fedora.short-stack.net

this was not as easy to figure out as i had hoped but i found a thread that explained how to install fonts in fedora that finally worked. most of them said to go to system > preferences > fonts but that menu item didn’t exist. so instead i just did this:

cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts
fc-cache -v -f

log out and back in again and voile! you can has a new font.

there are SO many things i’ve done with fedora lately that i swear have changed my world. my god, it’s amazing. i know that sounds exaggerated but it’s the truth.

i tackled my photoshop woes this week and learned a lot in the process.

this week, we got a new girl at work. since the company i work with is fairly small, they can’t afford top notch computers for everyone in the office to work on. i decided i’d let her use mine and i’d just bring my laptop in, completely forgetting that i had not yet found a reasonable way to get the adobe suite working aside from the pain-in-the-ass, bandwidth-hogging remote desktop method. this gave me a mission.

i’d seen my friends use a windows emulator but had never looked into it. mostly because i had left all my windows/warez CDs in boone. just my luck! i was in boone this weekend for my birthday and remembered to snag them all. step 1 accomplished.

i googled a few solutions and found vmware server. it’s free and seemed like the perfect solution, except for when you up the RAM usage for the virtual server to 2 GB (the minimum requirements to install adobe master suite), you can barely move your mouse when it’s all said and done.

a friend suggested virtual box and that is what i ended up using. after a lot of trial and error, i finally got things working. i will say this, though: make sure you give yourself enough space (15+ gigs) to install the programs you want because resizing the virtual disks is a serious headache.

i looked up many ways to do it and finally found a system recovery ISO (reminded me a lot of knoppix) to boot the guest OS from, run gparted, copy the old partition, put it on a bigger one, and resize it. it took like 7 tries, however, because i kept getting an error in gparted and the new windows partition would not recognize the extra space and it acted like the partition was still 10 gigs instead of 15 (even though it was running off of the 15 gig partition). i honestly do not know what fixed that problem other than luck and jesus having pity on my soul and my processor. it may have been the fact that i finally selected the option to check/repair the new partition in gparted so when the guest OS booted, windows ran chkdsk and recognized the extra space. i’m still gonna say it was a miracle.

so… short story long: if you want to run adobe master suite cs3, it runs beautifully (almost zero lag) under virtualbox.

so… i upgraded to fedora core 9. i love it. i got rid of windows entirely and now have 100+ gigs to devote to fedora and it’s pretty much awesome.

not so much the case anymore. i went back to fc8 after running into entirely too many bugs/general problems with f9. it might just be personal preferences but i’m happier this way. plus, i finally got vmware server running (wouldn’t work under that kernel without patching it in a million ways and even then i kept breaking shit) and my wireless is up. i am a happy camper.

although, i will say that i was surprised when i went back to fc8, my wireless setup was entirely different. i did “lspci” and instead of BCM4321AG showing up, it now says BCM4328. R151517.exe doesn’t work anymore and i had to use the drivers from R151519.exe. everything else stayed the same. at this point, i don’t care how i got there. it works, dammit.

now i just have to remember to get my copy of windows xp to put on vmware so i can get the adobe suite cs3 up and running. i’m pretty excited that i finally have everything running how i want it. i hope i don’t jinx it. and that the cat doesn’t sit on it.

i must have been drunk when i partitioned my hard drive on this stinkin’ laptop. i only allocated 6 gigs for my linux partition and i am seriously paying for it right now. i can’t run any updates because i’ve run out of room. i shrunk my drive i keep all my music/vids/pictures/files (it was 100 gigs but i shrunk it down to 70) and now my hd looks like this:

sda1: windows, 40 gigs
sda2: linux, 6 gigs
sda3: docs (aforementioned media partition), 70 gigs
unpartitioned space: 30 gigs

there are 2 gigs inbetween them all but that’s the jist of it. my question is (and i googled this for hours last night trying to find an easy/lazy way out of my dilemma): is there any easy way without having to reformat for the millionth time to merge my linux partition with my empty space? sda2 is ext3 format. i can format my empty space as ext3.

if i can’t merge them, then can i mount the second ext3 partition and somehow tell fedora to use that as space to install updates and things? i’m still looking into this frantically because I WANT QUAKE 3 BACK AND I WANT TO INSTALL UPDATES. it’s driving me nuts.

despite the fact that nothing higher than adobe photoshop 7 wants to run under wine (for me anyways, i am probably overlooking something), i will not surrender to teh gimp. i hate it. my apologies to the creator of gimp. i am very biased.

anyway, i had zero luck getting anything higher than 7.0 to install under wine without giving me errors whether they were pop-up windows or causing my whole system to freeze. it just wasn’t happening. if anyone has a suggestion, please do inform me and i will metaphorically have your babies.

i finally found a theme i like and have fedora looking SPECTACULAR! i love it. it’s so pretty and shiny. i just want to stare at it. i used this application theme and this window border theme. wallpaper is from n.design studio.

first of all… i found a solution to the xD reader problem i was having: use the camera USB cord. ;) genius, i know. heh, no luck with that one for me or anyone else that i could find.

rob suggested using xawtv for my webcam/FTP problem but i am having trouble getting that to run. still working on it.

the sound/mic deal with skype is iffy at times. mic has not worked yet and sound is a pain in the ass since it decides to randomly stop working. it’s pissy.

to be continued… o_0

to my surprise, i’ve had no problem getting my webcam to work on fedora 8. my only complaint is finding a decent webcam program that allows me to FTP my images to my server.

so far, i’ve tried camstream, webvideo, and conquercam (favorite client in windows, using it through wine, doesn’t detect webcam). actually, none of these can find my webcam. the only programs i’ve used that have detected the webcam and worked are cheese and ekiga, neither of which have FTP capabilities. i guess i’m just spoiled and have to get used to doing it manually unless anyone out there can give me a better suggestion.

anywho, this is how to get the webcam working.

the webcam specifically is a 0c45:62c0 Microdia (su - /sbin/lsusb).

to download the driver, type the following into your terminal
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk
cd trunk
make
make install
modprobe uvcvideo

“/sbin/lsmod” will show you the results. if you have gnome, you can use cheese to test it, the equivalent of apple’s photobooth program. ekiga works too… but i must say, i <3 cheese. i just wish SOME FREAKING PROGRAM WITH FTP CAPABILITIES WOULD WORK ON HERE. i’ll get it eventually… maybe.

still no luck… :-( working on it.