stackz0r's Fedora 21 Adventure

I have re-purposed this thread to document my experiences with Fedora 21.

So I just installed Fedora 21 and wanted to get some music going while I play around but I ran into a problem. Tried 4 different players, none of that works. .flac files will play however.

Apparently no one else on the Internet had trouble figuring this out because no one out there has posted a solution on how to do this.

mp3 is not an open source format, and just like on most distros, therefore the mpeg codecs are not in the official repos

install the "rpmfusion" repo and get the good-ugly-bad codecs from there

first install yumex though, it's easier to work with than just yum or the standard package manager, you'll find the right codecs more easily with yumex, so as to avoid installing too much crap because it's not clear which ones you need.

 

You can now also 1-click install like on OpenSuSE, but I'm looking for the link, hang on...

Just don't download stuff off of websites!!!

Yeah I can't believe I didn't think of that. I guess I'm used to other distros having those codecs in their repos just not installed on the machine by default.

Do what zoltan suggests.

I found it man, no worries.

Didn't find the 1-click installer I saw they had published. I just don't remember where it was any more.

Anyway, two ways to get your codecs:

1. clean and simple ffmpeg codecs, no other closed source crap:

a. install rpmfusion repos:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$ (rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$ (rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

and then after that update your repos:

su -c 'yum update'

 

b. install the non-free codecs:

su -c 'yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer-plugins-bad-nonfree gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-base-tools updates gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1 lame-libs'

 

2. Using Fedy (formerly known as Fedora Utils):

If you want to install other non-free crap, like Flash Player, Skype, Microsoft Fonts, etc..., the most time saving (and still safe, better than downloading crap from any Microsoft website) way is to use Fedy.

To install Fedy, you can enter:

su -c 'curl https://satya164.github.io/fedy/fedy-installer -o fedy-installer && chmod +x fedy-installer && ./fedy-installer'

and then run the program, it's really obvious to use.

Sorry, didn't see that you had found it.

But it's good to have everything posted here anyway for other users that might have the same issue.

Thanks for the help. Not interested in any of that other stuff like Skype lol. How well does Cinnamon work on F21? Or any other DE for that matter. This is my first time trying GNOME and I don't dislike it but I want to play with other DEs. How do I revert? Just reinstall GNOME the same way I would any other DE?

Also what do I need for Netflix to run?

Cinnamon being Gnome Shell 3 based, should work pretty well, but Cinnamon is not as fast and lean as Gnome Shell, it's not as nice on system resources. Cinnamon should be maintained in the official repos though, Fedoraproject was even speaking of making Cinnamon an official spin during Fc18-19 iirc.

Netflix: I have no idea to be honest, isn't that lightspark based?

Ugh... Got it to work. But I have to use Chrome... Is there a way to run Chrome without me having to be paranoid about what its doing?

It only works in chrome because it has the proprietary DRM installed in it, its unfortunately the best way to use netflix.

I suggest just using chrome for netflix only. 

Two options:

1. What I do: run it in an unprivileged lxc. That's just super easy and comfortable, because you can update chrome easier, and everything just works (as far as chrome works of course, it's not the best software out there, there are often bugs).

2. Other option: get the chromium source, then clone the chrome source you need for extended functionality from code.google, and compile a cocktail of chromium with the source you need for the extended functionality. On Fedora there is no ready-made package for this, but you can get it through SuSE's pacman repo, it works on Fedora too. It will still install pepper though, which is DRM-crap, I wouldn't really run it without an lxc anyway lolz, but at least compiling it on chromium source Google won't spy on you through the browser, so no audio recording and keyboard and mousepointer logging and crap that chrome does, and chromium doesn't work as a daemon/TSR like chrome, if you kill it, it's dead, it doesn't just shift to the background like chrome. Chromium is also much smaller, like only a quarter of the size (makes you wonder what the rest of the chrome code does, doesn't it... there is almost no added functionality vis-à-vis chromium lolz), so it's much faster.

NB: chromium nor chrome are in the Fedora repos, because Google doesn't meet the open source development and packaging quality standards. The problem is that Google doesn't respect open source packages of dependencies it uses, it just packs their own mutilated version made to make chrome work. That's a pretty awful practice.

My distro has an option to download the additional binary proprietary add-ons for chromium, but this doesnt seam to work with netflix. I didnt know it was possible to build chromium with cherry picked proprietary addons?

It's a hack, you basically just build chrome like you would, using the obfuscated code from Google, then erase all the chrome parts that can be substituted with the chromium parts.

If you erase the history of chromium including the DRM licenses, it will reload those and it should work again, but I haven't tried, I don't do netflix, as I have Sky Anywhere and Amazon Prime already, and I actually never watch either of them lolz.

I've been running into an issue lately. The Fedora software store loads really slow for me, and takes much longer than it should to install and remove programs. Every now and then, while either installing or removing software, the task fails, and I get this error.

After this happens, I cannot install or remove any software. If I try, it fails immediately. After this happens I can't even open yumex either, it throws an error message and forces me to quit. So far the only solution I have found is to restart my PC but the issue always recurs.

I really like Fedora so far and this is the longest I've used any distro without giving up but having to restart my machine several times per day kinda sucks.

I am also looking for a solution to slow my mouse speed down further, I have it set to the lowest possible setting in the system settings.

Do you encounter similar errors when running in the terminal "yum install/remove *package*"?

I have not as of yet, but then again I have only used the terminal to install and update a few things. But so far no errors with terminal.

The Fedora Software store is a joke to be honest. It's new and very incomplete.

Use yumex, it works perfectly fine.

Also, use Audacious, it has the same GUI integration with Gnome, and is a much better music player.

EDIT: Zoltan beat me to it