Fedora 18 Alpha on a ThinkPad T430
Just put Fedora
18 Alpha on a ThinkPad T430. (This machine is, as
far as I can tell, a 100% supported, zero-vendor-drama
Linux box. And in normal use it's dead quiet.)
Fedora 18 was an easy install, and boots really
quickly.
Now for the GNOME 3 rant. Actually, not much of
a rant. This is more like a couple of things I found
to tweak.
Since I'm a lumper, not a splitter, I symlinked
Downloads and Desktop in my home directory to "." and
added a .hidden file to hide the stuff I don't want
to show up on the desktop. My "system" is that
there's stuff that's part of a versioned project
(in Perforce or Git), and just one place for stuff
which needs to be gotten rid of or added to a project.
I used gnome-tweak-tool for a couple of things.
Desktop: Have file manager handle the desktop: On
Shell: Arrangements of buttons on the titlebar: All
Typing: caps: Make Caps Lock and additional Control
Windows: Action on title bar double-click: Toggle Maximize Vertically
Windows: Window focus mode: Sloppy
Now for the fun part: fixing Alt-Tab behavior. (Greg
K-H does this too.) Originally I was using
one GNOME extension to do this, but that doesn't
seem to be maintained any more. There seem
to be a few choices, but I'm currently running Coverflow
Alt-Tab which does a nice job and by default
cycles among windows on all workspaces.
So that is my one GNOME extension so far.
Two basic setup tasks, adding the printer and a
wireless network, went really smoothly. The UI for
networking on here is much improved—just pick
a network and it prompts for a password if necessary.
Simple.
The wireless network config is pretty similar
to Mac OS (the designers of the two systems have
probably been peeking over each other's shoulders
at coffeehouses). For the printer, though, advantage
Fedora. I just hit "Printers" under System Settings,
and it found the HP LaserJet 3055 on the home network
and just worked. No pause to download or install
any software. Easiest print setup ever.
I got baffled by the VPN setup, though. Trying to
translate a working OpenVPN config file into the right
config choices did not go well, so I just wrote a
script to start OpenVPN and pass it the file. If I
have time I will take another look at doing this the
easy way, but for now the script Works For Me.
Getting out of GNOME territory, a few other tweaks.
I added a "lessx.sh" file to /etc/profile.d. It goes something like
this:
export LESS=-X
I tightened up sshd configuration (yes I run sshd
on the client, long story). Listen on lo only,
PasswordAuthentication no. I also swapped out
Sendmail for Postfix and set up the myorigin and
defaulttransport lines in main.cf to tunnel outgoing
mail out via ssh.
One puzzling thing was the result of nmap. Looks like
rpcbind is running. A "sudo yum remove rpcbind"
took care of that, but it's a little strange to see
this service running. At least it shows that my
long-standing "always nmap a fresh install" advice
is still good.
Syndicated 2012-11-13 14:49:59 from Don Marti