Desktop view on KDE 4.2

Fedora fans are certainly very happy to see their kde desktop updated to KDE 4.2. The new version is really more attractive than ever. In this version, you can put a folder view for you desktop by selecting apparence setting

Play radio with Fedora

Some radio website allow you to play the live radio station with an embedded player as for BBC 2. However, this may be embarrassing for some people how probaly like listen to radio with application minimized in tray zone.

If the link is not proposed, you can follow the following procedure to play your favorite radio:
1. install videodownloadhelper plugin for firefox.
2. open the radio in the embedded player
3. the videodownloadhelper will capture the stream. You can download the file and obtain the source download link (tools-> downloads-> copy download link)
4. Play your radio in your favorite audio player (amarok and realplayer for my case)

Exemple: play BBC 2 radio channel with this command:


realplay http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/realmedia/fmg2.ram


ps: thanks to Tom Horsley for his help

send SMS with SKYPE on fedora

We provide a set of commands that permits to enable sending sms on linux FEDORA. Note that sending SMS with skype is not free.

Requires:
1. Download and install skype
2. install python and python-devel
(as root) : yum -y install python python-devel

Installations steps:

3. As root, execute the following commands

wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge\
/skype4py/Skype4Py-1.0.29.0.tar.gz

tar zxvf  Skype4Py-1.0.29.0.tar.gz

cd Skype4Py-1.0.29.0/

python setup.py install

cd ..

4. From your account, Lunch skype:
skype&

5. Execute the following set of commands in your account

wget http://www.kolmann.at/philipp/linux/\
skysentials/skysentials-1.0.1.tar.gz

tar zxvf  skysentials-1.0.1.tar.gz

cd skysentials-1.0.1/

./skysentials.py

6. have a fun

Using the webcam with kernel 2.6.27

After updating you kernel to version 2.6.27, some applications like skype and cheese may crash or not be able to play webcam videos. This is due to the incompatibility between V4L1 and V4L2.

Note that drivers gspca has been integrated in the kernel starting from 2.6.27 and use V4L2 instead of V4L1.

The solution for this problem consists on downloading the compatibily labraries and then to load them before starting the application.

On Fedora, this can be done with the following commands (as root):

For i386

wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/libv4l \
/0.5.4/1.fc9/i386/libv4l-0.5.4-1.fc9.i386.rpm

rpm -ivh libv4l-0.5.4-1.fc9.i386.rpm

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so cheese

For x86_64

wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/libv4l \
/0.5.4/1.fc9/x86_64/libv4l-0.5.4-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm

rpm -ivh libv4l-0.5.4-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libv4l/v4l1compat.so cheese

How to change the mac adress in Fedora

Some people may need to change the mac address of their ethernet network cards. This can be easily done with fedora with command line. Just follow the steps below:
1. Log as root on a textual console (ctrl+F2) or through "su -" command in your console
2. Print your network configuration with ifconfig

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:8B:6A:7E:9E
inet addr:10.1.128.244 Bcast:10.1.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
inet6 addr: fe80::218:8bff:fedb:7e9e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:79086 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:40319 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:72461556 (69.1 MiB) TX bytes:5245562 (5.0 MiB)
Interrupt:17


Here, eth0 is the ethernet interface of your system. The mac address is put in red.

3. Change your mac address using the following syntax

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:18:8B:CA:7E:90

The new value (in green) must be hexadecimal

4. if you have a dhcp server that distributes the adresses automatically, then request a new adress for your eth0 interface

[root@localhost ~]# dhclient eth0

5. Now, your interface is up and have a new mac and IP addresses. This feature may be useful if the network administrator ban you according to the mac adress, for example .........