Fedora 11 Installation and Post Installation Guide - Page 14

Plymouth is the new Graphical Boot of Fedora 11 which replaces the old RHGB. It requires kernel modesetting (KMS) support to work properly. KMS is currently supported on most ATI Radeon chips; anything from the Radeon 9500 and newer should work. Intel KMS support is in development, but is not yet supported. For all other graphics hardware, the text plugin is used. If you see only a scrolling bar when booting to Fedora you can try to force your Hardware into graphics mode without using KMS support. To do so reat below at the Graphical Boot Problem. However you could first try and change this theme to another one to see if it works without any changes to your grub.conf.

su -
yum install plymouth-plugin-{fade-throbber,label,space-flares,throbgress,two-step}
yum install plymouth-theme-{charge,fade-in,solar,spinfinity}
yum install plymouth-utils

su -
plymouth-set-default-theme themename
/usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrd

While booting in Fedora 11 you might have seen a blue scrolling bar loading instead of the grub's graphical boot screen. This has happened because of the modesetting option of the kernel that Fedora 11 uses. In order to see the graphical boot you must edit grub.conf and add a vga resolution to it. Here it is how:

su -
gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

title Fedora (****)
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-**** ro root=UUID=**** rhgb quiet vga=792
initrd /boot/initrd-****

vga=792 stands for 1024x768 resolution with 24-bit colours. You can find the resolution you like from the table below.

If the resolution you want isn't among those open a terminal and type vbetest as root. You will see a list like this:

Add 512 to the number you see inside brackets. For example if you have a 24bit widescreen with 1280x800 resolution add vga=865 (512+353).

27. xorg.conf is missing

Many Fedora users complain that xorg.conf is missing in Fedora 11 and cannot find it in its usual location /etc/X11/xorg.conf to make some changes on their own. Well this is not bug, this is a feature of Fedora 11! But here is how to create xorg.conf if you really need it. As root open a terminal and type:


This will create a default xorg.conf in /root/xorg.conf.new which you can copy to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

If you are using Radeon or Nvidia drivers from rpmfusion repository alternatively type:

This script will automatically create an xorg.conf in its correct location.

28. GUI root login

Fedora 11 by default doesn't allow someone to login as root through GDM. Instead you have to login as a normal user and become root through your terminal. However many users still want to login as root. Although I don't approve this here is how to do it. Don't forget that once you login as root its easier to damage your system so don't do the following unless you are sure what you are doing.

Open a terminal and type:

Here find the following line

and comment it like this

#auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet

Save the file and logout.

Do the same for /etc/pam.d/gdm-password

Now you can login as root. However you will notice that some stuff like Services won't run. To solve this type:

And paste the following line between the <config></config>

The problem that remains is that system-config-services is slow to respond, but it works. Don't forget, it's not a good idea to login as root.

29. Install Google Chrome on Fedora 11

I believe you all know Google's browser, Chrome. A Linux version for Debian/Ubuntu is present for a lot time now. Now you can install Chromium on Fedora 11 as well easily thanks to a Chromium repo by spot.fedorapeople.org. It is available for both 32 and 64bit Fedora versions! To do so open a terminal and type:

And paste the following lines:

Now just type:

30. Fedora Books

I have received many emails asking me to advise for Fedora and Linux books. Here are some good books you can read and enhance your knownledge on Linux and Fedora. I hope you will find them useful!



I hope this guide was useful for all Fedora users, old and new ones! If you think there is something that should be added on this guide just leave me a comment below!

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