Last week I updated my nvidia drivers in Ubuntu through
x swat ppa
I had my root filesystem as btrfs and somehow Ubuntu did not boot into graphical login. I was having lots of work and could not sit to fix it and started using Windows 7. After a week of no Ubuntu I felt handicapped and wanted to restore it.
Today morning I tried removing ppa from command line, reinstall nvidia, tested if it works. Nothing brought back GUI and I wanted linux badly. I had a Fedora 15 iso and used dd to write it (something similar to the following command).
sudo dd if=Fedora-15-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M
After that I booted into Fedora 15. It looked very elegant though it has no right click on desktop.
I got tempted to try it and I distro hopped into Fedora 15. To my amazement Fedora 15 had gcc 4.6
Next surprise to me is Kernel 3.0!!
After doing
sudo yum update
and rebooting I found a new kernel 2.6.40 (there is no kernel 2.6.40 in kernel.org and only kernel 3.0 after 2.6.39). Fedora wanted to maintain compatibility between existing programs and avoid breakups due to version confusion, so it badged kernel 3.0 as 2.6.40, how sweet
Next is I installed kmod-nvidia after adding rpmfusion
After rebooting I can see the full effects of Gnome 3, which looks glorious. When opening new windows they come as if falling from top and looks amazing to eyes. Nvidia got upgraded to 280 series.
Gnome3 and Fedora 15 feels fresh with animations coupled with subtle elegance
Installing Adobe Flash plugin was easy. I downloaded Adobe Flash Player 11 beta from
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/flashplayer11_b1_install_lin_64_071311.tar.gz
After extracting, I copied the libflashplugin.so into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ as follows
sudo cp Flashplugin/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/
Yes while installing Fedora 15, I ticked the Administrator privileges and it added my user to wheel group, thus enabling me to use
sudo
Also package installation requires my own password as I added my user to administrator group
The icons with ON and OFF is a mimic of iOS (iPhone or iPad), see the below screenshot. Also the combo boxes look beautiful
When Activities in top left corner is clicked, active windows are shown with small overlay X button (once again like iOS, in Safari, when we click a tab, it shows all tabs open with a overlay x button). The buttons Windows and Applications used for tabbing reminds me of seeing it somewhere, but can't remember
See below for the overlay x button
See below for multiple windows shown with overlay buttons, similar to multiple tabs shown in iOS safari when clicking tab button
To open more instances of folders or any apps in the tray I used Ctrl + Left mouse click
Hovering mouse over Activities in the top left brings pleasant surprise. Another cool ripple effect which does not look obtrusive and looks very mild and beautiful, see below near the activities to see the mild ripple in action
To add more apps to the tray is easy. Just drag the app to the tray and it is there, see below the tray has Screenshot tool added
Standard gnome3 scrollbars look really elegant
Double clicking the title bar of any window toggles between maximizing and restoring the window size. Another beautiful aspect of gnome3 is its tabs look very attractive unlike the boring rounded rectangles, see the tabs inside nautilus which are different and good
Dragging a window titlebar towards edge works similar to Windows 7. Window just snaps half the screensize
Dragging the titlebar towards the top just snaps it to full size (or just maximizes)
Slider of sound reminded once again of iOS, see the following snapshot (in the top right corner there is a callout overlay window showing volume adjustment slider which looks similar to iOS slider)
To change the desktop background is different in Gnome3. Click the username in top right corner to bring system settings menu item
In system settings, click background and change it
Fedora 15 with a beautiful background
Every line drawn or pixel shown exudes quality in Gnome3. I think the way it renders is for the first time utilizing the capabilities of graphics card.
I am still exploring gnome3, starting to like it
