Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Can't watch mpeg-4 aac h.264 video in Linux Firefox

Updated for Fedora 19 - July 2013

Every new Fedora install, I forget how to watch apple trailers in my browser. I get the mpeg-4 aac and h.264 decoder missing message.

This can be solved in three steps:

1) Add the rpmfusion repository.

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/19/Everything/x86_64/os/rpmfusion-free-release-19-1.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/releases/19/Everything/x86_64/os/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-19-1.noarch.rpm'

2) Install vlc

sudo yum install vlc

3) Lastly this one extra command allowed the movie to play

sudo yum install gstreamer1-libav

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Fedora 19 and Gnome 3.8 - Get back your terminal background transparency

Gnome Terminal in 3.8 had the transparency option dropped/removed not because it wasn't a useful feature, but because implementation between new and old code was difficult.

Anyways with Fedora 19 and Gnome 3.8, there is a way to get back this feature. I ended up using the window manager cinnamon as it has advanced features of gnome, yet includes lots of the intuitive right click menu options you expect on any desktop.

Step 1:
sudo yum install devilspie

Step 2:
mkdir ~/.devilspie

Step 3:
// Add any file in this dir ending in .ds and devilspie will process it.

vim ~/.devilspie/terminal-opacity.ds

Step 4:
// In this file add this line of code
// Terminal is what fedora uses as the name of these terminals.

(if
  (matches (window_name) "Terminal")
  (opacity 85)
)

Step 5:
// Add in .bash_profile the following line. It will
devilspie -a &

Step 6: Logout and log back in.

Any new terminal console windows will now be transparent - including the menu bars.