Plugins for Fedora 19 to play movies and music

Issue:

Not able to play any movies or musing in my Fedora OS. When I try to open AVI format file it shows following error 

The following plugins are required: 

MPEG-1 Layer 3 ( MP3 ) decoder XVID MPEG-4 decoder

I will walk you through to install this plugins/decoders.

Solution:

Unlike Windows, Fedora won't include all the plugins and decoder out of the box. It is due to some patent or copyright issue. Whatever it may be our intention is to play all video and audio formats. To do so just open terminal in administrator or root login. Then give the below commands. 

Installing RPM fusion repository:

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Installing Codecs or Plugins or Decoders to run video and music

yum install gstreamer{1,}-{ffmpeg,libav,plugins-{good,ugly,bad{,-free,-nonfree}}} ffmpeg

Installing VLC 

yum install vlc

If VLC doesn't work after all the above steps you need install extra two packages. Refer this article.

Fedora 19 - Install Adobe, flash player, drivers, Google Chrome all at once

A few months ago came the version of the Fedora 19 distribution, plus many updates, brought several new important features. The official Fedora repositories have hundreds of packages, applications and games. But as in most other GNU / Linux distributions do not come by default codecs and proprietary software for licensing reasons, so are not included in any official repository.

Some apps were not found in the official Fedora repositories, for example, the famous open source VLC Media Player, will be included in some proprietary software libraries, and so it is not available in official one. For users who want to install VLC, SMPlayer, proprietary drivers for your video cards AMD and Nvidia, as FFMpeg tools, unrar, unace and etc, you can use the RPM Fusion repository.

ADDING REPOSITORY RPM FUSION

Adding RPM Fusion repository in Fedora 19 is very simple, just open the terminal and type:

chmod + x *. bin
su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

ADDING REPOSITORY OF ADOBE

If you want to install the plugin Adobe Flash Player on Fedora 19, you can use the repository offered by Adobe:

For Fedora 19 32-bit:
su
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

For Fedora 19 64-bit:
su
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

To install the Flash Plugin

su
yum check-update
yum install flash-plugin

ADDING REPOSITORY OF GOOGLE

Google Earth and Google Music Manager. In this case, simply install the repository to automatically add the Google apps.

wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
su 
rpm --import linux_signing_key.pub

Fedora OS disappeared after Windows OS update or installation

If you installed Fedora in your system first and Windows OS after it, you may run into an issue Fedora OS no more available in the boot. In this case you need to re-install GRUB bootloader. To install the GRUB bootloader boot from your Fedora DVD installation disk. Booting from disk will give you some option like 'Start Fedora' and 'Troubleshooting'. Don't click on 'Start Fedora' it will simply run the LIVE OS. Click on 'Troubleshooting' and then select 'Rescue a Fedora System'.

You system now boots into rescue mode. Now you can see only a prompt and you won't get any graphical interface. All you want to do is install grub in the first partition of your hard disk. Don't panic just enter the below command after the prompt to install grub.

grub-install /dev/sda1

Above command is to re-install the GRUB bootloader.

Now you need to create a configuration file. This configuration file will add Fedora OS in the boot menu. Use the below command.

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Fedora 19 internet not working - How to solve?

I got network problem when I transferred to new home. Everything was fine before. Now, my laptop running Fedora 19 detects Wi-Fi network but I was not able to access internet. The sad thing is I was able to access internet in my Windows Phone. I tried router reset but nothing gave me hand. So I decided to configure the file manually. But the solution was very simple than I imagined.

What are the possible issue

You need to know there are two type of configuration in router

• Dynamic
• Static

My router is dynamic configured. Don't bother about how find either your router is dynamic or static. It is not a big deal. I am going to give you two command, either of a command will do a magic for you.

Troubleshooting 1

Open your Terminal and write the following command as given in the image.

Command - sudo dhclient -v 

If the above command doesn't work switch to root user and try below one.
Command - dhclient -v

Troubleshooting 2

This is for static ip users. For this you need to know router ip address. To find that you need to check your router manual. If you follow the manual you will be able to figure out it. You can also find it using the following command.

Now use that ip in following command.

In the first command write Router Ip as I mentioned in previous image. The p9p1is name given to your ethernet card. Let it be the same as it is the default.  In my case
x=1
y=1

I am comparing with Router ip.

In the second command, replace z with 0.
x=1
z=0

Firefox already running but is not responding - Solved

Sometimes you get error message in Firefox like Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process or restart your system. Following is the screen shot of error message.

Solution

It is clearly given in the error message like you need to end the process or restart. Restarting system is hectic task which consume lot of time. To solve the error without restarting open System Monitor.

Then you will see the following window.

 

Search for Firefox process. Click on the process as I did in the image then click End Process which you can see at the bottom.

Cause for the problem

This problem usually occurs when you close the Firefox with many tabs. Closing multiple tabs at the same time is the reason for this issue. You can avoid this by closing tab one by one. I don't know the technically reason behind it, but it happened to me every time I close active multiple tabs. This is not a frequent issue, but occurs very rarely. When I open many apps along with Firefox the chances are more for this issue. I am facing this issue only after updating Firefox to latest version.

Password generator app for Fedora

Password generator is a Python program. Run it using the terminal to generate password. So below is what the program do.

If you like it, you can download from this link - http://www.2shared.com/file/hzvRkOZb/passwdgen.html

Copy the link and paste in the browser to download passgen.py file.

Usage

After running this Python file in terminal you will be asked to enter how many password you want. In above picture I have given as 11. So 11 passwords were generated. It will give you alphanumeric password. If you are too intelligent to think of your own password, hats off you don't need this app at all.

How to run

Open the file location in terminal. If your file is in Downloads the use this command.

cd /home/your_home_name/Downloads
python passgen.py

What I am trying to say is open the file location in your Terminal using CD command. Then use Python <filename> to run the python file.

How to delete Windows OS from Fedora OS?

In Fedora OS, you will be able to see the Windows partition mounted in file manager. File manager is nothing but the place where you store your files. Let me show my file manager and the mounted Windows partition in file manager.

Hope you can locate Windows partition in you system running Fedora. So to remove or format Windows OS from Fedora, you can simply delete all the contents in Windows partition. However it won't be as effective as formatting. So lets try the formatting option.

Steps to format Windows OS from Fedora

Open the Disks tool from activities. To open this simply press Windows Key in your keyboard and type disks in the search bar. If you laptop doesn't have Windows Key, then move the mouse over Activities and in the search bar type disks.

Disks is the tool, using it you are going to delete Windows OS. Be careful while doing this. Because you may end up with deleting Linux partition. It means you are simply going to lose your files. In this tool you can see the partition with format NTFS. It is the windows os storage format. If you have two partitions in Windows then it will show two blocks.

In my case I know that 185 GB block is the place where my Windows OS sits. So I simply click on it and then click on gear icon. It shows several option. You can find Format option there. This format option will delete all the file (including Windows OS) in that block.

How to find in which block my Windows OS sits?

Under devices in File Manager you can see your Windows partition. Click on the first partition, check whether it contains folder named Windows and Program Files. If this folder is there, then that is partition where you have installed Windows OS.

Warnings

Deleting Windows OS means you are going to delete all the paid software installed in Windows OS. So make sure you have all those CD and product key before doing this.

Anti-virus software for Fedora

I was searching for a virus protection tool for a long time. Whenever I ask for Anti-virus tool in forum, people give lame answers like Linux won't get affected by virus. I was not happy without running an anti-virus program in my Fedora OS. I came to know about an anti-virus software ClamAV. This virus scanner software is available in Fedora repository. To download it use following command in Terminal as Root user.

yum install clamav* -y

By doing so it will install dependencies - clamav, clamav-filesystem, clamav-lib, clamav-update and clamav-data. The above package installs the back ends. If you didn't get the shortcut icon for clamav then you should manually install clamtk package for interface. To install it open Terminal and enter following command.

yum install clamtk -y

Anti-virus update configuration
You should regularly update virus definition to keep you system protected from unwanted threats. To allow this software to install update you need to edit freshclan.conf flie. Login as root user an

su
gedit /etc/freshclam.conf

Make following changes in configuration file. Insert a space between # and the text like given below.

# comment to remove the line below
# example

Now press save button, which you will find in menu bar. Close the word document.

To check for updates follow below steps. Enter below commands

su
clamtk

Go to Help meun and click on Check for Updates. It will update virus definitions.

This virus application will also check virus in e-mail.

Music player application for Fedora

The default Fedora GNOME 3 comes with Rhythmbox music player. There are other music player for Fedora which can do tasks like ripping and editing. If you are bored with Rhythmbox music player, install any music player from the below list.

Music Players

Application	Feature
Sound JuicerGNOME	CD audio ripper (GStreamer)
Amarok	KDE4 multimedia audio player
Banshee	Multimedia player
Audacious	Multimedia player
KscdMusic	CD player
JuK	KDE4 music player (jukebox) for managing music collections
GNOME CD Player	CD player
GNOME Sound Recorder	Sound recorder
XMMSCD	player
Clementine	Clementine music player (based on Rhythmbox)
Radio Tray	The RadioTray radio streaming player, works from the panel like an applet
Xnoise	The Xnoise music player uses a music track orientation
Audacity	Professional multitrack audio editor
ArdourDigital	Audio Workstation (DAW) and Hard Disk Recorder (HDR)
Rosegarden	Audio/MIDI multitrack sequencer and score editor
FluidSynth	Software synthesizer
Qtractor	Audio/MIDI multitrack sequencer base on Qt toolkit

Best music player

Every music player has their own benefit. I mostly use Rhythmbox which can play almost all audio formats. Once I installed KDE4 environment, Amarok is a default music player there. It is also good which has lyrics feature. I am not able to understand some of the feature in it. Some forum users claim Banshee is best. However my favourite is Rhythmbox, it is stable at times when my PC crashes.

Subtitle player which plays subtitle alone for Fedora

I suddenly got fond of American TV series. I was not able to understand it without subtitle. First I searched for online TV series with subtitle, no luck in finding it. Then I searched for online video player which can embed subtitle, it went failure. After slogging in internet for several hours I found that online videos can be streamed in VLC but it came up with new error. I searched for subtitle player for Fedora, I end up with an software Greenfish subtitle player.

Greenfish Subtitle Player - Not Working in Wine too

I tried Greenfish subtitle player and it is the player I was searching for. But fate played in my life, I was not able to install in Fedora even using Wine. I believed that Greenfish player can be installed using Wine. But it is not launching.

VLC online video streaming - Not working, shows some error

Many websites suggested to copy-paste the online video URL to VLC network streaming. But it came with error 'VLC is unable to open MRL'. There is no exact solution to work around this problem. They suggest me to unblock in firewall. But I have no idea about firewall in Fedora. So I just move on.

Partial Solution - Gaupol subtitle player for Fedora

I found this package is used to read, write and manipulate subtitle. Using this subtitle you can view the text in subtitle file. To be hones I am not impressed with this solution but it is the only solution. To install use following command.

yum install gaupol -y

Beautiful theme for GNOME shell for Fedora

I just got bored using the same interface. So I planned to change the interface. I downloaded KDE desktop but it is complicated. I am not able to understand the interface. For each and every option I watched YouTube video to find out how it works. Eventually I shifted back to GNOME which is simple and handy. I came to know that themes can be installed to make my home screen look beautiful. I tried many themes and the best of all is Night Blues V2 theme.

Download Night Blues V2

Night Blues theme comes with quick controls for brightness, lock screen and power off.

To install this theme your GNOME version should be above 3.10 and above. To check your GNOME version use following command in Terminal.

gnome-shell --version

The above command will show you the GNOME version.

How to install:

For any modification you make in appearance you need two extenstions.

• User-Theme-Extension
• gnome-tweak-tool

To install the above two extension, open terminal and write the below two command one after the other.

• yum install gnome-tweak-tool -y
• yum install gnome-shell-extension* -y

 Once the installation gets completed successfully, use terminal and write gnome-tweak-tool to open it. Click on theme and then locate the download theme file. To locate the theme, use the button written as none. 

Make Fedora faster by disabling unecessary services

You might have noticed Fedora OS delays while start up and logout. It happens because every time the OS boots up it need to start all the services that is turned on. Services means you are providing access to some hardware resource. For example Bluetooth is a service and if you enable the service you can use application to do task. Fedora OS provides many customer as well enterprise level services. If you are normal user then you can disable enterprise level services. I admit I don't know what enterprise services used for but after disabling it I saw some improvements in my laptop.

How to disable services:

You can disable services directly by writing some commands in Terminal. To make it easy you can download a app called system-config-services. To install it open Terminal and type the below command.

yum install system-conifg-serives

Installation should be done as root user. You can find this app with name Services in Activities. Below is the screenshot of my application.

Services to disable:

Following services are safe to disable.

• auditd
• avahi-daemon
• haldaemon
• lvm2-monitor
• netfs
• rsyslog
• smolt
• udev-post  

How to kill a process in Fedora?

To kill or end a process we need to user task manager. There are several task manager for Fedora and I have already mentioned about System Monitor which is default task manager comes out of the box in the latest Fedora OS. Before this System Monitor came into the picture, there was another software which did the task manager operation - Htop. It is a simple text based software. With this you can view the process as well as kill the process.

Install Htop:

Open terminal and write following command as root user.

yum install htop -y

How it works:

To run this application, open Terminal and type htop. Use up arrow or down arrow to select the process. To kill a process press F9. 

How to get GPU or Graphics Card information in Fedora

There are few software to get details about RAM memory, graphics card (GPU) or any other hardware in your laptop running Fedora OS. Particularly user wants to know their system hardware when they want to check their graphics card. I hope there will be some commands to find the configuration but many won't understand it. So here I have going to give a application to view configuration in graphical mode.

Application Name - Hardinfo

How to install:

Installation should be done in Terminal. Open the terminal and write below command.

yum install hardinfo -y

Then the software will be installed and available in your applications.

Source - https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/7401/how-to-know-system-hardware-settings/

Live cricket score notification Fedora

Cricket app for Fedora: It is good news for cricket fans using Fedora OS. Now you can get cricket notification right in your desktop. I will say this app is not up to our expectation but happy to see one such app. Usually getting app for Fedora is not a easy thing. This cricket app encourages to use Fedora OS a lot.

Install Cricket app:

This app can be downloaded from below link.

Cricket app download link - https://github.com/PrasannaVenkadesh/GillyCricket

The name of this app is GillyCricket. You will find a file named as Fedora_install.sh. Download the file. To install the file run the below command in Terminal.

sh /Downloads/fedora_install.sh

To run the app in graphical interface use the following command. 

Gilly &

Unistall the app:

To uninstall the app give the following command in terminal.

removeGilly

For more detail visit official page.

App to open RAR file in Fedora

Fedora by default don't support .rar format. Whether it may be GNOME, XFCE or KDE it won't support .rar format. Archive app that I have in my Fedora GNOME desktop is Xachiever. You need to install a plugin kind of software called unrar, to open .rar file.

App name - Unrar
App size - 115 KB
Installing time - less than a minute

Issue: How to open RAR file

Solution:

This software can be installed by two easy steps. Just enter the two commands in Terminal. 

1. Adding RPMfusion repository: 

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

2. Installing UNRAR software:

yum -y install unrar

After following above steps you will be able to open RAR files. Sometimes you may have added RPMfusion repository before for installing some other software. In that case, after giving the first command you will get error like 'nothing to do'. If it is the case, directly enter the second command.



Now you can open any RAR file with whatever achieve software you have. Unrar is not a stand-alone software and you don't get any icon/shortcut to launch that app.

Torrent app for Fedora

Torrent Fedora: There are numerous Torrent client for Fedora. The apps that works in Ubuntu works in Fedora as well. I tried many torrent app but I prefer only two app among all. The reason for selecting this two app is its download speed is more than upload speed. Other torrent app keep on updloading instead of downloading. This two app can download files with just one or two seeds. Okay, let's see what is the name of that two apps.

1. Deluge
2. KGet

Deluge:

I will say this is the best of all. First I tried Transmission torrent client and faced numerous issue. So I searched for other clients for Linux. I found Deluge as my best torrent companion. It can works in any desktop environment like  GNOME, KDE, XFCE and others. It GNU licensed software and so it is available for free.

Installing Deluge:
Enter the below command to install Deluge torrent client.

yum install deluge

Enter this command in Terminal.

KGet:
This is another torrent client which I like most. This client is available by default in KDE desktop. For other shells like GNOME, XFCE ect you need install manually.

Installing KGet:

yum install kget

Transfer files from Fedora to Windows Phone via Bluetooth

If you are using Windows Phone and computer is running Fedora operating system you can transfer files via Bluetooth. Transferring files through Bluetooth is simple instead of using USB connection. However to connect Windows Phone in computer running Fedora OS using USB, you need to install GVFS-MTP package. This is time consuming task. Let's see how to use transfer files via Bluetooth from Fedora to Windows Phone and Windows Phone to Fedora.

Step 1: Turn on Bluetooth in Windows Phone and Fedora.
Step 2: Start the Bluetooth service in PC. Open terminal and type the below command

service bluetooth start

Step 3: Connect to the PC through Windows Phone. Touch on the computer name in Bluetooth device list in your phone. It will generate a private key. Then a pop up appears in your PC, click on 'Allow'.

Step 4: You can open the Bluetooth settings and check the whether Windows Phone is connected or not.

Step 5: To transfer file, click on the Bluetooth icon and you can see 'Send Files' under Windows Phone (my phone name). Clicking on send files will open file explorer. Choose the files you want to send. You can select multiple files at a time.

Task Manager for Fedora

Task Manager Fedora: We are used to task manager in Windows operating system. It is very handy to kill unresponsive programs in our system. Likewise it will be good if we have one such tool in Fedora. Fortunately, Fedora has one tool by default. The name of the tool is System Monitor. It can be found in Applications shell. Let me explain how to use the System Monitor to kill or end an unresponsive application.

Steps for using System Monitor:
1. Open System Monitor from Applications.
2. It will open a three tabbed window that contains Processes, Resources, File System.
3. Don't bother about Resources and File System tab as our target is to kill unresponsive program.
4. Say if Google Chrome browser is the unresponsive program, then click on the chrome listed in processes and click on 'End Process' button that you find below.
5. Like this you can kill any program that are not responding.

You can also try using Htop.

Install Viber in Fedora 19

Viber Fedora: Viber is a VOIP application. Using it users can make free call or send text message via internet connectivity. Viber is officially available for Ubuntu OS. We can use the Ubuntu package to install Viber in Fedora. It can be easily done by entering few commands in Terminal. As for now, Viber is available only for 64 bit application. 

Issue: Unable to install Viber in Fedora 19

Solution:
Open Terminal and enter the below given commands to install Viber.

mkdir /home/viber
cd /home/viber
su -c "yum -y install wget"
wget http://download.cdn.viber.com/cdn/desktop/Linux/viber.deb
ar p viber.deb data.tar.gz | tar zx
sh /home/viber/usr/share/viber/Viber.sh

You need to enter the last command (sh /home/viber/usr/share/viber/Viber.sh) every time to launch Viber application.

Note: This application is currently available only in 64-Bit version. To check whether your system is 32 bit or 62 bit use the below command.

uname -r

VLC media player not running as Root user in Fedora 19?

In Fedora 19, VLC media player won't run as root user. If a user try to run VLC media player in Fedora 19 as root user, it shows following error message.

Issue
# vlc
VLC is not supposed to be run as root. Sorry.
If you need to use real-time priorities and/or privileged TCP ports you can use vlc-wrapper (make sure it is Set-UID root and cannot be run by non-trusted users first).

Solution
It can be made to run as Root user by simple modification in VLC config file.
Step 1: Open Files application.
Step 2: After Files application gets open, in the side pane there will be 'Computer', click on it.
Step 3: There open bin -> usr -> vlc.
Step 4: In vlc file find geteuid and change it to getppid.


Is it safe to modify the file?
VLC by default won't open in root user. The reason behind it is security. As it is a third-party application, it is possible to download it with some malcious code. So it is not recommended to run VLC media player as root user. Linux recommends user to use normal account for everyday activity. Root user should be used only for some modifications in the system. If you are not worried about your security then go ahead and change the file.

Convert Word, PPT to PDF in Fedora 19 without extension

In Fedora 19, one can convert / export any kind of office files to PDF. Office files like word, excel and ppt can be exported to PDF. There is no need for additional add ons or extension to do this. You no need internet connectivity too. In this internet revolution we need internet connection to accomplish even a very small task.

How to covert to PDF in Fedora 19
In Fedora 19, LibreOffice comes by default. Write required content in excel or ppt or word and just press export to PDF icon. You can find it in the top panel as PDF icon. For your reference I have given the screenshot below.

Above figure shows the icon which will convert to PDF.

First write the content in your office file (excel or word or ppt). Then click on the icon that is given in above images. It will ask the name and location for PDF file to save. Provide the name as per your wish. Choose the location where the file need to be stored. Click 'Save' to complete the process.

Bluetooth not working in Fedora 19

Bluetooth issue: All of the sudden my Bluetooth stopped working in Fedora. I made it functional by installing a package. Bluetooth was working fine for few months and suddenly I am not able to use Bluetooth. So to solve the issue you no need to install drivers, instead install a third party software.

Solution:
So open your terminal and switch to 'root' or 'administrator' user. To do it

#su

After entering the above command it will ask for password. It is your 'root' or 'administrator' password. Now your next step is to install the package to make Bluetooth to work. Type the below command to install the package.

#yum install bluez-hid2hci -y

Now all you want to do is start the Bluetooth service. To start the service type following command.

#service bluetooth start

It will provide the result like below image.

Now restart your system to save all the changes.