FC5 gotchas

David A. De Graaf dad at datix.us
Wed Apr 5 01:28:44 UTC 2006


I've just completed (I think) my first fresh installation of Fedora
Core 5 and made some discoveries that you might want to note.

The xorg project has reorganized things and screwed up xterm a bit.

1)  The system-wide default initialization files are now in
/usr/share/X11/app-defaults, instead of /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults.
However, the xterm man page still refers to the old wrong location.

2)  As delivered, xterm can no longer display colors - only black & white.
However, an updated version fixes this.

The xterm man page says:
  If your display supports color, use this
	*customization: -color
  in your .Xdefaults file to automatically turn on color in xterm and
  similar applications.

This seems inaccurate; the updated version displays color without it,
as xterm always has.

3)  Double-clicking to select a word works stupidly - a word is
defined to be a contiguous string of alphanumerics, so you cannot
easily select a filename that includes a dot, or a complete URL.
I finally tracked down the cause of this degradation.  A crucial line
in /usr/share/X11/app-defaults/XTerm has been commented out, thusly:

! Here is a pattern that is useful for double-clicking on a URL:
!*charClass: 33:48,35:48,37-38:48,43-47:48,58:48,61:48,63-64:48,126:48

If the charClass line is uncommented, double-clicking works properly
again.  This cryptic line defines certain other punctuation marks to
be equivalent to alphanumerics so that, in particular, a full URL
will be selected, but excluding the <> brackets that may enclose it.
Filenames containing punctuation marks can be easily selected.

Why someone chose to comment out this crucial definition in FC5 is
unfathomable.  
I hope this little diatribe will save others the frustration of
searching for this single ! that is so unfortunately added.


The installer has lost the ability to configure my ancient Riva128
video card so a graphical install wasn't possible and I had to revert
to a text install.  Afterward, system-config-display was also unable to
configure it.  I was able to get the X server started only by retrieving
an old xorg.conf from the backup.

For some incomprehensible reason, sound will no longer work unless I
forcibly load the appropriate sound module.  I've had to put this line
into /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
  modprobe snd-sbawe

This module should load automatically.  It used to.
This line in /etc/modprobe.conf should be sufficient:
  alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe


I understand that Fedora Core is the bleeding edge, but I would have
hoped for progress *without* quite so much regression.


-- 
	David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
	dad at datix.us         www.datix.us




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