First, empathy, the new default chat client, does video. But to make it work seamlessly with your friends who use GoogleTalk on Windows, you’ll need all the gstreamer plugins. Here’s how to get them:
sudo yum install gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-* -x *devel -x *docs
Second, Google Earth is a pretty sweet program. But to make it run on 64-bit linux, you need some compatibility stuff added in. Here’s how to get it working, courtesy of bigjim-network
- the command he used on Fedora 11 is modified here for Fedora 12:
sudo yum install glibc.i686 libxml2.i686 freetype.i686 libXrender.i686 libXrandr.i686 mesa-libGL.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 bug-buddy.i686 PackageKit-gtk-module.i686
If you have an nVidia card, you’ll want to do the following as well:
sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686
And for an ATI card, use this (untested by me):
sudo yum install xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs.i686
Update 26 May 2010: I just tried to install it on Fedora 13, and I got the error below:
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libminizip.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied
To fix it, run this command:
sudo chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /opt/google-earth/*.so
Third, if you’ve got the less awesome startup screen - the plain black screen with a blue bar turning white at the bottom - kernel modesetting will allow you to have the full plymouth graphical boot. Add the proper “vga=XYZ” to the end of your kernel line(s) in /etc/grub.conf. The mode for MacBooks and other screens at 1280x800 resolution is “vga=865”.
Small things, but perhaps important ones. If you’re not a linux user and you think this post was dumb, here’s a picture from the interwebs.