Things To Do After Installing Fedora

Everybody has their own personal preferences in all walks of life. Desktop computer is no different. Every time I install Fedora, I immediately change few settings. The default settings in some applications may not appeal to every body. They certainly don't, for me at least. I will not discuss configuring network, Internet, printer, audio and video drivers in this post because they are more of necessity than personal preferences. Here goes the list.

Nautilus: The first time you open nautilus(aka File Manager), you will notice each folder opening in different windows. Click on your home folder icon on the desktop and click on few other folders. Your desktop looks clumsy with a whole slew of unwanted windows. The fix:

This solves one major headache.

Num lock: Do you use the numeric keypad a lot? If yes, you know how frustrating it is to turn the num lock on every time you restart the computer. There is a solution for this one too.

The next time you login to X, num lock key turns on automatically. How convenient.

Configuring run levels: Runlevels are modes of computer operation. When you are using Fedora in graphical mode, you are in run level 5. Technically speaking run level 5 is multi-user graphical mode. Run level 3 is multi user text mode. There are a bunch of programs running in each run level. You can configure run levels and stop unwanted programs to start when a particular run level starts. This saves your computer resources and optimizes the performance.

You will require to restart the computer to allow the settings to apply. You can also use the Services Configuration Tool to start, stop, and restart SysV services. To launch the tool.

You will see the description and the status of a service when you click on it. The Start, Stop and Restart buttons are self explanatory.

System update: If you didn't install Fedora on the day it was released, you are most probably missing lot of updates. To take advantage of the latest security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements keep your system up to date. Refer to using yum post for details on how to use yum. On the terminal switch to super user mode type

If there are abundant updates available, it will take a while to download and install them on your computer. Go grab a cup of coffee until it completes.

Vi editor: Do you use the vi editor? Probably vim? I tend to use vim whenever it is available. The default settings for vim on Fedora are fairly good. I set an alias for vi. Whenever I type vi the system launches vim. To set an alias type the below command:

Now type vi and see vim launching. However, the alias setting lasts until you restart the computer. To set a permanent alias, put the same command in your .bashrc file. When the computer starts Bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc. Put this alias in every user's .bashrc file that needs this setting.

If this is the first time you opened .bashrc, you will also notice the alias cp="cp -i". Remember the ugly prompt when you overwrite files with the cp command?

Yes, you guessed it right. Remove the cp="cp -i" alias in the .bashrc file if you do not want to be prompted when overwriting files using the cp command.

Yum cache: When you download packages from the repositories using yum, you have an option to save the rpms on your computer. You can use your yum cache to reinstall or install the same packages on another computer without downloading them again from the repositories. I and my colleague share the yum cache over NFS and save a lump of bandwidth. And also time. To enable the yum cache:

About me: Not but last the least tip. Do you want to display your picture on the graphical login screen? Do you want to change your password without typing a command? I will direct you to the right window.

These are some of my personal preferences. I do these because this is the way I want my computer to behave. What are your personal preferences? How do you change your system preferences? Share them with us by posting comments.