title:Fedora KDE install, setup and config tricks and mini howto
keywords:fedora,core,kde,nfs,network,install,x,windows,x11,keramic,login,auto,root
description:How to change some irritating defaults with KDE, and where to find obscure settings.

December 2006, Fedora Core 5 (yes, I know that FC6 is already out).

Fedora Core and KDE are wonderful. However, out of the box there are
some fine features that are disabled or set "wrong" to my way of
thinking. One big problem with the default FC is Gnome. I used to like
Gnome, but in the past few years Gnome seems to have gotten bloated
and slow, while at the same time losing most of my favorite
features. In the meantime, KDE has gotten faster and gained
features. The choice is clear. KDE rocks.

I'm open to other opinions, but this document is about making KDE a
little friendlier and fun to use, and how to get Gnome out of the
way. On some machines I've gone so far as to not install
Gnome. However, I don't recommend this. The alternately-abled people
who configure Fedora and Anaconda assume that Gnome is present and
rely on one or two of its utilities for firstboot (or used to). Disk
is cheap (and yum can remove Gnome later if you want).



Firefox and Thunderbird fonts
-----------------------------

Firefox menu fonts are too small (or too large). Thunderbird menu
fonts are too large or too small. Firefox fonts do not use the KDE
preferences. Thunderbird does not use KDE preferences.

Apparently, Mozilla products use the GTK QT engine. Install the
yum/rpm package gtk-qt-engine from Fedora extras. After installation
you'll hve a new Control Center option under Appearance & Themes
called "GTK Styles and Fonts". Make changes, log out and log in.

yum -y install gtk-qt-engine




KDM instead of GDM
------------------

The KDE control panel login manager doesn't seem to work quite right
with gdm, so I suggest switching to kdm. You will also want the
display manager to default to using KDE as the desktop.

[root@zeus ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/desktop
DESKTOP="KDE"
DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE"
[root@zeus ~]#

In /etc/X11/xdm/kdmrc:

AllowRootLogin=true

Yes, you will have to be root to edit these settings. Make a copy of
these files before editing.



Window settings
---------------

KDE calls the start button (or start menu) the the K Menu. I'll it the
K Menu even though it never has a "k" on it, and varies from having a
picture of a red hat to having the Fedora "f". 

"K Menu" / "Control Center" / "Appearance & Themes" / "Window Decorations"

Under the "Window" tab choose "Keramik". The reason is that several
features are only available in this window style. In particlar, I like
a fat window border. This fatter border makes it easier to grab window
borders when resizing. In the days of yore, screen real estate was too
valuable to waste on wide window borders, but no more. 

I *really* want the window borders hidden for maximized windows. This
is one of those settings I can never find. (Part of the reason I'm writing
these notes is so that I'll be able to find these settings). Look in
"Window Behavior".

"K Menu" / "Control Center" / "Desktop" / "Window Behavior" under the
tab "Moving" uncheck "Allow moving and resizing of maximized
windows". Sheez.

I leave "Placement" set to "Smart" although it is might be better
called Wacky as far as I can tell. New windows are invariably never
where I want them. However, KDE and Fedora isn't a Macintosh, so at
least I have some choices. (I was an Apple evangelist, so don't even
start in with me about how wonderful the Mac is. Since I'm ranting
about everything else, the KDE Control Center programmers could
collect an index of the settings and put that in the Control Center a
Help Center. It would make it easier to track down one of the dozens
of available settings.)

Next I like to fix the "K Menu" / "Control Center" / "Desktop" / "Taskbar"

Check only "Show application icons". Group similar tasks: Never
(although this acts like it is set to "always" since all the Firefox
and terminal windows are grouped... go figure). Appearance: Elegant.

On important setting is in "Window Behavior". Under the "Advanced" tab
is the "Focus stealing prevention level", which I set to "High". This
keeps new application windows from popping to the front if you are
actively doing something. For example, I'll launch a terminal window,
and login to one of he many servers at work. At the same time, I
launch Firefox, Thunderbird, Emacs and Xmms. They can open in the
background in their own good time (even on an SMP machine opening
those apps can seem glacial). I don't want Thunderbird to pop up the
login window if I'm check the status of my jobs on the cluster.

Next, I go through all the other tabs in "Window Behavior" and disable all
the animations, active window borders, don't display content in rising
windows, etc. 

I don't like tooltips on my desktop or taskbar or in the Panel (the
toolbar at the bottom of the screen with the start button, etc.



Install XMMS 
------------

XMMS seems to be the most functional music player. The KDE and other
offerings don't work, or are missing critical features. I'm mystified
as to why the world needs 10 crappy media players. FWIW, none of these
non-XMMS players seem to have instructions (examples!!) for how to get
them working with FC.


Use yum to install these packages:
xmms-libs
xmms-acme
xmms
xmms-flac


[mst3k@zeus ~]$ rpm -qa | grep xmms
xmms-libs-1.2.10-25.fc5
xmms-acme-0.4.3-5.fc5
xmms-1.2.10-25.fc5
xmms-flac-1.1.2-26.fc5
[mst3k@zeus ~]$



Starting with either FC4 or FC5, Fedora comes with Fedora Extras
pre-installed for use with yum. This is good. You'll also want Livna
which has some additional useful packages which have some kind of
license conflict with FC (either more restrictive, or less restrictive
distribution licenses; these packages are still freely available).

A prime example is the free MP3 library. The owners of MP3 allowed
free use for many years even though MP3 is patented. Once MP3 became
popular, the owners started suing to get money for licenses. This is
clear just plain wrong and an abuse of the system. Now there is a free
MP3 library, but it can't be distributed by companies like Redhat. We
are reduced to getting it from organizations like Livna. Personally, I
only use ogg and flac unless I have to listen to a snippet from the Web.

http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/UsingLivna
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm


My eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be, so I like a larger default
font in Emacs. The Emacs wizards have failed to write useful
documentation (examples!) for how to get the font size to permanently
stay larger. So I use .Xdefaults 

Changes to this file did not seem to take effect until I had restarted
X. The easiest way to do this is probably to reboot. I think you can
end your session, and in the display manager (that initial login
screen) use control-alt-backspace.

This seems to work better on one of my FC5 installs than on another. I
don't know why. As far as I can tell, all the 100 fonts are
installed. xfontsel is an interesting application. It is better than
nothing (or maybe not) but it certainly sucks and is very, very
obscure.

I'd love to get the font set in my .emacs file, but the Emacs Mule is
more obscure than X Windows.


On the machine where it works:

[twl@zeus ~]$ cat .Xdefaults
*Emacs.font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-14-100-100-100-*-90-iso8859-1
[twl@zeus ~]$


An identical FC5 install where it doesn't seem to work:

[mst3k@zeus ~]$ cat .Xdefaults
# *Emacs.font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--17-120-100-100-m-100-iso8859-1
# *Emacs.font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--14-100-100-100-m-90-iso8859-1
# *Emacs.font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-16-100-100-100-*-90-iso8859-1
*Emacs.font: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--25-180-100-100-*-*-iso8859-1
[mst3k@zeus ~]$