Three Great Things about Fedora Core 6
I've been meaning to do a review of the things I really like about Fedora Core 6. This will be pretty confusing to people who don't use Unix.
Compiz
This is a set of graphics bells and whistles. Every description I've seen about Fedora Core 6 shows the wobbly windows or workspaces rotating like the faces of a cube.
What's cool about it?
Compiz does a lot of shiny things you won't notice after a couple days. Windows wobble like jelly when you move. There's a few things that are harder to notice, but cooler:
First, it's not supported by many video drivers. I had NVidia cards, which meant getting beta drivers, which meant switching to the i686 kernel and resolving some weird driver issues. That was rough.
Second, cool as the Compiz features are, lots of them are clearly half done. If you could do multiple rows of workspaces the rotating cube and switch workspace effects would be cooler still.
Obscure Hint
I saved one of the best and hardest-to-find Compiz features. If you rotate the mouse clockwise around the workspace switcher, all the windows in the current workspace dash until they form even rows, and you can pick the window you want to be active. It's like a much prettier version of alt-tab.
Udev
This is a system for handling peripherals like mice, keyboards, USB devices, etc. . . This goes back to Fedora Core 5 and maybe earlier, but it's new to me.
What's cool about it?
It makes the operating system react in a sensible way to devices being connected and disconnected. My computer no longer thinks my graphics tablet is a mouse. Devices appear on the same nodes every time.
It'll be perfect when. . .
X Windows doesn't react smoothly, so I can't connect a graphics tablet and use it right away unless I restart X. Also, devices don't seem to exist until you plug them in. Some earlier programs, such as JPilot, get really confused by this.
Obscure Hint
The rules that govern device connection are in /etc/udev/rules.d. Sometimes, the order is bad. For instance, 60-wacom.rules should be renamed to 40-wacom.rules, so that the computer will claim your graphics tablet as a graphics tablet before it thinks it's a mouse.
Nautilus Networking
With Fedora Core 6, you can pick a menu item for "Connect to server. . .". This allows you to mount a Samba share, an NFS share, an FTP site, a site with SSHD and heaven knows what else as a simple folder.
What's cool about it?
This feature has increased the amount of time I spend using the file manager by a factor of four or five. I can use the command line to move files, but GUIs make me happy. This lets me drag files from computer to computer. All the passwords get stored in a password-protected keychain, and it's been really fast and easy to use.
It'll be perfect when. . .
When more programs support these folders, it'll be more like true file sharing. Right now, remote files appear to Nautilus as URLs. If you try to edit an image on a remote server mounted by SSH, the command it'll run will be "GIMP ssh://server/path/to/image". GIMP will run, but it won't open the image unless you copy it to a local directory.
Obscure Hint
GIMP and VIM don't support opening by URL. OpenOffice and Gedit do.
Compiz
This is a set of graphics bells and whistles. Every description I've seen about Fedora Core 6 shows the wobbly windows or workspaces rotating like the faces of a cube.
What's cool about it?
Compiz does a lot of shiny things you won't notice after a couple days. Windows wobble like jelly when you move. There's a few things that are harder to notice, but cooler:
- Translucent gnome-terminal windows show underlying windows, including animations.
- When you maximize a window, you can grab and edge or a corner to peel it back and see underlying windows. When you let go, the window gelatonously snaps back to maximized.
- When you use the switch workspace command (bound, by default, to cntrl-alt-down, the screen seems to pull back so you can see all adjacent workspaces, again, with any animations showing. When you choose a workspace, it zooms back.
First, it's not supported by many video drivers. I had NVidia cards, which meant getting beta drivers, which meant switching to the i686 kernel and resolving some weird driver issues. That was rough.
Second, cool as the Compiz features are, lots of them are clearly half done. If you could do multiple rows of workspaces the rotating cube and switch workspace effects would be cooler still.
Obscure Hint
I saved one of the best and hardest-to-find Compiz features. If you rotate the mouse clockwise around the workspace switcher, all the windows in the current workspace dash until they form even rows, and you can pick the window you want to be active. It's like a much prettier version of alt-tab.
Udev
This is a system for handling peripherals like mice, keyboards, USB devices, etc. . . This goes back to Fedora Core 5 and maybe earlier, but it's new to me.
What's cool about it?
It makes the operating system react in a sensible way to devices being connected and disconnected. My computer no longer thinks my graphics tablet is a mouse. Devices appear on the same nodes every time.
It'll be perfect when. . .
X Windows doesn't react smoothly, so I can't connect a graphics tablet and use it right away unless I restart X. Also, devices don't seem to exist until you plug them in. Some earlier programs, such as JPilot, get really confused by this.
Obscure Hint
The rules that govern device connection are in /etc/udev/rules.d. Sometimes, the order is bad. For instance, 60-wacom.rules should be renamed to 40-wacom.rules, so that the computer will claim your graphics tablet as a graphics tablet before it thinks it's a mouse.
Nautilus Networking
With Fedora Core 6, you can pick a menu item for "Connect to server. . .". This allows you to mount a Samba share, an NFS share, an FTP site, a site with SSHD and heaven knows what else as a simple folder.
What's cool about it?
This feature has increased the amount of time I spend using the file manager by a factor of four or five. I can use the command line to move files, but GUIs make me happy. This lets me drag files from computer to computer. All the passwords get stored in a password-protected keychain, and it's been really fast and easy to use.
It'll be perfect when. . .
When more programs support these folders, it'll be more like true file sharing. Right now, remote files appear to Nautilus as URLs. If you try to edit an image on a remote server mounted by SSH, the command it'll run will be "GIMP ssh://server/path/to/image". GIMP will run, but it won't open the image unless you copy it to a local directory.
Obscure Hint
GIMP and VIM don't support opening by URL. OpenOffice and Gedit do.