Dual Booting the
Clemson Dell Latitude C600:
Windows 2000 and Red Hat Fedora Core 1

Bill Moss
Updated April 3, 2004

Introduction
Post Installation Configuration of the C600
Installation of Applications not in FC1
Gnome and KDE
Conclusions

Introduction

This article discusses the dual boot installation of Red Hat Fedora Core 1 (FC1) on a Dell C600. Several packages not included in FC1 are also discussed. In addition, we compare the Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1 desktop environments.

On the Fedora Project homepage fedora.redhat.com, we find the following statement.

"The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in the building of Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than was possible in Red Hat Linux. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system that uses free software development practices and is more appealing to the open source community."

Red Hat is terminating support for Red Hat 9 and earlier versions.

Over the last three years I have made several changes to the partition table on my C600 using the commercial product Partition Magic. I have also used Ghost to create images of Windows and Linux partitions. There are now Linux based alternatives. Knoppix is a bootable CD (699 MB) with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. Knoppix can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, or rescue system. The Knoppix collection includes Qtparted and partimage. Qtparted is a GUI for GNU parted and has functionality similar to Partition Magic, partimage has functionality similar to Ghost. SystemRescueCD (104 MB) is a linux system on a bootable CD for repairing your system and your data after a crash. Like Knoppix, SystemRescueCD contains Qtparted and partimage (See www.knoppix.org and www.sysresccd.org).

FC1 was installed without problem using the following partition table.

Partition Table, Dell C600, dual boot Windows 2000 and RH FC1

drive letter/mount point	partition	cylinders	size (MB)	type	pri/log
C	/dev/hda1	1-629	4934.0	fat32	primary
	/dev/hda2	642-2432	14049.0	extended	primary
/boot	/dev/hda3	630-641	94.1	linux ext3	primary
D	/dev/hda5	642-1794	9044.4	fat32	logical
/home	/dev/hda6	1795-1859	502.0	linux ext3	logical
/	/dev/hda7	1860-2366	3984.8	linux ext3	logical
swap	/dev/hda8	2367-2432	517.7		logical

I chose the default GRUB bootloader and installed it in the /boot partition /dev/hda3. GRUB was configured to boot Windows 2000 in /dev/hda1 by default. In addition to the default packages for the personal workstation option, I chose the development, kernel compile, and document publication packages. I also installed both Gnome and KDE desktop environments for comparison purposes.

Post Installation Configuration of the C600

Mounting the Windows Partitions. To mount C and D from Linux, as root I added the following lines to /etc/fstab.

  /dev/hda1 /mnt/windowsc vfat rw,nouser,auto,uid=500,gid=500 0 0
  /dev/hda5 /mnt/windowsd vfat rw,nouser,auto,uid=500,gid=500 0 0

and then issued the commands

  # mkdir /mnt/windowsc # mkdir /mnt/windowsd 
  # mount /dev/hda1 # mount /dev/hda5

Network Interface Configuration. The Clemson Dell Latitude C600 came with a Xircom RBEM56G-100, multifunction Ethernet-modem, Type III cardbus PCI card and a Dell True Mobile mini-PCI card. Configuration can be done with the Red Hat Network configuration tool: Start Applications -> System Settings -> Network. On the Hardware tab, I found two items listed.

Description	Type	Device
Prism II Wireless	Ethernet	eth0
Cardbus Ethernet	Wireless	eth1

Note that the descriptions are reversed but these descriptions automatically updated after the configuration was completed.

On the Devices tab, I found two devices of type Ethernet listed. There should have been one device of type of Ethernet and one device of type of Wireless. I deleted these two devices and started over. I added a device of type Ethernet, a device of type Wireless, and a device of type Modem. I configured each device to be inactive on boot and to dynamically acquire its IP address and DNS information. I also configured these devices so that they can be enabled and disabled by users.

On the Wireless Settings tab of the Wireless device, I set the mode to Managed, the SSID to cuairnet, and set the Clemson WEP key. On the Hardware Device tab of the Wireless device, I checked "Bind to Mac address" and hit the Probe button. The correct Mac address for the Wireless card appeared in a textbox.

On the Hardware Device tab of the Ethernet device, I checked "Bind to Mac address" and hit the Probe button. The correct Mac address for the Ethernet card appeared in a textbox.

On the Provider tab of the Modem device, I set the dialup number, username, and password.

I saved this configuration, exited, and then restarted the Network configuration tool. On the Hardware tab, I found three items listed.

Description	Type	Device
Xircom Cardbus Ethernet	Ethernet	eth0
orinoco_cs	Wireless	eth1
Generic Modem	Modem	Modem0

I edited the Generic Modem configuration, setting the Baud rate to 115200 and the Flow Control to Hardware.

After rebooting, I found that the Wireless device could be activated with the Network Device Control which uses the ifup command, but the Ethernet and Modem devices could not. A Web search revealed many reports of this behavior. One suggested workaround was to eject the Xircom card and then insert it. I used the commands cardctl eject 0 and cardctl insert 0 and found the Ethernet and Modem devices now worked. Since the Network Device Control cannot be used to control the Ethernet and Modem devices on the C600, I decide to write a script to control the network devices.

I added the commands cardctl eject 0 and cardctl eject 2 to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local so that the machine would boot with all network devices disabled. I created a script ifctl that begins by running netstat -r to show the routing table. The script provides an exit option, enable and disable options for each of the three network devices, and a netstat option. The interfaces are disabled with the ifdown command, but they are enabled using cardctl eject n and cardctl insert n, where socket n = 0 refers to the Xircom card and n = 2 refers to the True Mobile mini-PCI card. The script is set up to be run by a panel launcher in a terminal window. The ifctl panel launcher can be used to enable the network device of choice. Using sudo, the script can be run by a normal user by putting the following line in /etc/sudoers

  bmoss localhost.localdomain = NOPASSWD : /usr/local/bin/ifctl

TrueType Fonts. Windows true type fonts can be made available to Linux, increasing the compatility between Office and OpenOffice. Here are the commands for the true type font families I use with Linux. As root issue the following commands.

  cd /usr/share/fonts
  mkdir truetype
  cd truetype
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/arial.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/arialbd.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/arialbi.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/ariali.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/times.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/timesbd.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/timesbi.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/timesi.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/cour.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/courbd.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/courbi.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/couri.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/verdana.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/verdanaz.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/verdanab.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/verdanai.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/cmex10.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/cmmi10.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/cmr10.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/cmsy10.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math1b__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math1mb_.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math1m__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math1___.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math2b__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math2mb_.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math2m__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math2___.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math3b__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math3mb_.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math3m__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math3___.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math4b__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math4mb_.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math4m__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math4___.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math5b__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math5mb_.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math5m__.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/math5___.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/mtextra.ttf
  ln -s /mnt/windowsc/winnt/fonts/symbol.ttf
  ttmkfdir
  mkfontdir
  chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/truetype
  fc-cache

The cm, math, mtextra, and symbol fonts are needed to display MathML in Firefox or Mozilla on Linux and Windows. With the Mathplayer installed, Internet Explorer also uses these fonts to display MathML on Windows. These fonts can be found at www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/fonts/. If you are dual booting, you only need to install the fonts on the Windows side and then symbolically link as above. To get the true type symbol font to work correctly with Firefox or Mozilla, edit the file ../firefox/res/fonts/fontEncoding.properties. Uncomment the lines

  #encoding.symbol.ttf = Adobe-Symbol-Encoding
  #encoding.symbol.ftcmap = mac_roman

DiskOnKey. M-Systems' DiskOnKey is supported in FC1. I have an older rev 2.01 model. Once inserted, an /etc/fstab record is automatically generated for device /dev/sda, and the directory /mnt/diskonkey is created. As a user you can mount and unmount the key using the commands mount /dev/sda and umount /dev/sda. Another approach is to create on icon for the key on the desktop using the KDE desktop context menu. The context menu of this icon contains a mount/unmount item. Newer keys are mounted read-write but my rev 2.01 key was mounted read-only. There is a workaround. As root, use the command mount -o rw,remount /mnt/diskonkey to remount the key as read-write. To unmount, as root use the command umount /dev/sda before removing it.

Installation of Applications not in FC1

ttM. The applications ttM, TeX4ht, and TeX4moz are the most popular LaTeX to HTML translators. TeX4ht and TeX4moz convert equations into graphics but ttM can convert a LaTeX document into XHTML/MathML. The Linux distribution of ttM is free and can be downloaded from

  hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/mml/.

I used ttM to translate the LaTeX document fermi.tex into fermi.xml. The output file looked good except that the copyright symbol was missing, the prime symbol for derivative was too low, and there were some extra spaces in some of the equations. These were easy fixes. I also created simple screen and print stylesheets defining margins and font properties. With the addition of one line at the top of the file, the XML document is viewable by Internet Explorer + Mathplayer and by Firefox or Mozilla. Here is the edited output file fermi.xml and a PDF file fermi.pdf generated using pdflatex. The PDF version looks good on screen because it was produced with the Mathtime fonts. The printed PDF version is publication quality. On screen the XML version looks good in Firefox on Windows and FC1, but not quite as good as the PDF version. Firefox on Windows can print the XML version and it is comparable to the screen version. Firefox on FC1 cannot handle the MathML fonts. It you want a printed version, stick with PDF.

Maple 9. The package compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.118.i386.rpm was loaded from the FC1 distribution. Maple 9 was loaded from the distribution CD available at Clemson. A symbolic link to the Maple 9 command xmaple was place in /usr/local/bin. This command runs Maple 9 Standard. A Maple 9 item was added to the Main Menu (see Modifying the Main Menu below).

Cisco VPN client. I downloaded the Clemson archive for version 3.7.2 and extracted the configuration file Clemson.pcf. Next, I downloaded the latest version 4.0.3 B and replaced its configuration file with Clemson.pcf. I ran the installation script in the distribution directory, and then set up the command vpnclient connect Clemson to run from a panel launcher in a terminal window. Versions 3.7.2 and the latest version 4.0.3B will work with FC1.

WebDAV. WebDAV (see www.webdav.org) is a protocol that provides for mounting of Web directories on a server running the Apache mod_dav module. Many instructors at Clemson use WebDAV with the course management systems Blackboard, myCLE, and WebCT. Several WebDAV clients are available for Linux.

Cadaver-0.22.0 is an easy compile and install. Cadaver is similar to ftp and it gets an A for stability.
DAVfs-0.2.2 is another easy compile and install. It mounts the remote file system using the coda kernel module. It gets a B for stability. Mounting is smooth but unmounting is not. A workaround is to follow the prescribed killall mount.davfs command with a umount command for each mounted directory.
The KDE 3.1 Konqueror file system and Web browser is part of the FC1 distribution even if the KDE desktop is not selected for installation. Konqueror supports WebDAV. Using locations that begin with webdav:// instead of http://, Konqueror mounted all remote file systems tested. Konqueror gets an A+ for stability and it is fast.
The Gnome 2.4 Nautilus file system browser supports WebDAV. I found I could mount the test directory http://test.webdav.org/dav/ but I could not mount any of my Clemson WebCT course directories. Nautilus gets a D for stability.

Kile. Kile is an integrated development environment (IDE) for LaTeX. I loaded the RPM kile-1.6.1-0.fc1.i386.rpm from kile.sourceforge.net. Although Kile is a KDE application, it can be run under Gnome. I have written a separate article comparing Kile-teTeX on Linux to TeXnicCenter-MikTeX on Windows, so I will say no more here (see www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/latex.html).

Acroread. The Adobe Acrobat reader provides the most consistent rendering of PDF files on Linux and Windows although there are now a number of other free viewers. In addition, the Acrobat reader provides information about font types and font embedding. I loaded the RPM acroread-5.0.8-1.rhfc1.dag.i386.rpm from dag.wieers.com/packages/acroread. Note that Dag Wieers works for IBM Belgium. His repository is of high quality. Each of the packages are tested on the specific Red Hat version before releasing. The file acroread.spec found in the acroread directory contains the following.

  %changelog
  * Tue Jan 27 2004 Dag Wieers <dag@wieers.com> - 5.0.8-1
  - Added fix to make locale settings still work. (Fernando Lozano)

  * Mon Jan 26 2004 Dag Wieers <dag@wieers.com> - 5.0.8-0
  - Added exports for LANG and LC_ALL, just in case. (Axel Thimm)
  - Updated to release 5.0.8.

Without these fixes, users have reported that Acroread crashes when opened under FC1.

Firefox. Soon the Mozilla suite will be broken into components so that users can load only what they need. The browser component is Firefox. The current version is 0.8 which is considered a prerelease version. I have been using Firefox under Windows 2000 and FC1 since it came out. In my opinion it is superior to Internet Explorer. I loaded firefox-0.8-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz from www.mozilla.org/products/firefox. See also dag.wieers.com/packages/firefox/ for a package tested on FC1.

J2re. The Java plugin, part of the Java Runtime Environment, is required to run the Java applets that are built into the course management systems WebCT and Blackboard. I loaded j2re-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin which can be found at java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html. See also j2re-1.4.2-5.rhfc1.dag.i586.rpm at dag.wieers.com/packages/firefox/ for a package tested on FC1. If you only need the plugin, load mozilla-j2re-1.4.2-5.rhfc1.dag.i586.rpm. The following symbolic link was constructed to install the plugin in Firefox.

  /usr/local/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so ->
  /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_04/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so

True Type Fonts for OpenOffice. The true type fonts listed above were made available to OpenOffice using the following steps.

  /usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin -> Fonts... -> Add... ->
  Source directory -> /usr/share/fonts/truetype -> Select all -> OK

The OpenOffice default fonts can be change to true type using

  Tools -> Options -> Text Document -> Basic Fonts (Western)

Apt & Synaptic. Apt is a download utility that is a useful supplement to the FC1 up2date utility. The FC1 download site is often busy and Apt can be set up to download from repositories that have a wider collection of RPM's. I followed the instructions at dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/ to set up Apt. I then used Apt to download and install Synaptic, a GUI for Apt.

Quanta. Quanta is an IDE for markup and scripting languages such as XML, HTML, and XHTML. I installed version 3.1.4-1 using Synaptic. Although Quanta is a KDE application, it can be run under Gnome. Quanta has many of the features of the Windows applications Dreamweaver and HTML-Kit. One feature that is missing is the forward and inverse search found in the LaTeX IDE Kile mentioned above. The typical edit-preview-debug cycle is slowed by the need to scroll the editor and preview windows. The Quanta previewer opens in the Quanta window and automatically updates. This is a time saver.

KWirelessMonitor. This application is designed to run in the system tray. It uses vertical bars to indicated signal strength. KWirelessMonitor was downloaded from KDE-Apps.org.

KDEPIM. The KDE Personal Information Manager contains several components including KOrganizer which can be used to record your daily appointment. KOrganizer can be configured to run in the system tray. Version 3.1.4-4 was downloaded using Synaptic.

K3b. One of the most frequently used CD burning applications is cdrecord. It is part of the FC1 distribution. The application K3b is a KDE GUI for cdrecord. It looks similar to Easy CD Creator on the Windows side. I downloaded it using synaptic. I burned the Knoppix and CD Rescue iso's mentioned above as a test.

Kscd. The application Kscd is a KDE based CD player. It auto loads when a audio CD is loaded. To control master volume setting, run Kmix. You may want to run Kmix in the system tray. Kscd and Kmix are part of the FC1 distribution.

Gnome and KDE

Gnome 2.4 File Association. The method Gnome uses for associating a file with an application and for associating a file with an icon are in a state of transition. The documentation on this topic is not helpful. I took it as a challenge to see if I could get the Gnome 2.4 file manager Nautilus to deal correctly with Maple 9 files. Maple 9 uses two file types. The legacy MWS files are plain text files while the new MW files are XML files. The mime type commonly associated with Maple is application/x-maple so we have one mime type and two file extensions, mws and mw.

The Gnome 2.4 method for associating a file with an application is controlled by mime type. Currently, there are two methods of detecting mime type which are applied in the following order. The first method may be dropped for the next version of Gnome.

Discovery of mime type by examination of file content. This method is controlled by the entries in the file /etc/gnome-vfs-mime-magic. I commented out the entry /text/xml because it caused Maple 9 MW files to be classified with mime type text/xml.
The Gnome virtual file system stores records of mime types, file extensions, and associated applications. Users can interact with the Gnome virtual file system using the Preferences -> File types and Programs utility or directly by editing the files in the directory ~.gnome/mime-info.

It is best to use the File types and Programs utility and then edit the files in ~.gnome/mime-info only if you need to clean up some mistakes. Here are the file entries that were created for Maple 9.

  ~/.gnome/mime-info/application-info/user.applications
  8a055ef8-634b-41b8-a964-7bd41b0e3fbe
        requires_terminal=false
        command=xmaple
        can_open_multiple_files=false
        mime_types=application/x-maple
        name=xmaple

  ~/.gnome/mime-info/user.keys
  application/x-maple
        default_application_id=8a055ef8-634b-41b8-a964-7bd41b0e3fb
        category=Documents/Numeric
        default_component_iid=
        description=Maple 9
        icon_filename=/usr/local/maple9/maple.png
        default_action_type=application
        short_list_application_user_removals=
        short_list_application_user_additions=8a055ef8-634b-41b8-a964-7bd41b0e3fbe
        use_category_default=no

  ~/.gnome/mime-info/user.mime
  application/x-maple
        ext: mws mw
        deleted:

The Gnome method for associating an icon with a file is to use the File types and Programs utility. However, this method is broken in version 2.4. There is a workaround. The icon associated with a file is controlled by mime type and by the entries in a particular directory. First, the Windows Maple 9 icon App9.ico was converted to the PNG icon maple.png using gthumb. Then the following symbolic link was constructed.

  /usr/share/icons/Bluecurve/48x48/mimetypes/
    gnome-mime-application-x-maple.png  ->
  /usr/local/maple9/maple.png

Needless to say, Gnome would benefit from a cross desktop standard for handling file/application and file/icon associations. This may be coming from freedesktop.org. Gnome 2.4 gets a D- for file association.

KDE 3.1 File Association. KDE file association is based on mime type. Mime types can be edited and added using the KDE Control Center: KDE Control Center -> KDE Components -> File Associations. Mimetypes are divided into categories. The KDE file system browser Konqueror can be used to set file extensions, icons, applications in order of preference, and the action for double clicking: Konquerer -> Edit -> Edit File Type... or Context Menu -> Edit File Type... . KDE 3.1 gets an A for file association. Note that KDE desktop icons are stored in

  /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps

KDE 3.1 Desktop. My desktop contains Trash, Start Here, and Home Directory icons which can be used to start the Konqueror file system browser. The bottom panel contains icons for the following.

  Start Applications | Konsole | Firefox | Kate | Evolution Email |
  OpenOffice Writer | Maple 9 | Kile | Quanta | Ifctl | Vpn Client |
  KDE Print Manager | Pager | Battery Monitor | Clock

All applications start quickly except for OpenOffice.

Konqueror is both a file system browser and a Web Browser although I prefer to use Firefox for Web browsing. The Konqueror window contains a left navigation frame and a content frame. The content frame can be further split horizontally or vertically and is also tabbed. I often have the My Documents folder from my Windows partition displayed in one half of the content frame and my Linux home directory displayed in the other half. The bookmarks menu or optionally displaying the bookmarks in the navigation frame make for quick jumps to key directories in the file system. The navigation frame can also display the file system tree which is handy when you want to take a walk through the file system. The location toolbar allows you to type a path and go directly to a directory. Cutting, copying, and moving files and directories is easy. Searching a directory for a file name or for specific file content is supported by a Find item in the Tools menu and in the Context menu.

There is a custom context menu for each file shown in the content frame and a context menu for the content frame. File associations can be edited with the Edit File Type... item in the Edit menu or the Context menu. Some files can be previewed in the Konqueror content frame which is indicated by a preview item in the Context menu. Using the Open With... item in the Context menu for a file, the file can also be opened with any application associated with the mime type of the file. Double clicking on the file will open it with the first application in the list of associated applications.

Konqueror can also display hidden files. The Konqueror toolbars can be configured and Konqueror is fast. Konqueror gets an A. By comparison, I would give Windows Explorer a B.

All KDE applications such as Kate, Kile, and Quanta use the same file picker component to open files. The file picker is one of the strongest features of KDE. The file picker window has a left navigation frame and a content frame. The configure toolbar button allows you to select the file view including the option of viewing hidden files. Bookmarks allow for quick jumps to key directories in the file system and since the file picker is a common component, the bookmarks are the same across applications. The navagation frame contains configurable icons including one for floppy and network. The KDE file picker gets an A. By comparison, I would give the Windows file picker a B.

All KDE applications such as Kate, Kile, and Quanta use the same printer selector component which can be configured using the KDE Control Panel. There are four pre-configured printers.

  Mail PDF
  Print to File (PDF)
  Print to File (Postscript)
  Send to FAX

As root, printers can be added using KDE Print System utility or using the KDE Control Panel. I added the KDE Print System utility to the KDE panel by Right clicking panel -> Add -> Special Button -> Print System.

Gnome 2.4 Desktop. My desktop contains a Trash, Start Here, and Home Directory icons which can be used to start the Nautilus file system browser. The bottom panel contains icons for the following.

  Main Menu | gnome-terminal | Firefox | gedit | Evolution Email |
  OpenOffice Writer | Maple 9 | Kile | Quanta | Ifctl | Vpn Client |
  Gnome Print Manager | Pager | Battery Monitor | Clock

All applications start quickly except for OpenOffice and Kile.

Nautilus is a file system browser but not a Web Browser. Nautilus is bare-bones compared to Konqueror. The Nautilus window contains a left navigation frame and a content frame. The content frame cannot be further split horizontally or vertically and is not tabbed. The bookmarks menu (bookmarks cannot be displayed in the navigation frame) make for quick jumps to key directories in the file system. The navigation frame can also display the file system tree which is handy when you want to take a walk through the file system. The location toolbar allows you to type a path and go directly to a directory. Cutting, copying, and moving files and directories is easy. Searching a directory for a file name or for specific file content is only supported by a Search for Files... item in the Main menu. You have to manually type the directory that you want to search. The Konqueror design is better. Right clicking on a file opens a context menu but you cannot right click on the Content frame to get a Context menu for the frame. The Konqueror design is better.

File associations cannot be edited with Nautilus. File association is broken in Gnome 2.4. See the above discussion. Files cannot be previewed in the Nautilus content frame. Using the Open With... item in the Context menu for a files, the file can be opened with any application associated with the mime type of the file. Double clicking on the file will open it with the first application in the list of associated applications.

Nautilus cannot display hidden files. The Nautilus toolbar cannot be configured. Nautilus is fast. Nautilus gets a C. By comparison, I would give Windows Explorer a B and Konqueror an A.

The Gnome file picker is one of weakest features of this desktop environment. Only one file view is provided and hidden files cannot be viewed. There are no bookmarks to allow for quick jumps to key directories in the file system. There is no left frame containing configurable icons. This is file system navigation at its lowest level. The Gnome file picker gets a C. By comparison, I would give the Windows file picker a B and the Konqueror file picker an A.

All Gnome applications use a printer selector which can be configured using Main Menu -> System Settings -> Printing. There are two pre-configured printers.

  Generic Postscript
  Create a PDF Document

Modifying the Main Menu: Gnome and KDE. In FC1, the default theme for both Gnome and KDE is Red Hat Bluecurve and the Main Menu (Start Applications, K Menu) looks nearly the same for both desktops. If you install applications that are not part of the FC1 distribution, you may want to edit the Main Menu at the system level. Here is some background information. The folders and subfolders appearing in the Main Menu are defined in the XML file

  /etc/X11/desktop-menus/applications.menu

Take a look at this file and notice the Keyword tags. Application items are included in a Main Menu folder if there is a corresponding *.desktop file in /usr/share/applications. This file contains the name of the application, the path to its icon, the command to be executed when the application is run, and a category for the application. For example, the installation of Acrobat Reader as described above generated the file net-acroread.desktop. Here is the listing.

  [Desktop Entry]
  Name=Adobe Reader
  Comment=View and print PDF files
  Exec=acroread
  Terminal=false
  Type=Application
  Icon=acroread.png
  MimeType=application/pdf
  Categories=Application;Graphics;X-Red-Hat-Base;
  Encoding=UTF-8

The fields in the Categories record along with the Keywords in the applications.menu generate an Main Menu item in the Graphics folder. This desktop file would not be found in a generic distribution of the Acrobat Reader. This desktop file is part of the RPM created by Dag Wieers specifically for FC1. Besides the Acrobat Reader, I have loaded Kile, Firefox, J2re, Synaptic, Quanta, and Maple 9. All these applications generated items in the Main menu except Firefox and Maple 9. To add menu items for, Firefox and Maple 9, I used net-acroread.desktop as a template and created maple.desktop and firefox.desktop. I changed the names, commands to execute, icon paths, and the categories. For Firefox, I used the categories record for the e-mail client Evolution found in redhat-email.desktop. This insures that Main Menu items for Firefox and Evolution appear in the same folder, the Internet folder. Similarly, for Maple 9, I used the categories record for Emacs found in gnu-emacs.desktop so that both items appear in the Graphics folder of the Main Menu.

Note that the icons used in the Main menu are typically found in the following three directories.

  /usr/share/pixmaps (Gnome)
  /usr/share/icons/Bluecurve/48x48/apps (Red Hat Bluecurve)
  /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps  (KDE)

KDE users can modify their Main menus. Right click -> KDE panel -> Configure Panel... -> Menus -> Edit K Menu. Gnome users do not have this option. A Gnome user can modify the Main menu system wide by editing, applications.menu but this must be done with great care (make a backup before you start) and is not recommended. Both KDE and Gnome users can copy Main Menu items to the Panel.

Printing: Gnome and KDE KDEPrint, the printing module in KDE (see printing.kde.org) is built into KDE applications and can be used by most Gnome and third party applications. When used with CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System, KDEPrint covers all the bases. KDEPrint consists of six components.

A print job viewer for each defined printer.
A print server configuration tool.
A print settings tool.
An add printer wizard.
A printer manager.
A print utility called kprinter.

The easiest way to learn about these components is to Right click -> KDE panel -> Configure Panel... -> Menus -> check Print System -> OK. This will put a Print System folder in the Main menu. This folder contains the above six items plus one. This extra item is Konqueror started at the location print:/. I liked this last item so much that I created a panel launcher to execute the command

  kfmclient openProfile kdeprint

I created the kdeprint profile to open the location print:/manager with a window configuration that shows the print manager and little else. When viewed with Kongueror, the print manager has a row of buttons across the top that gives you access to all the tools in KDEPrint. I also created his same panel launcher on my Gnome desktop.

Next, I added some printers. Add Printer Wizard -> Network Printer w/IPP -> Setting... -> Subnetwork: 130.127.112 -> Scan -> selected guthrie -> select HP, Color Laserjet 4550 -> print test page -> fill in printer name and location. The guthrie is one of the six printers found on this subnet. Next, I repeated the process by scanning the Subnetwork: 172.19.112. I found three more printers. I added two, gutenberg and ramanujan. Drivers for all three of these HP printers were found by the wizard. For comparison purposes, I used JmDNS to search for printers (see jmdns.sourceforge.net/). JmDNS is a Java implementation of multi-cast DNS and can be used for service registration and discovery in local area networks. I used the command

  java -jar /root/java/jmdns.jar -i `giveip`

to scan for printers, where giveip is a bash script that extracts the interface Ethernet address from the output of ifconfig. JmDNS found six of the nine printers.

Next, I checked the printer driver settings. Main Menu -> Print System -> Print File -> select gutenberg -> Properties -> Driver Settings. I found the following settings.

  HP LJ 8150DN -> Double-Sided Printing : Off
  HP LJ 9000DN -> Double-Sided Printing : Off
  HP Color LJ 4550N -> Double-Sided Printing : Long Edge

I used the following command

  lpoptions -p printer_name -l | grep uplex produced the output

to query the printer settings. The resulting output was

  Duplex/Double-Sided Printing: DuplexNoTumble DuplexTumble None *Notcapable
  Duplex/Double-Sided Printing: DuplexNoTumble DuplexTumble None *Notcapable
  Duplex/Double-Sided Printing: *DuplexNoTumble DuplexTumble None Notcapable

The two duplex printers had settings of Notcapable and the simplex printer had a DuplexNoTumble setting. I fixed this problem by changing and saving the driver settings for each printer. Main Menu -> Print System -> Print File -> select printer_name -> Properties -> Driver Settings -> Double-Sided Printing : Off -> Save -> OK. The key here is the Save button, which causes the file /etc/cups/lpoptions to be updated. This is the system-side printer configuration file. Here is a listing.

  Dest gutenberg Duplex=None
  Dest guthrie Duplex=None
  Dest ramanujan Duplex=None
  Special Advanced%20Faxing%20Tool%20(ksendfax)
  Special Mail%20PDF%20file
  Special Print%20to%20File%20(PDF)
  Special Print%20to%20File%20(PostScript)
  Special Send%20to%20Fax

The utility kprinter can be run standalone. In this case you add files to be printed in a dialog box so files can be printed without opening them with an application. All KDE applications have kprinter built in. Most non-KDE applications can also use kprinter since they allow the user to specify a print command. I used kprinter successfully with the non-KDE applications Acrobat Reader, Firefox, OpenOffice, Gnome Ghostview, and Maple 9, with the KDE applications Kate and Kile, and with the Gnome applications gEdit and Evolution.

Conclusions

From fall 1998 to spring 2003, I administered the course management system WebCT along with Corey Ferrier. The production server was a Dell PowerEdge 4300 and the backup server was a Dell PowerEdge 4200. Both ran Red Hat Linux. These servers never went down and required only 75 hours of administration over five years. It does not surpise me that Linux has had a big impact in the server market over the last six years. In April 2001, I wrote my first article on dual booting the Dell C600 using Red Hat 7.1. This article was followed by articles on dual booting the C600 with Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0. I skipped 9.0. Now that this article is complete, I am finally convinced that the Linux desktop is ready for prime time. For the first time, I believe that everything that I typically do under Windows 2000 can be done as well or better under Linux.

Dual Booting the Clemson Dell Latitude C600: Windows 2000 and Red Hat Fedora Core 1