Fedora 19 Released

Fedora project has officially announced the release of Fedora 19 code named Schrödinger's cat. Fedora 19 features the 3.9.0 kernel. For end users, the new features include the Cinnamon desktop environment, GNOME 3.8, KDE 4.10, and MATE 1.6 desktop; Out of the box support for extraction of RAR archives using File Roller archive utility, a new screen management software for KDE named KScreen, OpenVPN 2.3, and more.

For the developers, most of the development tools like Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, GCC (4.8.x) - have been updated. But more importantly, Fedora 19 now includes the Node.js JavaScript runtime environment for developing fast, scalable network applications using the JavaScript programming language. MariaDB a fork of MySQL has also been included which replaces MySQL.

How to download Fedora 19

There are multiple desktops available for use with Fedora. Each has a slightly different look and feel and offers varying levels of customization. Visit fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options and choose the one that strikes your fancy.

If you are already using a previous version of Fedora, then it is possible to upgrade to Fedora 19. Visit fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading to know more.

You can find the full release notes here. Fedora also comes with comprehensive documentation on every aspect of the OS that the end user might encounter which is a big plus.

Fedora 18 has been released

This is the latest version of the Fedora Linux operating system code named "Spherical Cow". Fedora 18 "Desktop Edition" is made available as a Live CD so that you can try out Fedora 18 without needing to install it on your PC.

Fedora 17 - Beefy Miracle Released

Fedora 17 aka "Beefy Miracle" has been officially released. Fedora 17 brings a wide range of improvements both over and under the hood. For the details, read about all the changes for Desktop users, for System Administrators, and the full feature list.

Watch the video below where the developers talk on the Fedora 17 release.



Fedora 17 Desktop edition and its various spins can be downloaded from the following page.

How to Configure a Network Interface Card in Linux

This guide explains how to configure a network interface card in Linux.

If you are using a modern Linux distribution, chances are your network card will be detected automatically and configured for DHCP.

However, there may be instances where you are forced to configure your network interface card manually. This guide explains the step by step process to configure a network interface card in Fedora Linux.

Top 5 Linux Distributions

As a Linux user, I am sure, you will be interested to know which is the most popular Linux distribution. Till recently, if you go by Distrowatch stats, Ubuntu ruled the roost as the most popular Linux distribution. However, after Ubuntu team made a switch to the Unity interface, its popularity has declined considerably.

Metric equivalent of Microsoft fonts for Linux

Visit any random website and chances are the website expects your machine to have a set of fonts which have become the de-facto standard on the Internet. The fonts being Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and so on. While it may not be illegal to install these fonts on a Linux machine, they are propritery and are owned by Microsoft. And Microsoft does not licence third parties to redistribute these fonts - a reason why you don't find these commonly used popular fonts installed in Linux by default.

This is going to change once and for all. Red Hat in association with Ascender Corp has developed a set of fonts which are the metric equivalent of the most popular Microsoft fonts, and they have released it under the GPL+exception license. Three sets of fonts have been released, them being:

1. Sans - a substitute for Arial, Albany, Helvetica, Nimbus Sans L, and Bitstream Vera Sans
2. Serif - a substitute for Times New Roman, Thorndale, Nimbus Roman, and Bitstream Vera Serif and
3. Mono - a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, Courier, Nimbus Mono L, and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
   

The advantage for Linux users is that now you don't have to explicitly install Microsoft fonts anymore as the web sites or documents which use Microsoft fonts will display flawlessly using the metric equivalent fonts which can be included in all Linux distributions by default.

The work on the fonts is yet to be completed and so will be released in two stages. In the first stage, all the fonts are released as fully usable but will lack the full hinting capability provided by True Type/Free Type technology. In the second phase of the release which will happen some time in later half of 2007, the fonts will have full hinting capability and will be at par with or excel the Microsoft fonts in quality. For now Red Hat has made available all the fonts for download so that you can test it on your machine.

Creating good quality fonts - ie. fonts which retain its quality even in smaller sizes is a very tedious and time consuming process. And buying good quality fonts is a very costly affair with each set of fonts costing anything upwards of $100 . By taking the initiative to develop good quality fonts which are the metric equivalent of Microsoft fonts, and releasing them under a Free licence, Red Hat has done a very good deed for the Free Software and Open Source cause.

Change your Mail Transport Agent (MTA)

A Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) is a software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using a client server application architecture. An MTA is also called by a few other names such as - a Message Transfer Agent, Mail Relay, and Mail Transport Agent.

Some of the popular MTAs in use are Sendmail, Exim, and Postfix.

Fedora and Red Hat Linux distributions by default ship with Sendmail as their MTA. However, switching to another MTA such as Exim or Postfix is quite easy.

Switch between MTAs

Method 1 : alternatives command

In Fedora or Red Hat, you can change the default MTA by using the alternatives command.

With alternatives, an executable with a generic name on the file system is used to access a particular service. This executable is really a symbolic link to another symlink in the /etc/alternatives/ directory. For example, the /usr/bin/sendmail is actually a symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/mta . In order to select between Sendmail or Postfix, we just change the symlink for the /etc/alternatives/mta . This is normally done with the alternatives command. Here are some examples:

To display which MTA alternative is in use:

# alternatives --display mta

To choose from the available MTA alternatives from the command line :

# alternatives --config mta

To setup Postfix as the default mail system:

# alternatives --set mta

Method 2 : system-switch-mail

Another method of changing your default MTA in Fedora is to use the /usr/sbin/system-switch-mail or /usr/sbin/system-switch-mail-nox tool. You will first have to install the system-switch-mail package using Yum as follows.

$ su -c 'yum install system-switch-mail'

Once you have installed the system-switch-mail package, you can run one of the corresponding tools to switch between the different MTAs installed in your system. When you run the system-switch-mail[-nox] command, you will see a self-explanatory selection dialog that allows you to switch to another MTA installed in your system.

Verify that the MTA is running

To verify that the MTA of your choice has started running, open system-config-services in Fedora and see if it lists your MTA in the services that are running on your system.

List of services running in Fedora

How to install a Network card in linux

This article is outdated. Please see - Configuring a network card in Linux for the updated information.

There are different ways of installing a network card in linux - and that too depending on the linux distribution that you are using. I will explain each one of these methods here.

The Manual method

Open the computer case and insert the network card into an empty PCI slot. Then boot up your machine to load linux.

In linux login as root and then navigate to the directory /lib/modules/ . Here you will find the modules supported by your system. Assuming that you have a 3Com ethernet card, in which case, the module name is 3c59x , you have to add this in the /etc/modules.conf file to let the machine detect the card each time the machine boots.

#File: /etc/modules.conf
alias eth0 3c59x

If you have only one network card, it is known by the name eth0, the succeeding network cards in your computer go by the name eth1, eth2 ... and so on.

Next, load the module into the kernel.

root# /sbin/insmod -v 3c59x

Configure an IP address for the network card using ifconfig or netconfig or any other method if your machine gets its IP address from a DHCP server. Eg:

root# ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

The Easy way

RedHat/Fedora distributions of linux ships with Kudzu a device detection program which runs during systems initialization (/etc/rc.d/init.d/kudzu). This can detect a newly installed NIC and load the appropriate driver.

Then use the program /usr/sbin/netconfig to configure the IP address and network settings. The configuration will be stored so that it will be utilized upon system boot.

Also see Assigning an IP address to know more ways of configuring an IP address for your network card.

Package Management using YUM

This is a short tutorial on using YUM - the command line package manager used by Linux distributions like Red Hat, Fedora, and CentOS.

This is not an exhaustive list of all yum commands but it is a list of the basic/common/important ones. For a complete list see the yum man page.