Fedora

Having recently moved my desktop to Fedora 15 I am now using Gnome Shell (more on this later). However, as with many of the configuration settings for Gnome, having focus follow mouse is no longer something you can set using installed graphical programs.
Fortunately, a one line command can rectify this for those of us who have become accustomed to using focus follows mouse (if you've never tried out focus follows, you should give it a shot for a week or so - you might be suprised out how nice it is).

For some reason, Fedora comes with vim, but calls vi, even though it is the full vim program rather than the older vi.
Given that the other systems that I have use the standard name for vim (you know, calling vim vim instead of vi. So, the only good solution was to alias the command vim to call vi.
The command for that is alias your_command_name="original_command_name".
Within the quotes can go any command, or even a series of commands.

When I installed Fedora, I went looking to add the sleep inhibit applet to my panel, but discovered that unlike the install on Ubuntu, this applet is not included by default.
This applet comes in handy when you are watching a video on your computer, preventing the screen from turning off while you watch the movie, which being a fairly passive activity generally means you aren't giving any input to the computer.

To get this applet, install the package gnome-power-manager-extra and then right click on your panel, click "Add to Panel" and find the applet.

As my computer has aged, it has revealed a personality that is rather cranky - a personality it expresses with part failures. Unfortunately for me, a few days ago, the expression of my computer's nature lead it to prevent me from logging into to Fedora, prompting me to begin a computer repair of truly epic proportions.
It all began when I ran an update that required me to log out upon completion - and then found myself unable to log back in.

I don't like the conventional way of changing a window's focus by clicking within it. Some time ago, I read about the concept of focus follows mouse, in which to change the window currently in focus, you simply point your cursor at it. Needless to say, on systems without this method configured, it can get quite frustrating, as the commands you intended for the window your cursor is over instead end up in the window last clicked within.

For anyone with multiple email accounts that they regularly check, being able to view all of the contents of every inbox at one time is a great boon, and is one of the few reasons that email clients are still more worthwhile then the web interface.
To find a way to set up all of your inboxes to be viewable in a single inbox, while still being able to access each one individually when necessary, is described as "Unified" by Thunderbird.
To turn on the Unified inbox:
Go to View >> Folders and select Unified in the list of options under Folders

After a day of struggles, I finally managed to installed Fedora 13, specifically the Electronics Lab Spin, on my desktop. Not that the amount of time it took me to install should deter anyone else, the trick that finally made it install was resetting my BIOS to its defaults. Why this worked is beyond me, but it strikes me as another one of those quirks that my computer has developed over the years.

Sadly, after all of my troubles with Gentoo, my switch to Fedora hasn't been easy so far. Currently, I am stuck, trying to get the Live CD to allow me to install to the hard drive. The problem isn't in the installation itself - its the fact that the Live CD is crashing at random intervals. I am currently downloading the Fedora DVD, which is not a Live medium, but if I discover that Fedora is regularly crashing on my machine, I'm likely to switch to another distro once more.