Well its pretty easy to install it. Just install the following packages.

• emerald-themes
• compiz-fusion-extras
• emerald
• compiz-fusion
• compiz-manager
• compiz-fusion-extras-gnome
• gnome-compiz-manager
• libcompizconfig
• compiz-fusion-gnome
• ccsm
• compiz-fusion-icon

Emerald is the window decorator for Compiz. It is not absolutely necessary to install it but it  gives much more cool title bars and window borders than the default window decorators…

CCSM is the Config utility for Compiz fusion.

Ever since i installed upgraded to opera 9.50 i got my flash videos working again but the audio was missing. And because i discovered that the audio was missing on firefox too, the problem was related to the flash plugin. Basically its some compatibility problem with Pulseaudio and the adobe’s proprietory flash plugin.

It seems the problem is due to removal of the package which helps flash plugin interface with Pulseaudio from the plugin’s dependency list.

Just install the package libflashsupport.i386 and one more sensory perception will be added to your flash.

• Totem Player  (Gnome’s default)
• Kaffeine (KDE’s default)
• VLC Media Player (not in default install)
• MPlayer (not in default install)

The players are good but they are not very much useful in the default install as the codecs, which provide them their juice, for most common formats are missing. There are two solutions to the problem. Provide the existing players the needed codecs or install player(s) with dedicated bundled codecs.

VLC media player comes in the second category. It comes with its own set of codecs and is actually a pretty good player, with some unusual features like software level audio amplification which can provide much higher volumes as compared to other players. Very useful for those low volume videos. It is available on livna repository so just configure livna on your machine and simple yum install vlc is the command.

Now for the providing codecs part. There are two rendering engines popular in linux, XIne and Gstreamer and codecs are available for both and most popular players can switch beteween the two. Some xine codecs are probably already there in your system through the xine-lib-extras and xine-lib-extras-nonfree packages installed for audio.

The MPlayer project maintains a great set of codecs for Mplayer which can also easily empower Xine engine. So my recommendation is to use those codecs for MPlayer as well as Xine. For Mplayer install following packages from Livna

• mplayer
• mplayer-gui

This will install the mplayer on your system. For the codecs go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu and download the latest Binary Codec package for your architecture. The Codec package is basically a compressed archive of the codecs so just extract its contents to the following directories (create if not present)

• /usr/lib/codecs
• /usr/local/lib/codecs

you can make links instead of two copies. The Xine engine is good to roll.

The gstreamer codecs are divided in three parts, the good, bad and ugly plugins. Good ones are installed by default. Ugly are the ones which are in good condition but can’t be shipped as default due to licencing issues, while bad are the ones which are in development phase or are not very well written. They are available through following packages.

• gstreamer-plugins-ugly
• gstreamer-plugins-bad
• gstreamer-plugins-bad-extras

Generally the ugly plugins will do the trick.

Choice of an engine or a Player is mostly personal choice. But i suggest installing plugins for both as this will help in other smaller issues like getting thumbnails for the videos in nautilus. I use Kaffeine with Xine and it works fine.

The base install of fedora does not supply the codecs for proprietary formats like mp3. It does provide support for open formats like OGG but your around-the-corner audio vendor will surely start scratching his head if your ask him for ogg music.

The solution is simple. Install the codecs (duh !!). Livna is a support repository for Fedora which distributes packages which cannot be supplied with Fedora due to patent or other legal issues but can be redistributed under other licences. The codecs and other necessary files are available in two packages

• libtunepimp-extras-nonfree
• xine-lib-extras-nonfree.

Livna maintains a shortcut for the the whole thing. There is a dummy package called

• amarok-extras-nonfree

which has both the aforementioned packages and amarok as dependencies. Amarok is a brilliant music player which is part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE). If you do not have KDE installed, the download through the shortcut will become huge ( >50 MB) because of amarok and core KDE libraries being installed too. In that case you can install just the extras packages, but i would suggest to give amarok a go.

• The Installer (Anaconda) has been improved.
• The artwork -Good but nothing after FC6 comparable to the DNA theme.
• Greeter Application – Either i missed it or its missing but you can’t change the session type. And the look and feel of the greeter, naah … out of theme and lost the kool factor of the greeter of FC8.

• Sounds – Logged in and hey there is a soothing melody. I hated that hooter sort of thing of earlier versions.
• KDE4 – I am more comfortable with Gnome but loved the look of KDE4. Linux is finally making progress in the GUI area to achieve highly user friendly interfaces.
• NetworkManager – it is enabled by default in Fedora 9. It can be a little trouble configuring for the first time users (more on it later) but once you get the config right, its a charm.
• PackageKit – It was a welcome change as the earlier GUIs for package management somehow didn’t work behind the proxy setup of my campus. And somehow once you get addicted to commandline yum, you miss the in-process information in the GUIs.

More on installing stuff to get the basic install to a comfort level soon….