Mageia 3: What to do after installation + customization and improvements

MAGEIA 3 INSTALLATION AND CUSTOMIZATION GUIDE

Installation

1. Download and installation following the instructions on the distribution's live dvd. I'm not going to stop much here, since the installation process is very simple in Mageia 3.
2. Configuration of repositories for system updates. Enter the Control Center> Configuration of media sources. Once there, configure the official repositories, marking the "Backports" and "Updates" of the types that exist, and also add the blogdrake repositories from the following address: http: //blogdrake.net/blog/drakedalfa/blogdrake
3. After installing the blogdrake repositories and marking the corresponding official repositories backports and updates, update the system from the Control Center and restart when requested.

Customization

All system customization is done from "Desktop settings”, And all the options that will be explained below are found in this section of the system, as an example a type of customization is shown, but other themes can be applied in this way to be chosen by each user, as they say there to you like colors, and these are mine.

1. We enter "Appearance of applications", style tab> fine adjustment: we modify where it says "Graphic effects" and we put "Low resolution and low CPU". In this section we can also change the icons, personally I have installed the Mandriva "Pink" icons, as follows: Download the icons from the following link (with the terminal, if you want from the browser, just copy and paste without wget):wget http://svn.mandriva.com/svn/packages/cooker/rosa-icons/releases/1.0.27/1/SOURCES/rosa-1.0.27.tar.gz
2. Once the icons have been downloaded, we unzip the package in the Downloads folder, rename the resulting folder with the name "pink", open the terminal and execute the following commands:su
cd /home/usuario/Descargas
cp -R rosa /usr/share/icons

3. Once this is done, from "Icons" we click on "Install theme file" and look for the downloaded file in the downloads folder, apply the changes and restart, and we will have the Mandriva icons installed on our system. We enter "Desktop Effects ”And in the General tab we mark“ Activate desktop effects ”. Then in "All effects" we put the effects we want, I have opted for:Unmark: Magnification, swipe, desktop cube, traditional window selection.
   Mark: Glide, Magic Lamp, jelly windows and window selection in cover mode.

   We enter "Appearance of the workspace" and in the tab "Announcement screen" we can change the start announcement screen, although I have chosen to install in another way:

   We download the theme:

   wget http://kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/156135-Mageia-Minimal.tar.gz

   Unzip and open a terminal entering the downloads folder, as root.

   We execute the following commands in the terminal and then restart:

   cp -r Mageia-Minimal /usr/share/plymouth/themes/
plymouth-set-default-theme -R Mageia-Minimal

   Within the desktop theme section, we can change the desktop theme and configure it to our liking, I have chosen to download the Oxygen DSX theme in the "Get new themes" option.

4. We enter "Behavior of the window", and in "Window changer" in "Visualization, we select in the third option select" Selection of window in cover mode ", and click the option" Include the icon show desktop ".
5. In the tab "Behavior of the workspace", in Activities> Complements we leave the first two options marked. Then in Virtual Desktops we leave 1 desk and 1 row number, in "Change" we remove the cyclical browsing option. In screen edges we can configure the windows to be displayed by taking the pointer to the corner of the pc that we select.
6. In the tab "Startup and shutdown" in Session Management, check "Offer shutdown options", "Turn off the computer" and "Start with an empty session", with the third option we make Mageia not have to remember the programs used in the previous session, thus speeding up system startup.
7. In "Access screen" we can configure the start of our session, as well as the welcome theme of the system. I have chosen to install the Caledonia theme that we can find by googling on the Internet. In the "Comfort" tab you can de-select "Enable automatic login" and in the preselected user we mark specified and put our user
   and focus on password.

We can also customize the menu panel, installing applets from the software manager such as yamp, quickmenu, and many more.

Programs

Before starting to install the software that is necessary for our day to day, we will first have to uninstall the software that we do not need, in order to lighten the system, and not have unnecessary programs that are not going to be used. This action can be performed from the software manager.

1. From the program manager we can install programs such as Skype, VLC, Thunderbird and also search the Internet for Spotify, and look for the program that we want in the software manager.
2. To avoid that when viewing videos on the Internet or in the system, between the computer in suspension, we can install Caffeine from the repositories, but first we must make sure that the following dependencies are installed in the system through the software manager: gnome-python-gconf
libGConf2_4
GConf2

After having these dependencies installed, we look for Caffeine in the software manager, we install it and once installed, we open it and in preferences, we mark “flash videos”, and we introduce the “Firefox” programs and the video player that we have VLC right , Totem, Dragon, etc.

We can install games in linux directly or we can also install Wine for games and to open an application that we have from windows and that we cannot find a substitute in the software installer (although I only use it for games, for the applications I have found substitutes that work perfectly same or almost the same as in windows). For Wine there is a lot of information on the internet about configuration and additions to make it as good as possible when installing the games.

OPTIMIZATION

Already in the customization section we have carried out some actions, which would also be part of this section. Even so, we will see below how to make KDE lighter, without giving up its "Beauty", which is what makes it stand out from other Linux desktop managers.

1. Remove actions from Kruner. We press Alt + F2, then we enter the configuration "the key icon", and we remove the following:
   • Quick access to the web.
   • Activities.
   • Window components.
   • Recent documents.
   • Markers.
   • Powerdevil.
2. Press Alt + F2, put in the window "oxygen-settings", enter the section "Graphic style", animations window, and remove the option "Activate animations". Then we enter "Window decoration" animations window, and remove the option "Activate animations".
3. If we have low brightness problems on laptops, we can install the Kgamma package from the software manager. Once installed, we go to Desktop Settings, and a new section will appear on the screen, where we can modify the values ​​to our liking.
4. Value optimization Swappiness. If we have enough memory in the computer, it is convenient to make sure that the system does not consume swap memory as long as we do not spend the ram, since this is faster by having swap memory to read from our hard drive. The values ​​that we have to modify in the terminal:Su -
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness (Vemos el % de memoria de intercambio que usa el sistema.)
sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10 (Cambiamos el valor de la memora a 10 con esto se usará la memoria de intercambio cuando quede el 10% de memoria ram disponible.)
Kwrite /etc/sysctl.conf. (Entramos en el fichero de configuración para hacer permanente el cambio.)
vm.swappiness=10. (Este valor lo tenemos que poner debajo de la última línea del documento.)
5. We are going to disable some startup services, both from Mageia, from the control center, and from KDE from "Desktop Preferences"> "Startup and shutdown". This is a somewhat personal section, since it depends on the applications and services that are used, so some services or others have to be removed. With this we will achieve better startup and shutdown times, and lower system load:Disabled services in Mageia from the Control Center
   • display-manager-failure
   • fedora-autolabel
   • fedora-autolabel-mark
   • fedora-configure
   • fedora-import-state
   • mdmonitor
   • nfs-idmap
   • nfs lock
   • nfs-mountd
   • nfs-rquotad
   • nfs-server
   • plymouth-quit
   • plymouth-quit-wait
   • plymouth-read-write
   • plymouth-start
   • systemd-tmpfiles-clean
   • wine

   Services removed from KDE:

   Writing demon
   Bluetooth daemon

VARIOUS

Here I am going to explain tips, tutorials and more, which I update and add after the initial content.

Installation flat icons for LibreOffice

Let's change the default icons from LibreOffice to the new set of flat icons that will come as discussed by the network in new versions of the office suite.

1. We download the icons from following link
2. We rename it to "images_hicontrast.zip
3. We enter a console and insert the following commands:su (para entrar como root)
cd /home/usuario/Descargas (Para entrar en nuestra carpeta descargas)
cp images_hicontrast /usr/lib/libreoffice/share/config (Para copiar el archivo a esta ruta)
4. The console will ask us if we want to overwrite the existing file, we say yes.
5. Then we enter Writer, and we go to Options> View, and there we modify the icons and select "High Contrast", and in size we put "Small" (personally I think it looks better that way).

And with this we can already see how the icons have changed to the flat set of future versions of Libreoffice.

I will continue updating this post, with screenshots and more content that I am collecting from the internet, and my own experience.

Suggestions are accepted !!!!!