Repositories for Fedora Core 6

Fedora Core is in rapid development. Repositories or in short repos (plural of repo) are servers which provide packages for Fedora Core users to install and update packages. For those who likes to live on the edge should enable testing repo. For newbie, you can use pirut or go to Application --> Add/Remove Software and enable the testing repo. Be warned that the packages provided are not stable. They can even make your computer system hang and your CD drive burnt ;). I don't like it. I like everything to be stable and I have experienced how it was to be living on the bleeding edge. Things were not that good. :D

Beside core, updates and extras repositories, you might need to add livna and kde repositories too. These sites provide non-free/proprietary packages like mp3 support and proprietary display drivers (ATI and NVIDIA). The kde repo stated above provides unofficial kde packages from kde community itself. The packages comes as updates for the packages provided by official Fedora repo.

To add livna repo, run this command :
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm

To add kde repo, download this file using wget:
wget http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/fedora/kde.repo

and put this file in /etc/yum.repos.d/

Afterthat, try checking updates by running yum check-update. You should see many updates come from both repos.

Setting up wireless with Mandriva 2007

I rarely install Linux on laptop. It was great to have one and saw how Linux distros progressed in this area. Since last week, I have been a responsible person for one of my office's laptop. I tried installing Fedora Core 6 on it. It was no good. After a couple of minutes, it started to become slower like something was going on in the background. It was so annoying. I tried upgrading the kernel and all the latest updates using yum but to no avail. Of course your mileage may vary.

Mandriva 2007

With Mandriva 2007, I was in luck. I got the DVD from LinuxForYou magazine. I am no stranger with Mandriva. I have been using it for 5 years and one of servers I managed using it. As any desktop-oriented distros, Mandriva is one of the user-friendliest distros out there. It is good and will be better in the future.

Wireless

My laptop is Intel-based. What i mean here is the wireless, CPU and VGA chipsets are from Intel. My wireless is ipw3945. No driver for this chipset I could found in the DVD. After googling, the driver is here. This is the kernel module (driver) for the wireless chipset. Hence, I activated it with modprobe : modprobe ipw3945. It created a device called eth1 (eth0 was reserved for wired connection).

Connecting to AP
Open Mandriva Control Center and go to Network And Internet:
Click on the Wireless connection.


As you see in the diagram below, the AP signal was detected and shown. The button Disconnect should be Connect before you connect your laptop to the AP.


If the connection is successful, then you can connect to your network and internet. Contact your network administrator if you have problem. Good luck.