firewing1 aka Stewart Adam - My Blog

Requirements

• Have the RPM Fusion repository installed
• Know how to install packages using the PackageKit utility

What is the difference between the proprietary and open source nVidia drivers?

The main difference between open source drivers and closed (proprietary) drivers is performance. The proprietary nVidia driver has much better 3D performance than the current driver for nVidia cards packaged with Fedora, called nouveau. However, keep in mind that nouveau is completely open and free, while the nVidia's proprietary driver is closed source. This means that sometimes a bug in the driver can't be fixed or an incompatibility cannot be resolved until nVidia decides to release an updated proprietary driver.

Requirements

• Have the RPM Fusion repository installed
• Know how to install packages using the PackageKit utility

I want them all!

If you want to install all of the items listed in this howto, install the following items:

• DVD playback packages: libdvdcss, libdvdread and libdvdnav
• MPEG plugins: gstreamer-plugins-bad and gstreamer-plugins-ugly
• Java: java-1.6.0-openjdk and java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
• Adobe Flash plugins:
  

  su -
  rpm -Uhv http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.no...
  yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.{i386,x86_64} pulseaudio-libs.i386 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386 libcurl.i386
  mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v
  

Background information: Packages and package managers

Fedora Linux uses the concept of RPM packages for installing applications. An RPM package is a single file which can be used to install or upgrade a program on your system. RPM Packages contain all the files, metadata and other information the system needs to know about the program you want to install or upgrade. Because packages installed on your Fedora system are managed by the RPM package manager, packages are easy very to install, uninstall, upgrade or even verify. For example, you can ask the system to tell you which package installed any given file.

Starting PackageKit

PackageKit is a relatively new utility which allows you to graphically install, remove, or update packages on your system. To start PackageKit, select System > Administration > Add/Remove Software from the menu.

Requirements

• Know how to install packages using the PackageKit utility

What are Delta RPMs?

Delta RPMs (DRPMs) are a very new way to upgrade packages on your Fedora Linux system. Unlike regular RPM packages, which contain all files required to install a package, DRPMs contain only the changes between two package versions. This allows you to do full updates in a much shorter time. For example, instead of downloading a full 10MB for an update where only 500kb of content changed, a DRPM package will only hold the 500kb of data which changed.

The Prestro project bridges the gap between DRMS and the Fedora package manager, yum. Although Fedora 11 has full support for deltarpms, the presto plugin is not enabled by default. Enabling it is simple and easy: