After not using Fedora for quite a few years, I’ve finally decided to revisit the distro and I am happy to say with a few changes post-install Fedora 15 and Gnome 3 can easily look as good as or perhaps better than Ubuntu and Unity.
Subpixel font smoothing
There have been a lot of complaints about fonts not working in Fedora 15 and looking bad, particularly in Firefox, Terminal, GEdit, etc. This is unfortunate as good looking fonts are very important to the overall impression of a UI and as it is very easy to fix this. As a normal user in terminal paste everything down to and including FOE.
As root user (in terminal type su and root password when requested)
Improve Font Appearance
Add MS Fonts
Install RPM Fusion Repositories [http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration]
Install Freetype Fonts
Install MP3 Plugins
Install the livna-release package for libdvdcss (DVD Decoding) if legal in your country
Install Flash
Follow instructions at http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2010/install-adobe-flash-player-10-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel/
GNOME Tweaking Tools – install them using the terminal
Install the Hope theme
Download and follow instructions at http://grvrulz.deviantart.com/art/Hope-gtk3-206207315
Run the gnome-tweak-tool
Shell tab — show date in clock
Interface tab -> Gtk+ theme Hope
Run the gconf-editor
desktop->gnome->shell->windows->theme Hope
Optional — install themeselector for Gnome Shell
Follow instructions at http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/themeselector-gnome-shell-extension-to.html
Optional — install multilanguage input support
Follow instructions at http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2011/06/12/japanese-input-on-fedora-15-linux-gnome-3/
logout and login again to make sure changes are working
Additional Helpful Gnome 3 Links
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME (for ArchLinux but a useful reference in general)
http://www.webupd8.org/search/label/gnome%20shell?max-results=10
Additional Helpful Links for Custom Dev Environments
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/
#1 by Daniel Mack on July 24, 2011 - 11:22 am
I’m getting the following errors:
…..No package freetype-freeworld available.
…..No package chkfontpath available.
…..Error: Package: msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch
………..(/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch)
………..Requires: /usr/sbin/chkfontpath
………..You could try using –skip-broken to work around the problem
………..You could try running: rpm -Va –nofiles –nodigest
I would appreciate any help you may offer.
Thank you,
Daniel
#2 by James Sullivan on July 24, 2011 - 8:45 pm
Daniel,
I’ve updated the order for the installs in the article. Please try it in the new order and see if that helps.
Good Luck,
James
#3 by Satya on September 12, 2011 - 12:17 pm
You should consider Fedora Utils – http://fedorautils.sf.net
It is a neat script to do everything automatically
#4 by dave on September 21, 2011 - 7:19 am
Thanks for the instructions.
I have been on-board with Fedora since V1 and as it is Redhat have always loved it.
At this point, I have to congratulate the Fedora World, you finally made a product as annoying and unreliable as Windows.
Flaky, unreliable and annoying to use, they basically screwed Gnome to the point where a Windows 98 Desktop is more fun and reliable ti use.
The bottom end (command line) is the usual stuff (solid, fast efficient and reliable) but I have to wonder how long until they screw that up to.
Not a fan of Ubuntu since 6.06. Way too much dis and mis information – half done tutorials, or guess work.
Fedora/ Redhat world support is excellent. Probably because if you post a tutorial with anything wrong, you get flamed very quickly..
At the end of the day its all about the support isn’t it?
Again thanks for this article, helps configure a lot. Unfortunately cannot fix the broken almost unusable Gnome.
#5 by perlguy on September 30, 2011 - 8:20 pm
FYI… the .fonts.conf autohint setting has little to do with antialiasing and sub-pixel-rendering. Installing freetype-freeworld, and using gnome-tweak-tool to change from grayscale to rgba – *that* enables sub-pixel-rendering. You CAN enable the option .fonts.conf instead of gnome-tweak-tool, but the option name is is “rgba”, and values vary, but most common is “rgb”. Check out /etc/fonts/conf.avail, for the various options and differences. for rgba to have effect, antialias has to be true as well – which is is by default under F15.
Now, if only I can find out why gvim doesn’t honor the ld.so.conf.d freetype-freeworld config, and insists on using the stock (no spr) freetype libs… when gnome-shell and gedit work fine. (ldd run against gedit and gvim show the difference – but I don’t know *why* they are different).
#6 by Richard J on December 27, 2011 - 8:12 pm
I DID THIS and It brought in a TON of Garbage……. I highly recomend that you do not take this route.
It is very easy to find a step by step way to update your system and it is simple to copy paste. Fair warning…
#7 by Satya on February 18, 2012 - 1:24 pm
Garbage? I don’t know what are you talking about. I have kept installations as minimal as possible, and it won’t install it change anything unless you select to do so. Perhaps you should file a bug report, if you really care about open source.