I’m back to blogging but this time I’m moving to Blogger just for a taste of something different. WordPress has been fantastic and maybe someday I might come back to this platform.
Anyway, here’s the new address: http://terminal-variant.blogspot.com/
Yeah, that’s my desktop. If you’re wondering how I put together three of those images to make this really cool screenshot, the application I used is called Screenie. Its a Qt application and its quite simple, just drag-and-drop.
Now, in the space between now and the last post I’ve used Kubuntu but now its back to Arch (I always come back to it I guess!). Kubuntu was quite stable with the 4.0 series. Around the time of what I described to as “Plasma Surgery”, (the time when Plasma broke with the shift to Qt 4.4) I was a bit reluctant to get into 4.1 again so I wanted to see what the other distros were doing with KDE 4.1. That brought me to my previous post on the comparision of other distros using KDE 4.0.
Kubuntu was very usable but a little short of features with 4.0.4 at the time. I haven’t checked 4.0.5 and don’t plan to. That is because KDE 4.1 Beta is out and it is reasonably stable. Its just Beta 1 and we have more than a month till the final release and what a time leading up to the release its going to be! There are rapid commits being made, bugs being fixed and polishing being done. There’s a new Plasma theme and it looks awesome. You can see it in my desktop screenshot and notice the carbon-fibre clock which in my opinion, really stands out.
KDE 4.0.82 is quite stable and I’m using the KDEmod unstable repository which gets updated weekly. Shaman is working fine and is quite stable. I’m looking forward to Shaman2 which should feature on some KDE distros (Kubuntu, maybe?) as the default package manager. Dolphin used to crash a lot and now its loading quicker than it used to in 4.0.69 (before the “Plasma Surgery”). Konqueror finally imports my Firefox bookmarks (it never used to the last time I tried, but it could have been fixed earlier).
I did try Arora (git) from the Arch repos and it looked promising. It looks a lot like Firefox but it has Safari’s address/page loading bar. Hopefully there will be bookmark importing support sometime in the near future so I can make the switch. Webkit is a bit slow for me at the moment though the rendering is a bit better than KHTML. Flash works and I hope it turns out to be a top browser.
The desktop effects are really smooth, though I hope its possible to speed up OpenGL rendering on Intel cards so I can use Cover Switch, an enhanced Alt+tab switcher (remember Cover Flow from iTunes?) to just bring on the eye-candy! What’s that I hear? Wobbly Windows? Yeah, KWin does them too. Why would you need Compiz Fusion now? You can use Compiz Fusion and there is a neat option to switch window managers under System Settings.
The state of Amarok2 is improving and I haven’t had any sudden crashes in a while though I stick to JuK for music at the moment. Quassel seems to have come among the KDEmod packages and I still can’t connect to Freenode. I really need to fix that or I’ll have to install XChat and at the moment I don’t want any GTK apps on my system. Firefox3 will find its way on though, after the big record breaking (will it be?) release tomorrow.
In case you’re wondering why I don’t have icons or the Folder View widget (which, by the way is pretty useful contradictory to anyone who thinks otherwise), its because I use the nice Alt+F2 Run Menu. Its much more productive because I can find about anything I want. If I were to tag my pictures (will do so with a stable version of 4.1) then I can search for them. With the power of Pacman+Shaman I can even install a software package with some simple commands.
Kubuntu Tutorials Day took place yesterday and unfortunately I missed it partly due to timezone and a bit of work. You can catch the logs (I know I will) at the wiki link. From what I’ve heard, Celeste Paul’s usability talk was excellent so you should check it out. In case you don’t know, Kubuntu Tutorials Day is a set of IRC sessions where the Kubuntu developers talk to the users about various ways to contribute to the development of Kubuntu and KDE. I remember there were some openSUSE users online as well for the sessions last year, so its quite sought after.
So I’ll sign off from Konqueror now. I do have a few other things I’d like to talk about but more on that in another blog.
Arch has taught me so much and I will go back to it one day. For now, I plan to decide between three popular KDE distros – openSUSE, Kubuntu and Fedora. The desktop environment of choice? KDE 4.0. So I downloaded the livecd torrents from their respective websites and burnt them to a rewritable disc. I could have used Virtualbox but I planned to install whichever I found the best. Fortunately, I did come to a conclusion and I’ll briefly share what I can recall from using these distros.
Fedora 9 :
openSUSE 10.3 :
Kubuntu 8.04 :
So I’ve settled for Kubuntu for now and I plan to review it with some screenshots soon.
First off, I’d just like to say that this new WordPress Dashboard looks fantastic and functions really well. Nice work guys. So, what’s up with my Linux box? Well, I switched from SVN to the KDEmod repository in Arch Linux. I managed to fix every problem I had before, including the missing Oxygen icons. Then I saw a few changes in the repo and an update to 4.0.68. I gave into temptation and did a pacman -Syu. That was the last I saw of my speedy, beautiful desktop which had the Slim Glow plasma theme and a few neat widgets.
So its back to Windows for a while. I’m getting a teeny bit bored of Arch. That is, if I find something more exciting I’d go for it. And I have a hunch I may have found it. Before I first used Arch, I had a long chat on the Arch channel and the Gentoo channel on Freenode. I was very satisfied with both distros. However, due to time constraints I went for Arch. But now I think I know my way around and I’m looking for a new, exciting challenge. Even possibly to try 64-bit since my Pentium 4 Processor with EM64T does support it. I will however, put a move to Gentoo on hold as I may go shopping for a graphics card. So I’d prefer to get it set up on Arch first before heading to Gentoo.
I’d really love to post another screenshot of my desktop, but due to severe borkage (is that a word?) I have no choice but to use this Microsoft product as I wait for an update after a few reports of a similar bug with KDM have been made.
After reading this article from polishlinux.org, Jayson Rowe’s move to openSUSE’s Factory version and getting a confirmation from a couple of Arch users, I plan to install KDE 4.0.66. The polishlinux review is exhaustive and is a must-read to see whats new since the last revision. The important thing is that what is coming out of the SVN at the moment seems to be reasonably stable.
I’ll be using markc’s repository which generates daily snapshots of KDE 4. I don’t think openSUSE does that so hats off to him really. KOffice, K3b and Amarok2 are also included in his repo so I’ll be installing all three of those as well. I can live with Krita for the occasional little image editing I do for fun, so it will be good to see what’s new. KGet from what I’ve read in an earlier polishlinux review, supports torrent downloads. I hope Kopete has seen some improvements as well. The new Plasma features look fantastic and I’m really looking forward to it. This means all my basic requirements will be fulfilled with six applications and I’ll get a huge bonus with Plasma.
Expect a short review with screenshots in my next blog.
Yeah, its been a while, I know. But I thought I’d kick back by talking a little about my current desktop. Its Arch Linux with KDEmod (unstable) or basically KDE 4.0.2. I was tempted to install KDE 4 from subversion initially. But I did want to keep my existing KDEmod setup and I didn’t have much time on my hands to get dirty. Then I saw that the KDEmod team had finally released 4.0.2 packages after sticking to 4.0.1 for a while. I can’t comment on stability improvements but I can say that the KDE 4.0.2 I’m using is pretty stable.
There are a few minor annoyances, however:
I’m not filing bug reports against anything related to the above points because 4.0.3 has been tagged as of March 26, so I’ll wait and see if there is any improvement in 4.0.3 which releases on April 2, 2008.
The latest gtk-qt-engine supports KDE 4, so be sure to grab the source or build from svn if you want your GIMP, Firefox and other GTK+ applications to use the Oxygen theme. There are a few minor glitches here and there though, so don’t expect it to be perfect. At the moment I don’t have Qt3 or any KDE3 application installed (yes, no Amarok or k3b, and I’m already missing them) but that could change soon.
I’ve already tried the 4.1 development version (4.0.66 at the time) through openSUSE’s livecd and its quite unstable as you’d expect KDE from the trunk to be. Amarok2 refused to start and there were a few other bumps as far as I remember. Plasma however, was a bit more stable than what I’m using. If you would like to install KDE 4, I’d recommend grabbing the livecd and installing it. SUSE’s done a fine job in polishing it up. If you have an openSUSE DVD then you can do a fresh install by noting down the KDE 4 Repositories and entering them as Additional Repositories during the install.
WordPress have really, really surprised me with a 3GB storage capacity. I think I’ll use that right now and then maybe play a little knetwalk.
Update: As of now I’m putting Firefox3 aside and sticking to Konqueror because pages look so much more prettier and load faster with Webkit. I can’t import Firefox’s bookmarks for some reason at the moment, but I think that should be fixed soon.
Today I managed to help a friend in getting his iPod to work with Amarok in PCLinuxOS using this guide. We were successful and he’s happily using Amarok to manage his music as well as his iPod. At the end of all I was left satisfied and suddenly something really random hit me. It just hit me, seriously. What if PCLinuxOS was taken over by Canonical? Now I assume you are ready to skip the rest of the post and start flaming me already. Go on, but what good would it do? What is the fool talking about you’d say, wouldn’t you?
PCLinuxOS is an excellent distribution. What has proved to be the difference in making it my recommended distro for newbies or users coming from other operating systems is the fact that it runs fine on laptops as well. I’ve tried openSUSE, Mandriva and Kubuntu on my friend’s laptop and openSUSE worked but was overwhelming, Mandriva worked but it wasn’t as up to date as I’d have liked it, but more importantly both distros had slow package management. Kubuntu didn’t detect the sound and wi-fi for some reason from what I was told.
Now, PCLinuxOS depends a lot on donations but still manages to do a fantastic job with its wonderful developer team of Texstar and the Ripper Gang. I have had the opportunity to speak to devnet, one of the lead developers, once on IRC and they are indeed a very friendly community. Texstar has stated in the past that he has tried Debian and other distros before but ultimately decided to use Mandriva as a base. While that in my opinion has proved to be great, I want to try and analyze what would happen if Canonical backed this distro.
The first step would be attempting to work under the banner of Ubuntu. If at all that is accomplished then it would be interesting. It would primarily benefit Kubuntu, which at the moment is under Jonathan Riddell who I must say once again as I did in the previous post, is doing a fantastic job with the distro. Kubuntu would be backed by a hard working development team that would be well-suited to the system of long term releases as well as they do a wonderful job in ensuring stability. The new six-month cycle would, the way I’d see it, be a new challenge to take up. There would be the problem of shifting these developers to another base, from Mandriva to Debian. Would it be welcomed? I do not know.
What would it bring to Kubuntu as a distribution in terms of features? A few more thinking caps? Certainly. Quicker implementation of features that are there in Ubuntu and other distros? Yes. I even think Kubuntu’s artwork could be taken to another level and be made a lot more appealing than it already is. Attention to detail is something the PCLOS developers are good at, and we’d see some splash screens for applications somewhere along the lines of openSUSE as well. I’m sure that can always be done but the fact is that it hasn’t been done. Riddell has earlier stated that Kubuntu makes use of KDE software only. Now with the current potential of KDE 4 yet to be utilized since KOffice, Amarok2, the PIM and other applications for KDE 4 aren’t completely updated yet, it will be interesting to see how KDE 4 further improves usability for such applications.
This deal would not benefit PCLinuxOS as an independent brand. That is one thing that needs to be made clear. You don’t bring a big fish out of the water and put it in a small fish bowl. However, you can set a small fish free into the ocean. That means that PCLinuxOS would have to come to Ubuntu and not the other way around. If Canonical wants the future of Kubuntu to be in very strong hands this
This would also be the “easy way out”. If Canonical were to consider this, it would in some peoples’ perspective, make them look a little ‘anxious’ as well. I don’t think they have learned their lesson yet though, have they? PCLinuxOS took Ubuntu by the storm and overtook Ubuntu on Distrowatch (which I believe does hold a decent stand when in deciding who uses what) at one point of time. That ‘period’ involved using the KDE version of PCLinuxOS which thus increased the usage of KDE indirectly as well. KDE was a hit so why does Kubuntu still have one lead developer? I have not written this to merely ask for an increase in the number of Kubuntu developers.
Its strange that I haven’t mentioned that dissolving PCLinuxOS would be something they would have to do in order to clinch the deal. The PCLinuxOS developers would gain experience working with a larger user base and we know Ubuntu is good in providing commercial support as well when needed so I see it as a positive for the PCLOS developers as well. It paints a pretty picture in the minds of the neutrals I must say. The unifying force would have to be open-source and that alone will keep the project together. But what is Linux and the spirit of open-source? One big community working hard together. If the two parties were to by chances see this idea the way I do, then there would probably be something to consider. Trolltech came along one day to pick up KDE, providing complete backing and helping to turn KDE into what it is today. With things looking promising with the Nokia deal and Qt 4.4, lets stand up for a new distribution revolution, shall we?
Disclaimer: I am simply fantasizing about such a takeover and it would indeed be wonderful if it actually worked out. I do not know how Canonical and PCLOS would be able to settle it, but if done, it would be another step in the right direction, to bigger and greater things… in Linux. Sometimes, a takeover isn’t about money, its about sharing a vision.
Update: At this point of time I would like to say that I did not mean to be controversial or anything like at times some bloggers do to attract attention. I merely wished to share an idea (even admitting that I am fantasizing) and gauge your opinion on it. That said, I would like to raise my hat to those who read or commented on this post because I did realize I said “bought” and this could have been interpreted in an inflammatory way, so I wish to just keep it clearer by saying “acquired.” I know that this would indeed lead to one of the distributions losing its identity and I also wish to emphasize again that I have a lot of respect for the PCLinuxOS community and I do not consider it a minority. What I did not mention before is that I do dislike Ubuntu and I do not like that Canonical hasn’t given Kubuntu the support it needs and have hinted it in my previous post as well.
I share the sentiments of the users who have commented when they imply that Canonical needs to take a good look at itself and lend a hand to Kubuntu. I realize that you do not need to have major backing to be successful. PCLinuxOS is doing a wonderful job I must say again. This post simply suggested uniting two parties however it would mean making a sacrifice. It also shows that PCLinuxOS deserves to have the backing of a powerful company to give it a financial advantage that would indeed take it to the next level. It deserves better marketing and so does Mint as has been rightly pointed out in the first comment below.
On the subject of the base of both distributions (Debian or Mandriva) and considering a question of merging them I’d like to say that I would not be able to decide which. Neither would any of you users. That is why I clearly said that for this deal to go through if it was even considered by both parties, it would need to be agreed upon by both parties. Finally to the user who said that Distrowatch numbers aren’t indicative of a distribution’s popularity. It is true to a good extent and I do not wish to take a side about its validity because that isn’t the point of this post. However judging by the response to this post, I would have to point out that there have been more PCLinuxOS users than (K)Ubuntu users who have had a say about this idea.
That said, I would just like to wish both distributions the very best for the future and I hope they manage to satisfy their respective user-bases.
My busy schedule seemed to coincide timely with an interesting but recurring debate that has been put in the limelight once again so it seems I can cover the arguments of both sides. Aaron Seigo, President of the KDE e.V. and KDE’s lead developer said in an interview with Computerworld,
What I find unfortunate is that some companies dig into technologies. Canonical did not communicate well about long-term support and therefore neglected 35 percent of their user base. A user base they routinely neglect, but at KDE we ignore a lot of this.
Now this was met with disappointment from Jono Bacon, Canonical’s Ubuntu Community Manager who countered Aaron’s comments. Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell wrote an excellent post, leading from the front and listing out the reasons why he felt that Kubuntu was actually helping the cause of KDE. This was followed by a post on the Planet by Celeste Paul which acts as an extension to Riddell’s arguments.
Having given you the situation as it is, I would like to emphasize on certain points from these posts and put forward my opinion on them. I’ll begin in sequence with then, with what Aaron said. I do believe that there is no need to make an actual long-term support version but I do believe that it would help certain small sections of the Kubuntu community, to extend the support of the KDE 3 version of Kubuntu for this particular release from the presently assigned six months to a year. This would give KDE 4 enough time to become a desktop environment which could be reliable enough to provide long-term support for even a year on.
I mean, if Kubuntu 8.04 has a year’s support, then users who opt for long-term stability can work for a year on what will probably be a stable KDE 3.5.9 release and then make the move to KDE 4 which will have been more than a year into its release. If you have seen the rate at which bugs are being fixed in KDE 4, there is no doubt that with this speed coupled with the quality of existing framework, you will have a stable version of KDE 4 following your final usage of KDE 3. All it takes for Canonical is thinking a little outside the box but it would mean making a bold decision.
Their current decision according to me could send one of these signals: a). they simply want to move forward and put their entire focus on KDE 4, b). they are conceding that Ubuntu’s LTS (not Kubuntu’s) is ideal for servers and users looking for a stable option for this particular release, hence ignoring the 35% base they have. I personally think it is a). and I do not think Canonical are cynical enough to concede that they are not giving Kubuntu (coupled with KDE) the developers, attention and focus it needs. Having said all this, I would like to add that judging by Jono Bacon’s post, the decision to not have a Kubuntu LTS this time around was, I am certain, well thought out by them and I respect their decision and I think we should just get on with it.
Now I’d like to touch on the second point of Riddell’s post in which he said that Kubuntu is a pure KDE distro. In my opinion, this is probably the strongest point in his post. He is spot on about Kubuntu actually helping the cause of KDE by being purely KDE-based and not including any GNOME applications in its default setup. PCLinuxOS and Mepis for example, use Synaptic as their package manager, which is GTK+ based. Kubuntu have gone out of their way to create Adept which in my opinion, might lack a small feature or two (like total estimated time remaining) but it is still a fine package manager. Another little known fact he points out is that it was he who worked with Amarok to get the first automatic codec installer working and the fact that Ubuntu got to it first is not true.
He also reminds us of Kubuntu Tutorials Day, when he held sessions of IRC to introduce users to PyKDE and Qt. I remember him mentioning on his blog a little after the event that openSUSE people too turned up and paid notice. I guess that highlights the reason why I visit the Ubuntu Forums every now and then – the wonderful community. I don’t spend time on the #ubuntu channel enough to say that there aren’t a few kinks there and though there has been trolling like with the famous sudo rm command incident, I do think that they are a helpful lot.
The last time the matter of Canonical neglecting Kubuntu came up when there was an open letter to Mark Shuttleworth written by a blogger who wished to emphasize the need to get rid of the current naming system of ‘buntus and stick to something along the lines of Ubuntu KDE Edition. Now while I did comment that I supported this idea, I realize now that this will not change the fact that Canonical had decided to base Ubuntu on GNOME and that Kubuntu came later. What Kubuntu really needs is a few more quality developers to help Riddell, who I think is doing a fine job on his own, but they could probably do with all the support they can get.
I couldn’t help mentioning this here and I do not intend to hype up anything. Trolltech have made a press release about the same and issued an open letter to the KDE community. According to some sources, holders of approximately 66.43 percent of Trolltech’s issued shares and votes have approved the offer. As always I won’t repeat what’s already been explained so far unless I have an opinion about this, so I’ll quote Havaard Nord, CEO and co-founder of Trolltech, just so you know that the deal has been made carefully.
We will continue to actively develop Qt and Qtopia. We also want to underline that we will continue to support the open source community by continuing to release these technologies under the GPL.
So this move should help Nokia to take advantage of Trolltech’s creativity and strengthen their mobile application platform. Open source, open source… I wonder if the Android had any reason to inspire this. So Havaard Nord’s dream of seeing ‘Qt Everywhere’ should soon become a reality. What started as a framework for making graphical user interfaces in C++, it has evolved to becoming the foundation of the K Desktop Environment. I wonder how the GNOME fans will react, but one thing is for sure, I definitely did not see this coming!
This is more of a quick news flash than anything else. The Wine developers have just announced the release of the 0.9.54 version which features Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 support. They have said that it should work now though I’ll wait a bit before I can link you to some feedback. I also just noticed that Photoshop CS2 has jumped to #1 in the list of Platinum applications in Wine. The reviews in AppDB suggest that the earlier 0.9.5x version allowed CS2 to run with performance issues and minor crashes but most features seemed to work. Now hopefully all that is fixed and we’ll get closer to a version 1 of Wine with 91 bugs left to be fixed. The Digg page currently features some humorous comments and I particularly like this one:
< classic > I can’t use linux desktop as I need photoshop < /classic >
You are running out of arguments Johnny boy!
Apparently you can also get Microsoft Office 2007 running in Wine with a little work and that is a great achievement as well.
There is also PlayOnLinux which is a Python-based frontend to install Windows programs in Wine. They have a repository of scripts for different games which should basically make it simpler to install games which is useful. With more support they can expand the repo for better game support and simple installation of games. It even lets you install DirectX for a certain game and it should thus save me some time and I could give Wine another shot with my FIFA 08 DVD. You can assign specific wine versions to run your installed windows program from and this means that Battle.Net in Warcraft III could work with an older version of Wine, allowing you to run other games with later versions at the same time. Simulated reboot and addition of desktop shortcuts are also useful features.
I checked a couple of topics on their forums and it seems to make games work real smoothly. All it needs now is more contributors who know how to configure Wine and the scripts don’t look that long either so if you have some experience do contribute or learn how to because it isn’t that hard from the looks of it.
Digg News Tuxmachines Planet KDE