making all in src
make[1]: Entering directory /home/dwarak/weather/src'
Makefile:426: *** missing separator. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory/home/dwarak/weather/src'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

install gnome-desktop-devel.i686 from the Terminal that is required to include the necessary files to compile the makefile. The reason this doesn't happen is that starting from gnome3.2 the os assumes all the tab spaces to be default spaces in the makefile. This is something like kinda patch.

Use the following command to change your Location using

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather woeid your_woeid

Change Temperature Units by

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather unit celsius

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.weather unit fahrenheit

Your Woeid is the Where On Earth ID provided by Yahoo ! Geoplanet referenced by a 32-bit identifier.

Find yours @ :

http://isithackday.com/geoplanet-explorer/index.php

If you have anything more to add, please post in your comments.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Fight Email Spam !!? – Here’s the Solution

Email spam’s on the rise. Lot many sites offer fake, and spam newsletters that clutter our inbox. Many of them want us to register and submit our email ids for confirmation and only then allow us to access the information we want. Some go a step further to send us a confirmation mail from which instructions or link should be accessed. This, as obvious as it seems, sucks !

 

The problem with this system of registration is that, once you register your mail and click on the confirmation link, it doesn’t end just there. People send you fake offers, newsletter that you don’t even remember having subscribed to, and many a times, some vulgar emails.

 

The best way to fight this is to provide a temporary email service just to register for the site you want to. You cannot just go sign up for an email service and go cancelling the account. It is of course, tedious and hectic.

 

 

We Give You The Solution !

There is this email service that you might consider. – mailcu.be or spamgoormet

This is the best way to fight such spam. The mailcu.be service can be used to have your own fake mail address. This address lasts for only 3 days. Guess what’s the best part ? You don’t have to sign up, you don’t have to give any of your details. Anyone can have any address that he wants to with a ‘@mailcu.be’ domain address. It does provide potential dangers as well. If suppose, say you register for a service and you receive a confidential email in it. If someone comes to know your mailcu.be address, he can easily access your email, because, its nothing but a URL manipulation that needs to be performed to access your temporary email.

 

To have your own email address -

http://www.mailcu.be/m/<your preferred username>

Let’s suppose, you want a temporary address by the name john,

then the link to access your temporary email address shall be,

http://www.mailcu.be/m/john

 

There is a chrome extension to this service  :

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gogmenngefoaabgnpekljldmpchodobp?hl=en-US



You may also want to consider these :

Spam Goormet : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fcgkhbajjgppgllmednlkajnkdjbgggp?hl=en-US

Easy disposable mail : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mkpfodpjhekjdhkchalfflggeoamfajh?hl=en-US

 

If you got anything to add, or some suggestions, as and always, please feel free to comment below…