Posted 30 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu
KDE 4.1 was released yesterday and I read a lot of good review about that release, so I thought I would install it in my laptop and give it a try. I tried KDE 4.0 when it was released, but it was not usable. KDE 4.0 was more like an alpha software than a final release one.
I already had Ubuntu 8.04 installed in my laptop. I added the Kubuntu repository and installed KDE 4.1 under Kubuntu 8.04. The installation was smooth. I liked the login window. It’s much more beautiful. Some people might still like the full blue one. I used it for 30 minutes yesterday. From my experience, I would say it’s much better than KDE 4.0 and more stable. KDE 4.1 should have been KDE 4.0. There are few widgets available for plasma if you install the plasma addons. I like the folder view widget. KDE desktop, by default, doesn’t have any icon, but you can use folder view widget to select the folders you want to see in the desktop.
Here are some of the hiccups I encountered. I enabled the windows effects in the system settings. After I pressed the apply button, KDE took me back to the login screen without asking my permission. I experienced another issue in the 30 minutes I used it. Once when I logged in, nothing happened. I had to press CTRL – ALT – Backspace to get back to the login screen. Once nothing happened when I pressed those keys also. I had to hard reset the system to boot again. It was quite smooth otherwise. I’ll use it for couple of weeks and see how it goes. If it’s stable, I might continue to use that as default windows environment in my laptop and continue to use Ubuntu in my desktop.
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KDE team has released an upgrade to their new desktop environment, KDE 4.1. This release is the second feature release of the KDE 4 series, sporting new applications and newly developed feature. KDE 4.1 is the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to the point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users.
Some features you are used to in KDE 3.5 are not implemented yet. The KDE team is working on those to make them available in one of the next releases. If you are not sure about KDE 4.1, read Is KDE 4.1 for you?.
If you are using Kubuntu 8.04, KDE 4.1 has been released and packages are available for Kubuntu 8.04, the Hardy Heron. These packages install to /usr/lib/kde4 and can be installed along side your existing KDE 3 installation.
Instructions:
The updated packages for Kubuntu 8.04 are located in the Kubuntu Member’s KDE 4 Personal Package Archive (PPA) repositories. To update to the release candidate of KDE 4.1, please follow these instructions:
- Add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
- If you already have the kubuntu-kde4-desktop packages installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and answer the questions in which you are prompted. If you do not have kubuntu-kde4-desktop installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop and answer the questions. Both of these options are to be typed at the command prompt.
Source: Kubuntu, KDE.
I read in several blogs and reviews that KDE 4.1 is much better and more usable than KDE 4.0. I’m going to install it in my laptop and see how good it is. I installed KDE 4.0 when it was new, but I wasn’t impressed by the usability and available applications. I liked the UI, but that wasn’t enough.
Here are some of the new/improved applications in KDE 4.1:
- KDE-PIM is back with 4.1, containing the applications
necessary for your personal information and communication. KMail as
mail client, KOrganizer as planning component, Akregator as RSS feed
reader and others are now available again in KDE 4 look.
- Dragon Player, an easy to use video player enters the stage
- Okteta is the new well-integrated and feature-rich hexeditor
- Step, the physics emulator makes learning physics fun and easy
- KSystemLog, helps you keep track of what is going on in your system
- New games such as KDiamond (a bejeweled clone), Kollision, KBreakOut
and Kubrick make taking a break from your work irresistible
- Lokalize, helps translators to make KDE4 available in your language
(if it’s not among the 50-odd languages KDE4 already supports)
- KSCD, your desktop CD player has been resurrected
- Dolphin, KDE’s filemanager has a new treeview in the main
view, also new is the support for tabs.
- Konqueror, KDE’s webbrowser now has support for re-opening
already closed windows and tabs.
- Gwenview, KDE’s image viewer has gotten a new fullscreen view, a
thumbnail bar for easy access to other photos, a smart Undo system and support for
rating images.
- KRDC, KDE’s remote desktop client now detects remote desktops on
the local network automatically using the ZeroConf protocol.
- Marble, KDE’s desktop globe now integrates with OpenStreetMap so you can find your way
everywhere using the Free Maps.
- KSysGuard, now supports monitoring process output or running
applications so there is no need to restart your apps from a terminal anymore
when you want to know what’s going on.
- KWin’s compositing window manager features have been more
stabilized and extended.
- Plasma’s panel configuration has been extended.
(Image: KDE)
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Tags:
Akregator,
Dolphin,
Dragon Player,
Gwenview,
KDE 4.1,
KDE-PIM,
Konqueror,
KOrganizer,
KRDC,
KSCD,
KSysGuard,
KSystemLog,
Kubuntu 8.04,
Kwin,
Lokalize,
Marble,
Okteta,
Plasma
Posted 28 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category General
KDE has created a website KDE Utilities with a compilation of various desktop utilities that work under KDE. It currently has very few utilities listed (13 at the time of writing), but I hope it would a be a single point entry to get all KDE related apps.
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Posted 25 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category General
My friend emailed this to me.
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Posted 25 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu
Ubuntu team has released the 3rd alpha version of Ubuntu 8.10 code named Intrepid Ibex. Alpha 3 has Xorg 7.4 and Linux kernel 2.6.26-4.11. This is an alpha version, so it’s not suitable for regular use. Here are some of the known bugs in alpha 3:
- When using manual partitioning and configuring crypt+LVM, the partitioning will fail in certain configurations.
- A bug in Pulse Audio causes it to prefer the PC speaker sound driver over other output devices.
- When running under VMware, the GNOME desktop locks up the virtual machine at log in time due to the new alsa PC speaker sound driver.
- The Intrepid 2.6.26-3 kernel fails to boot as a guest under Virtualbox.
- On Kubuntu systems, administrative commands using the kdesudo command fail with an xauth problem.
- On Ubuntu systems, the “Shutdown” button on the GNOME desktop does not shut down the system, but instead logs the user out.
There are workaround for some of those issues listed above. Refer to the release announcement from Ubuntu.
To download, click here.
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Posted 23 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category News
Google’s Blogger service is responsible for 2% of the world’s malware hosted on the web, according to a new report from security firm Sophos.
The security firm claims hackers are setting up pages on the free blogging service to host malicious code, or simply posting links to infected websites in other bloggers’ comments.
Beware next time when you read a blog at blogger.
Source: PC Pro.
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Posted 23 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu
Installation of Guest Additions (enables seamless mouse movements between host and guest OSes, share folders between host and guest etc) used to be pretty simple and straightforward with the older version of Virtualbox. It all changed with the newer version (I’m not sure which version to be exact). I’m using the latest version available for download and I have listed the steps I followed to install it. I installed Virtualbox in Ubuntu 8.04 and installed Windows XP Pro as guest OS in Virtualbox.
After you started the guest OS using Virtualbox, Click on Devices menu and select �Mount CD/DVD-ROM� and then �CD/DVD-ROM image� under that. This will show you a window as shown below. You’ll see
VBoxGuestAdditions.iso listed under that. If not, you have to look under C:\Program files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox in Windows or /opt/VirtualBox-1.6.2 or /usr/share/virtualbox/ in Linux. Click that ISO file and press the select button.
Then in the guest OS (Windows), open My Computer and double click the CD/DVD drive. For some people, double clicking the drive itself will bring you the guest additions installation wizard. For some, it’ll show
the files under that and you have to double click Virtualbox guest additions setup.exe file. This will get you the wizard. Go with the defaults and complete the wizard. Once it’s completed, you have to reboot the system. The screen resolution might change after rebooting. Go and change the resolution by right clicking on Windows desktop and selecting properties. You should now be able to move the mouse between the host and guest OSes without pressing the right control key.
Update: If you are using Virtualbox 3.0, you can try to install Guest Additions by clicking Devices -> Install Guest Additions. If it doesn’t work, then click Devices -> unmount CD/DVD-ROM and then click Install Guest Additions.
VirtualBox Guest Addition
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Posted 22 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu
I use Simple Backup program that comes as default with Ubuntu for backing up my home folder. I had problems with this software on and off for the past few months. It fills the var/backup folder sometimes when it can’t find the backup medium and that fills up my “/” (root) partition. I then have to go and manually delete those files to get the space back.
I set the software to backup files to my Maxtor OneTouch4 external hard drive. Ubuntu mounts the drive as OneTouch4, but sometimes it mounts it as OneTouch4_. I’m not sure if it’s due to multiple accounts being used in the desktop, but the mount point changes. Ubuntu mounts it automatically, so it’s not part of the fstab file. This happened 3 or 4 times during which the backup program ran. Since the program couldn’t find OneTouch4, it created a folder under /media with that name and created the backup there, thus filling up my “/” root partition. I used the disk analyzer, but I couldn’t figure out how the partition was full. Though the disk analyzer showed OneTouch4, I thought it was pointing to the external hard drive. I didn’t realize it was a folder under media in the root partition. It took me several minutes before I figured that out. Once I realized that, I went and deleted the OneTouch4 directory. The directory was gone, but the root partition was still showing 100% used. I couldn’t locate where the file went and I didn’t know how to clear the root’s trash folder. I finally found out that the deleted files went to /root/.local/share/Trash/files directory. The problem was, Trash folder’s permission won’t allow you to move into that directory or look at the content. I had to change the permission using chmod command and get into Trash and files directory. Once I emptied the Trash/files directory, I got all my space back on my root partition. Woof!!! What a pain. Once deleted, I went and changed the permission back to how it was for Trash and files directories. I, now, set the backup to run manually and I make sure OneTouch4 is my external hard drive before I run the backup.
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Posted 17 Jul 2008 — by Arun
Category General
There could be more than one way to do this, but I found this easy to do. This method helps you to set specific persmissions like whether a specific site can load image or not, can open pop up window or not, can set cookies or not and can install extensions and themes or not. To do this, go to the webpage you want the permission to be set. Click on Tools – Page info. Then click on Permission icon. This shows you the above mentioned options. Most of those will have Use default checked unless you have changed it before. If you want to change permission, uncheck Use Default and select Allow or Block (See picture). I tried this in Firefox 3.x. I think it must be the same in Firefox 2.x, but I’m not sure.
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Mozilla has released the first incremental update after releasing the Firefox 3.0 browser a month back. Firefox 3.0.1 has the following fixes:
- Fixed 3 critical security issues.
- Fixed stability issues
- Fixed an issue related to phishing database not getting updated on first launch
- Fixed SSL certificate exception issue
- Fixed the issue related to printing a content from the middle of the page
- Fixed issue with dial up in Linux where Firefox always started offline.
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