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Ailurus is a great little program to add on to a fresh installation of Fedora 15. I would compare it to something along the lines of Ubuntu Tweak, in which the user is presented with a set of clean up tasks, system information, a package manager, and even a good solid set of repositories to choose from. I only wish I had found it a little earlier than I did as it would have made adding the initial repositories a breeze when I first installed Fedora 15.
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This is the first article in a series I’m going to be writing about the different configuration tools available in Fedora 15.
Ailurus is a great little program to add on to a fresh installation of Fedora 15. I would compare it to something along the lines of Ubuntu Tweak, in which the user is presented with a set of clean up tasks, system information, a package manager, and even a good solid set of repositories to choose from. I only wish I had found it a little earlier than I did as it would have made adding the initial repositories a breeze when I first installed Fedora 15.
Screenshot of Ailurus Information Screen
A full list of system information can be found on the Ailurus Information screen
Screenshot of the Ailurus Information screen
The Ailurus Information screen gives you various information about your hardware and Linux installation. It is also capable of printing all the information or copying it to clipboard. I found the list to be pretty complete. I would post it here but it would make this review unnecessarily long. :)
Screenshot of Ailurus System Settings screen
The Ailurus System Settings screen allows you to tweak Firefox, the host name, and the tendency of swapping memory to disk
The Ailurus System Settings screen features a few pretty handy tools. There’s the ability to tweak quite a few Firefox settings from the user.js file, the ability to change the host name of your machine, and the quite handy ability to change the tendency of swapping memory to disk.
Screenshot of the Ailurus Install Software screen
Ailurus also features an install-able list of commonly used software in the Install Software screen
In the Install Software screen, Ailurus presents you with the option of installing your pick from a large list of commonly used software. A bunch of popular games are listed here, as well as Compiz tools, media editors, media players, image tools, and more. Unfortunately I did not find much of this software very useful, as it consisted of things already installed (such as Gnome 3) or things I just wouldn’t need (such as Midori, EasyTag and Keepassx). However I found the game list to be a great representation of how many different types of games are available on Linux. Battle for Wesnoth, FreeDOOM, and Frozen Bubble are just a sampling of all the games this software installer has to offer.
Screenshot of the Ailurus Repositories screen
The Repositories screen in Ailurus gives you easy access to a good full set of repositories
Now we’re on to one of my favorite parts of Ailurus. It comes with a full list of repositories, both free and non-free, that you can enable and disable. These consist of the ever popular RPM Fusion repositories along with Firefox 5, Livna, and many more. This screen also allows you to edit your repository configuration files.
Screenshot of the Ailurus Recover RPM screen
In the Ailurus Recover RPM Screen, you can create system snapshots to revert back to in the case of a bad package installation
The Ailurus Recover RPM screen is kind of like System Restore in Windows. It takes a snapshot of what packages you have installed on your system so in the case of an emergency you can revert back to the old installation. The only thing I find lacking here is that you have no idea where the snapshot file saves so you can restore from the snapshot via the CLI if necessary.
Screenshot of the Ailurus Clean Up screen
The Ailurus Clean Up screen features the ability to clean up Nautilus thumbnail images, recent documents, and the RPM cache
While I find the Ailurus Clean Up screen handy, I don’t find it quite as thorough as BleachBit, which I will be reviewing later. It features a button to clean up Nautilus’ thumbnail images, recent documents list, and the RPM cache.
Screenshot of the Ailurus Computer Doctor screen
The Ailurus Computer Doctor screen makes suggestions for system configuration settings
The Computer Doctor screen in Ailurus is probably one of its neatest and most unique features. This makes suggestions on configuration changes you can make to remove various errors and increase the safety of your system. For example, mine suggested I add a missing application shortcut to the application menu, apply a script in bash that would prevent spaces in file names from destroying the wrong files, and add colors to lists in bash so they would be easier to read.
Ailurus additionally features the option to learn Linux via a script that runs at user login that displays various commands and a short explanation of what they do. This tool is great not only for people wanting to learn Linux commands but also those that may want to keep themselves reminded of/refreshed on what commands are available. Along with this comes the option to run a “PreUpgrade” application to upgrade Fedora (untested by me since there is no Fedora 16 yet).
While Ailurus is not a complete solution to configuration options in Fedora, it makes a nice addition to the configuration tools you may already have. Its ability to add on repositories in one click and provide a central place for basic administration tasks make it one of my favorite configuration tools in Fedora 15. Full Story |
