Installing codecs and more

Codecs. 

Because of legal issues in certain parts of the world, Fedora lacks a lot of codecs.  This means that videos downloaded from YouTube and many movies won’t be displayed. There’s many ways to add this codecs to Fedora, but I’ll only list the two that worked for me. Just a warning before starting:  Don’t mix things.  There’s two main repositories for extra stuff, RPM Fusion and Russian Fedora,  and there’s many post-installation programs.  Add only one repository and install only one program.  Otherwise, you’ll end up with a mess of versions, repositories, architectures, etc. colliding.  Why? Because each one is a personal project carried out independently and following whatever needs or ideas the main developer has on the matter.  I know what I’m saying, I suffered this problem weeks ago in my own system and I had to install again from zero.

Well, said that, these are the two options that work for me.

Option 1 :   Adding RPM Fusion as repositories. To do so, follow the instructions stated here:  http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/

Option 2 :   Using PostinstallerF.  To do so, you must download it from here:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/postinstaller/  and then install it clicking on it.

For both options, you’ll need to write your root password.

Now, if you take the first option, you have to type  “dnf update”  so it will update the repositories. Whatever it may ask, accept. Then type  “dnf install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer-plugins-bad-nonfree gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg”,  wait until it resolves dependencies and accept. After that, type  “dnf install gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-base-tools gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1 ffmpeg libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd libdvdcss”.  If your connection isn’t good, you’ll be better installing in tiny groups.  DNF will resolve dependencies automatically, so it’s safe to do it this way.

You may ask  ‘Why using the console?’,  because Yumex doesn’t give you the option to accept or reject a new GPG key  (something that will happen at some point because they’re third party repositories).  But DNF does give you that option.  Besides, being so many items, it’s easier to copy & paste than selecting one by one.

If you choose the Post installer program, you just have to open it and click on  “Codecs”.  It will install everything needed without further intervention from you.  Just a warning:  if your connection is slow it will take hours and may need to restart the whole process a couple of time if your internet speed drops too much or you run out of battery.  But don’t worry, what is already downloaded it stays there and it won’t be downloaded again.

Here are two examples, one with DNF and one with PostinstallerF.

You may also want to take a look at this article on Fedora Magazine:

Installing the Fedora Cinnamon Spin

Well, that’s all by now, hope it’s useful for you.  Feel free to comment or add any info you like to.