Tipping my Fedora, part 3

[updated 2009.6.17]

This is another in a series of posts on my attempt to get acquainted with Fedora on VirtualBox.  YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), of course.

[The computers are a Windows XP Pro 32-bit (2GB RAM with 512MB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox) and a Vista 64-bit laptop (4GB RAM with 1GB assigned to Fedora/VirtualBox).]

I’m using the book Fedora 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux by Negus and Foster-Johnson [9780470413395] but not the included discs, as I wanted to make sure I had the latest version of Fedora, and I wanted to run it in VirtualBox as a virtual machine, so I could switch back to Windows when needed.  Having a big book on this can be a help in trying to learn a new system, although the variations due to running Fedora inside VirtualBox are not covered.

The book has tips such as:

* double-clicking on a folder to move down to a subfolder, or clicking the folder name at the bottom-left to move up to a parent.  This gives you a menu for selection.  This varies from the little green up-arrow folder in Windows Explorer.

* the “window shade” feature (double-click in the title bar “rolls up” the window instead of maximizing it) needs to be turned on.  System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Windows and in the pop-up, change Maximize to Roll Up. Not a perfectly working gimmick, IMHO.

Screen Resizing

I can log in, and once the Fedora is up, I can use the Auto-Resize Guest Display in VirtualBox (provided I have VirtualBox already set to full screen) to expand Fedora to fit completely inside VirtualBox.  There’s also a full screen option, but it’s easier to switch back to Windows if I just expand to size inside VirtualBox, and that’s enough to get a decent window for Firefox, etc.  (See Part 2 of this series for how that was enabled.)  Mind, it make take several tries to get it to work at times, and you have to have Fedora up for at least 2 or 3 minutes before it seems to want to work.

This also gives me access to the VirtualBox icons at the bottom of the window, which can help when I’m sitting wondering if anything is happening… oh, look, the drive icon is flashing.  Something is still working.  Fedora is not exactly encouraging on a lot of activities, as the little blue circling-around arrow doesn’t always appear for the cursor so you know something is going on.

Media Manipulating

I figured playing a few MP3 files would test the media capabilities… oops.

Fedora, it turns out, can’t do MP3 files.  It’s a matter of licensing.  So, I looked for and found a workaround called Fluendo and installed it, by downloading it (in Fedora using Firefox) and opening it, giving the root password several times in the process, and it installed.  Doing workarounds like this is something I expected, although not for something I had considered this basic (MP3 files).

Then I used Firefox to download some free MP3 files as samples and tried them out by importing them to Fedora’s Rhythmbox music player (which couldn’t handle MP3s before Fluendo).  Worked fine.  (I did this mostly just to see if I could get the connection to the sound card even through VirtualBox.)

The holders of the patent on the MP3 format wanted about 7 1/2 cents (according to the book) per system using this, and Red Hat decided not to include it (well, a lot of people just try Fedora out, much as I’m doing).  Makes sense.  Fluendo, however, legally has an unlimited MP3 license, so this stays within the law.  It’s free; you just can’t redistribute it.

(There’s actually a page in the Fedora wiki on “forbidden items.“  It includes commercial DVDs, since the format for commercial DVD discs is a patented one, so you may not see a lot of movies on Fedora machines without getting some extra software from somewhere — a popular source is rpm.livna.org .)

Terminal

I figured out — even before the book suggested it — that I needed to put an icon for the terminal function on the desktop.

Since Linux systems are aimed at multiple users, you log in as yourself, but often need to become root — the superuser (system administrator) to do certain things.  (I am Root, see me type.)

In the terminal panel, you get a prompt for you as user.  Type su - and enter (the hyphen added puts you in the root directory to begin).  The prompt will change and now you can install stuff, make changes, etc., that you were forbidden to do under your regular login.  Since you (supposedly) set your root password during the setup I described in earlier posts, you are better protected from malware, while using your regular login abilities, which might try to plant viruses, etc.  It does not make you immune to viruses and such; it just makes it harder than usual for the bad guys.

Of course, it also makes it more of an effort to install stuff, but that’s the tradeoff.