[YLUG] Fedora usability [was Re: clone fedora 10]

[Gaffer.]

Hello Mike,

On Tuesday 06 January 2009 22:08, mike cloaked wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 7:39 PM, Gaffer. <derrick_s at tesco.net> wrote:
> > FWIW I just installed Fedora 10 on my Dell Inspiron 1300 Laptop.
> > Celeron D cpu 512Mb ram and 30Gb HDD.  Without any problems or
> > issues at all.
> >
> > The only complaint that I have is that I prefer the KDE desktop
> > rather than the default Gnome one !  I still have to figure out how
> > to get and install it though.
>
> You could try
> yum groupinstall kde-desktop
>
> Remember you will get KDE4 which is very different to KDE3.5!

Mmm I tried the first version of KDE4/4.1 with very mixed feelings !  
Far too many things just didn't work or were totally missing so I stuck 
with KDE3.

> To switch over the best I find is that you create a file
> /etc/sysconfig/desktop containing:
> DESKTOP="KDE"
> DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE"
> which will then use the kdm login greeter rather than gdm.  You can
> easily revert to gdm if you want to but I find kdm is better anyway
> and looks nicer.
> Then reboot - when the kdm login greeter first loads it won't have a
> desktop selected to login to so choose KDE from the "Session Type"
> menu option and then click on the required user name. That user will
> then appear in the username at the top and you can enter the password
> and login.
>
> Next time round you will have the previous user already in the top
> white box.  kdm is configurable from the kicker menu once you are
> logged in to KDE.
>
> You can also login to KDE once the kde desktop files are installed by
> choosing the username in the gdm greeter and then selecting the kde
> desktop just before pressing the button to login - so using gdm the
> switch is somewhat hidden and it is more obvious in the kdm greeter.
>
> The other nice thing about kdm is that it will time out and make the
> monitor go into powersave if no user logs in whereas gdm does not! 
> In addition you can easily customise the user avatars for kdm from
> the configuration options once logged into KDE (you need the root
> password to do it of course)
>
> Hope this helps.

Oh yes it does.  Thankyou.

I assume that I can easily switch between both Gnome and KDE in a 
similar way to SuSE.  I will find out soon.   ;-)

Someone said that you get used to the way a particular distribution 
works and now that I have Fedora 10 on a machine, I realise how true 
that is !  YAST does an awful lot for you without having to work too 
hard.

-- 
Best Regards:
             Derrick.
	     Open SuSE 10.2 and 11.0 KDE 3, + Laptop Fedora 10.