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
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list