Fedora 3 on my Compaq Presario

This is a collection of notes for installing Fedora 3 on my desktop. It is not intended to be a walkthrough or comprehensive. I am mainly just jotting downd the tricky parts so that I do not need to remember them the next time install.

The Machine

I have a Compaq Presario. It is the 5014US model. I have replaced the hard drive, added a second one, increased the RAM, added a soundcard, added a video card, and added an ethernet card. I think that is about it. It connects to the internet through the ethernet card, which is on a LAN that connects to the WAN via a Qwest modem (see my guide for Linux working with Qwest for that can of worms). I have a Compaq IJ600 printer connected via USV to the computer. I connect a MakoPad SV-234 to the soundcard (joystick port). The monitor is the one that came with the computer, a Compaq FS740. This is an older computer, so the keyboard has died and I replaced it with a Logitech Access Keyboard. That should be it for peripherals. In summary, installing Linux on this machine is very straightforward. Just a few tricky parts...

Display

I use a generic CRT driver for 1280x1024. However, I actually run things at 1024x768. That is a slightly cramped desktop, but it seems to work best.

Updating

I have problems with Red Hat's updater. Fortunately, a very easy alternative is apt-get. I just run "update" and "upgrade after installing.

Boot?

Fedora 3 names one of the partitions "boot," which is what I think causes problems during loading. I have not bothered to figure out how to fix this yet. However, I believe a fix is necessary if you want to mess with GRUB.

Programs

I highly recommend both firefox and thunderbird. I won't make any claim like "they are more secure" or anything like that. I just like them.

Sharing with windows

For some reason, Fedora 3 does not seem to install everything I would like when using Samba. Maybe some of the more hard-core linux users think SWAT is whimpy. Anyway, download the newest versions of samba, samba-client, samba-common and samba-swat from samba web site. After installing them, you can use SWAT (http://localhost:901/) or the red hat samba configuration editor (under System Settings - Server Settings - Samba) to set things up. You may also need to go to the Services configuration (under System Settings - Server Settings - Services) to make sure everything is on and set to automatically start up.

If you have a firewall on (good idea) then you need to open up some ports. Go to the Security Level Configuration (under System Settings - Security Level) and make sure ports 137, 138, 139, and 901 are open for tcp and udp. Then hit OK.

Printer

I still don't have the printer working entirely correct. The alignment seems to be off (pretty badly). From what I can tell, the IJ600 is a Lexmark Z32. That's all I know. Well, I also know that CUPS is found at port 631, but I do not know what to do with it.

DVD player

Use apt. Just do "apt-get install xine" and then watch your movies using xine.

MP3s

Use apt. Just do "apt-get install xmms-mp3" and then use xmms to play your mp3s.

The Joystick

Fedora 3 seemed to do a good job of installing the drivers (modules) for the soundcard. However, the joystick did not work. I tried a number of things, but I believe the problem was in /etc/modprobe.conf. Here is the thread where I found the solution. It's post #3. I meshed that modprobe.conf file with the one I currently have. I am not sure what exactly it all means, but it worked. I also have the joystick wrapper library working, but I have not really used it. When installing this, I had to "apt-get install gtk+-devel" in order to compile it. My MakoPad SV-234 works fine with my Creative ES1371 soundcard (running snd-ens1371).