Install Fedora 19 Mate Compiz Spin

The following guide contains the installation procedure for Fedora 19 Mate Compiz Spin. This procedure was tested on a HP laptop with dual core AMD processor and 4GB of RAM using a USB external hard disk. I boot Fedora 19 from a USB stick and install the entire OS on an external (USB) hard disk. Depending on your hardware, it is not advisable to install Mate Compiz spin in a virtual machine if your hardware could not support it.

For installation of original Fedora 19, please refer to Installation Guide for Fedora 19. For installing fedora 19 on virtual machine, please refer to Install Fedora 19 on VirtualBox with Guest Additions. For netinstall, refer to Install Fedora 19 using Netinstall.

Creation of Boot Media

You can download the Mate Compiz Spin from here. You can explore other custom spins here.

The procedure on creating bootable USB can be found on the official Fedora documentation here. For details of creating a bootable USB drive, please refer to my post here on creating USB drive.

Installing Fedora 19 Mate Compiz Spin

Start your computer. You might need to press extra key at the beginning so that you can boot Fedora 19 from USB drive. In my case, a HP laptop, I need to press Esc and then F9. Most other computer uses F9 or F10 or F11. Please refer to the user guide of your computer.

Once you've bootup Fedora 19 Mate, the dekstop is shown below.

Click Install to Hard Drive. The first screen of installation wizard is shown below.

Select the language and make sure you check Set keyboard to default layout for selected language.

On the installation summary, you'll notice that there is a warning sign on installation destination. You need to confirm the installation target drive. Click on INSTALLATION DESTINATION.

There are 2 disk available. I will be installing Fedora 19 on WD1600JS. This is an external USB hard disk. Click to select the disk you want to configure. Click Done on the top left corner.

In this dialog box, you can choose to let the system configure the partition for you, you just need to specify the partition scheme. You can also configure the partition manually. I usually configure partitions manually when installing on a physical machine. Click Continue. (For new Linux users who want to know more about Linux partitions, please refer to my post Linux Partitions)

In this summary screen for manual partition, click + on the lower left corner to create a new partition. The first partition is the boot partition. 500MB is sufficient.

The next partition is swap partition. The recommend size for swap file is two times of your system RAM. However, due to RAM size getting larger and swap is seldom utilized. It is recommended to give the swap file 4GB of space, even if you have 16GB of RAM.

The last partiton is the root partition, you can use the entire free disk space to allocate to the root partition. Leave the capacity blank.

The summary of partition is as follows:

Click Done when you complete your configuration. The next dialog box shows the summary of all your actions.

Click Accept Changes to commit the changes. You will be shown the Configuration Summary.

Review the summary page and change any setting such as time zone or keyboard. Click Begin Installation.

Once the installation starts, in the meantime, you can set the root password and add user. Click ROOT PASSWORD.

Enter the root password and click Done when ready. Click USER CREATION.

Enter the user name and set the user password. Make sure you check Make this user administrator. Click Done when ready. 

Wait for the installation to complete.

Click Quit on the lower right corner when installation is complete. You can reboot the system. The login screen:

The desktop is shown as below:

Updating the System

Click System >> Administration >> Yum Extender. There should be list of updates if your system is not updated. Make sure you select the option Updates.

Use the following command to update the system

sudo yum update

Once the update is complete, restart the machine. You need to restart the system if you've just update a new kernel.

After updating the system, you might want to install addition software. Please note that this spin does not includes Firefox and LibreOffice. You might need to manually install it.

To install Firefox, use the command:

sudo yum install -y firefox

To install LibreOffice, use the command:

 yum group install -y libreoffice

Alternatively, you might  just want to install some basic applications. Use the following command for each applications:

yum install -y libreoffice-writer
yum install -y libreoffice-calc
yum install -y libreoffice-draw
yum install -y libreoffice-impress
yum install -y libreoffice-base
yum install -y libreoffice-math
yum install -y libreoffice-graphicfilter
yum install -y libreoffice-emailmerge

For addition software configuration, please refer to Fedora 19 Post Installation Software Configuration Guide. 

Configuring Compiz
Launch CompizConfig Settings Manager from System >> Preference.

There are many configuration option depending on your preference. I turn on Mate Compatibility, Desktop Cube, Rotate Cube and Wobbly Windows.

Activation of Compiz
To activate compiz, Applications >> Accessories >> Compiz Mate GTK or Compiz Mate Emerald

Alternatively, use the command

compiz --replace

To rotate cube, press Ctrl+Alt while use your mouse to turn the cube slowly.

To permanently activate Compiz permanently, open dconf-editor, go to org >> mate >> desktop >> session >> required-components. Under windowmanager, replace marco with 'compiz-mate-gtk' or 'compiz-mate-emerald'.

Alternatively, use the command:

gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components windowmanager compiz-mate-emerald

Replace compiz-mate-emerald with compiz-mate-gtk if you wish. If you did not set any of them, it reset to marco.
  

Note: Unfortunately, I could not screen print the rotating cube, as the mate desktop screen print function is not working. I manage to screen capture the installation screen using virtual machine.

Note (update 7/10):
Although I like to use this spin, however, I find that the desktop took a long while to appear after login. In additions, it lacks a lot of software which you need to install manually. I decided to install Mate and Compiz on an existing Fedora 19 GNOME/Cinnamon environment. I prefer this method since I do not need to install additional applications. Duplication of applications doesn't bother me.

For users who prefer a clean desktop environment, please stick to this spin. For users who do not mind having bloated software you can refer to my post Install Mate Desktop with Compiz on Fedora 19. Please note that it might take 6-7GB for the entire OS and software. 

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