[PlanetCCRMA] (no subject)

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 13:41 -0700, John Lowry wrote:
> Perhaps these are more Fedora issues, but as questions to this group have
> been dealt with quickly in the past I thought I'd start here.
> 
> I'm running Fedora 7 with CCRMA.  I have two issues:
> 
> 1. Networking enablement.  It didn't used to work.  Machine would freeze up.
>    So I disabled networking and manually started it up when not running
>    low latency kernels.
> 
>    Don't know why, but networking no longer freezes the low-latency kernels.

A newer version of the kernel with a different set of bugs? :-)

>    It may have to do with my ISP (Orange) changing their service slightly or me
>    now using  their router.
> 
>    But I can't figure out how to get networking to start automatically.  The
>    interface (eht0) always starts disabled.  Services have networking configured...
>    what must I do to get the hardware enabled at boot?

In the network control panel you can set an interface to be (or not)
active on boot. Or you can
edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to have "ONBOOT=yes" in
its defined configuration. 

You could also activate NetworkManager to automatically detect lost and
recovered network connections (useful if you move your machine between
networks). Do "/sbin/chkconfig NetworkManager on" and "/sbin/service
NetworkManager start" to stat the service (you'll get an applet in the
panel that shows you the status). 

> 2. Fuzzy characters.  When I run windows, Firefox displays text very, very
>    crisply.  In Fedora, it's super crisp in an Xterm, but not in Firefox.  Looks
>    similar to what happens when pixel configuration (e.g. 1280x1024) doesn't
>    match the hardware, but I know I have this right and it's fine in an Xterm.
>    But Firefox and other programs (e.g. konqueror and the desktop) have a 'soft
>    focus' quality.  Any clues as to what may be going wrong?

Hmmm, the fuzzy quality is probably anti-aliasing (which probably is not
being done in xterm). 

There's two things (well, probably more) you can to to optimize font
rendering - you should be able to find plenty of articles through
google. Probably the most effective is to rebuild freetype to have the
byte code interpreter enabled (it is disabled in the Fedora build due to
patent problems with the hinting method). Get the source package,
install it, edit the spec file to enable the byte code interpreter,
rebuild (possibly up the release) and install. 

This will make freetype use the font hinting included in the fonts
themselves (if I remember correctly). It does make a difference. 

Hmmm, I think the Liberation fonts are installed by default in Fedora 7
but I don't know if they are used by default. These are free fonts that
have the same metrics as the Microsoft fonts so they will/should/may
render the same as in other platforms. 

> 3. Finally, and this is definitely off topic, but bizarre enough I thought I
>    would include it for your amusement(?)  Whenever I go to two monitors, my
>    internet connection dies.  This happens with two different machines (HP and
>    Acer) and with both Windows and Linux.  Also with the Orange router and a
>    Belkin router.  I can't even think of a way this would be happening--how would
>    two different OSes bugger a router just because you're using two monitors?
>    Has anybody EVER seen this one before?

Nope, first time. 

Double weird points because it happens on both Windows and Linux. Would
seem to point to a hardware issue except for the fact that it happens on
two different machines!

-- Fernando