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Imagine that you're sitting alone, working at your computer. If you need some tunes to help you stay awake, you can use your computer as a multimedia center, with help from Red Hat Fedora Linux 3.
Setting up your sound system
Fedora Core should have automatically configured your computer's sound system during the post-installation process. However, you may run into problems — especially on older computers — so Fedora Core provides a sound-card-detection utility.
You can configure and test your sound card at the same time by following these steps:
1. Log in as any user.
2. Click the GNOME Menu button, and choose System Settings --> Soundcard Detection.
Enter the root password if prompted.
The Audio Devices dialog box opens.
3. Click the Play test sound button.
A dialog box opens asking whether you heard the sounds.
4. Click Yes if you hear the sample guitar — and your computer is ready to rock.
If you don't hear the music, click No. Check the following possible causes:
• Your computer has an old, unrecognizable sound card. In that case, you should purchase and install a new one.
• You don't have a sound card. You definitely have to purchase a new card and get it put in there.
• Your speaker connections are faulty. Check your cables and try again.
• Someone else's stereo is way too loud. Call the cops.
5. Click OK in the Audio Devices dialog box and you're ready to go.
Playing CDs
Everyone wants a little music in their lives — but you went ahead and bought a computer instead of that stereo system. (Doh!) But it's not a problem: As it happens, you did indeed spend your money wisely — because your Fedora Core computer functions well as a stereo system. This section describes how to set up your computer to play music CDs.
Fedora Core bundles several open-source CD players for Linux users: CD Player, XMMS (included in the distribution but not installed by default), and Rhythmbox.
The following steps show you how to start playing CDs:
1. Log in to your computer.
2. Pop a CD into the CD-ROM drive.
The GNOME CD Player application appears. Depending on how old your audio CD is, you may or may not see the title information displayed in the CD Player window.
3. Listen as your CD starts playing.
 | You can manually start the CD Player by clicking the GNOME Menu button and choosing Sound & Video --> CD Player — there's nothing to it! |
The CD Player controls should be familiar territory for anyone born in the twentieth century. Here's a quick refresher for cave people:
- To change the volume, click the vertical slide bar on the right side of the CD Player window. Hold the mouse button while you adjust the volume.
- Click the crossed tools (a screwdriver and wrench) button, toward the middle-left area of the window, to open the Preferences window. You can then select how CD Player reacts when you start and stop it. You can also control the default CD device (the default is /dev/cdrom, but you many want to change it to /dev/cdrom1 or another device, depending on your computer hardware). You can also select the theme of the CD Player skin. A simple help system is available too.
- The remaining music controls are self-explanatory.
As you can see, playing CDs is simple.
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