Archive for the ‘Other Distrobutions’ Category

Upon installing Fedora 12 on my desktop I had experienced Audio skipping and scratches when playing DVD’s on Totem, but have experienced no other audio issues with playing music, flash, or avi and mpeg files in Totem. I set out to find a solution to this problem. I do not know how much of a difference any of the below processes made because in the end I lost audio playback in Totem altogether, and ended up Installing VLC. If you are having similar problem I recommend installing VLC first, and work backwards from there.

as root:

alsactl init 0

add tsched=0 to /etc/pulse/default.pa

remove pulseaudio as root



yum remove pulseaudio

reinstall with the fallowing as root:



yum install pulseaudio alsa-plugins-pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-libs pulseaudio-libs-glib2 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-libs-zeroconf xmms-pulse pulseaudio-module-gconf wine-pulseaudio xine-lib-pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pulseaudio-module-bluetooth gst-mixer padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter

now edit /etc/pulse/default.pa

replace: load-module module-detect

with: load-module module-hal-detect tsched=0

open /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

replace: ; default-fragment-size-msec = 25

with: ; default-fragment-size-msec = 10

and reboot

check your audio mixer settings. Open the Pulse Audio Device Chooser (loads in system tray) and select default as the default server.

At this point DVD would have audio in Totem on the menu system but not when playing the movie. At this point I got frustrated enough with fixing DVD audio in totem I defaulted to installing VLC.

as root:

yum install VLC

As always VLC works perfectly. I prefer Totem (with the Xine engine), however it appears as if Fedora no longer provides this option. The only real issue I have with VLC is its use of QT libraries when I prefer to run GTK libraries for the simple fact that I run the XFCE desktop with some Gnome components and QT adds extra unnecessary weight to my desktop.

One of the the things that has always bugged me about fedora is some of their rigid policies concerning proprietary codecs such as MP3s. Granted Debian’s policies are nealy as restrictive, but relatively easy to get around if you so desire. A good example of this contrast between the two distributions’ policies is with the EasyTag package which allows me to manage the id3 tags for my MP3 collection. In Debian I only have to install the proper codecs and libraries from a third party source. In Fedora, they have gone to the level of not compiling their EasyTag package with mp3 support. The solution I found was the following command (which takes EasyTag from their unstable branch).

as root:

yum –enablerepo=rawhide –disableplugin=protectbase update easytag

as root:

yum install compiz-gnome compiz-fusion-extras compiz-fusion-extras-gnome emerald emerald-themes fusion-icon

add fusion-icon to menu preferences –> appearances and select the Application Autostart tab

Configure Compiz the way you like it.

note: you need to have RPM fusion and livna.org repositories enable (read here)

as root:

yum install kmod-nvidia

if you are using the PAE kernel:

yum install kmod-nvidia-PAE

for the default kenrel as root:

sed -i ‘/root=UUID/s|$| rdblacklist=nouveau|’ /boot/grub/grub.conf

for PAE Kernel:

sed -i ‘/root=UUID/s|$| vmalloc=256m|’ /boot/grub/grub/conf

Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and for the default kernel make sure nouveau.modeset=0 vga=0×318 has been added to the end of the kernal line or vmalloc=256m vga=0×318 if you are using the PAE kernel.

as root:

setsebool -P allow_execstack on

now reboot

PAE stands for Physician Address Extension and is an option for the Linux kernel which will allow you to access 4gig of RAM on a 32 bit kernel setup.

install as root:

yum install kernal-PAE

Reboot the computer and a new kernel option, indicated by the suffix PAE, is available. Boot that kernel. In the terminal type:

free -m

and you should see a print out with a number close to 4025 listed under total.

as root remove the default kernel:

yum remove kernel