KDE 4.devel

I have been using 4.0.x since January, so I have learned to live with some of the quirks such as suddenly disappearing panels. The KDE4.1 beta fixes many of these problems, as well as gives the desktop a tremendous speed boost. Some other improvements I’ve noticed are:

* Smooth scrolling in Dolphin and Konqueror, even on pages/directories containing lots of images.
* Drag and drop icons from the menu to the panel and desktop for shortcut launchers
* Add more than one panel!
* Very good and fast desktop effects with Xrender. Fglrx is currently broken for me, so this is a big issue.
* Ozone lets you have differently colored window borders
* the Display systemsettings module actually seems to work
* Plasma stability (especially nice for a beta)
* very innovative “+” and “-” in dolphin when hovering over icons for selecting multiple files/directories
* When you resize the panel, the various applets are resized as well.

As a side note, I have been using Neon (nightly amarok builds).The default Neon color scheme does match the default plasma color scheme, but it does not match my slightly tweaked scheme. Apachelogger handily came to my rescue and told me to copy the kde4 kdeglobals to the neon config directory. “cp .kde4/share/config/kdeglobals .amarok-nightly/share/config/” will do this for you nicely.

Getlibs — simple 32 bit compatibility on amd64

I have been using the 64 bit version of kubuntu since dapper, and have always refrained from installing proprietary 32 bit applications such as skype, Adobe reader and even the Amazon mp3 downloader. Flash has always been an issue too. Today though, I was forced to get adobe reader working (it has nice booklet printing options that I can not find in any other program). After a bit of googling I can across getlibs a simple application to download required 32 bit libraries for 32 bit binaries. You simply install the 32 bit deb with –force-architecture and then run “sudo getlibs executable.” Then try running the program. If it still fails, you may may have to run getlibs against the executable again (probably because the program depends on a library later in the program). So far I have installed Adobe reader, firefox-2 i386 for flash and skype. All three work flawlessly. Getlibs has alot more options, such as the ability to install compatibility libraries by library name.

I think it would awesome integrated into GDebi, of course with a educational warning about looking for a 64-bit version first. This would make it far easier for users to transition to future of 64-bit linux.

Hello Planet

Hello Planet Ubuntu, I am Michael Anderson aka “nosrednaekim.” I work on some kubuntu configuration applications such as desktop-effect-kde and system-config-printer-kde (I have to get back on that <_< ). I’m looking forward to Intrepid (who isn’t) and I hope I can contribute even more this release cycle!

Ubuntu at the Trenton Computing Festival

So, today I joined fellow LoCo Team members for the first time to advocate the use of Ubuntu LInux at a local computing expo at TCNJ.

We had barely finished setting up when we started getting bombarded with requests for the “New Ubuntu” Apparently the Canonical/Community PR machine has been doing a good job informing people about Ubuntu and its upcoming releases. We had four machines burning i386 ISO’s non-stop and they went as fast as we could burn them. Several current users stopped by and got a CD becuase the mirrors were to slow to download it for themselves.

Aside from the current users of Ubuntu (or other Linux) the people were in general VERY accepting of the idea of Linux on the desktop and, as a general rule, scared of the demise of XP and the “rise” of Vista. Of course, Joe Terranova(leader of the NJ LoCo team) dual-head compiz-enabled desktop certainly convinced all passer-bys that Ubuntu could more than surpass any other system for Beauty, as well as functionality.

In the afternoon, I headed over to watch Joe’s “Stump Speech” on Linux, Ubuntu and the Loco Team. The audience seemed quite interested, especially with the ability to virtualize windows. The speech was concluded by a general following of Joe back to the Ubuntu display to give the audience Live CD’s.

We then helped a guy get his wireless working under Hardy Heron using ndiswrapper (Bryan Quigley is the king of GUI’s… and I wish we only had ONE mouse button). This prompted him to remove his XP sticker and replace it with a shiney Ubuntu case badge. (hopefully Joe has a picture of that). EDIT: yes, he does

It started to slow down after that as people started to go home, but the Cd’s still flew off the table.

Another Large attraction was Bryan’s OLPC XO laptop…. many people simply coming by to play with this piece of equipment that is quickly becoming legendary.

On display in the center were also two monitors for sale…. that happened to be attached to computers running Ubuntu Hardy. I guess Linux is good for selling displays

All in all I had a very fun and action filled day…… and I hope we got some converts

Static Networking in Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4

The Kde4 remix of Kubuntu Hardy Heron has one fairly bad flaw for a certain group of users:
It has no way to graphically configure static IP networks. Users are left to manually edit
their /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf. Thankfully this is not hard and the following
tutorial should explain how to do it.

EDIT: if you have another computer with Internet, or have Windows on the same computer and would like to configure the network with a GUI instead of via files…. please follow the instructions in the first comment

First, run “ifconfig” to find the name of your network card. It should be eth0, or similar (eth0 will be used throughout this tutorial).
Then, open up your /etc/network/interfaces file with “kdesudo ‘/usr/lib/kde4/bin/kwrite /etc/network/interfaces’”.
It should look something like:


auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0
auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth1
#iface eth1 inet dhcp
#iface eth2 inet dhcp
#iface ath0 inet dhcp


first, uncomment the line which says:

iface eth0 inet static

Now we have to add some lines which are highly dependant on your individual setup and network/ISP

address 192.168.0.2

put your desired address here

netmask 255.255.255.0

netmask should always be like this, unless your ISP says different or you have set it up differently(if
you’ve done that, you probably don’t need this guide.)

gateway 192.168.0.1

This is the IP of your ISP/Router

broadcast 192.168.0.255

This should be provided by your ISP, if not, it is the first 3 sections of the gateway followed by the
first section of the netmask.

the whole section should look like this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
broadcast 192.168.0.255


Now, we need to edit our resolv.conf and add our DNS nameserver(s)

open the file with “kdesudo ‘/usr/lib/kde4/bin/kwrite /etc/resolv.conf’”

add a line like so:

nameserver 208.67.222.222

This is the line for the OpenDNS nameserver, you can use the one from your ISP
by simply replaceing the above IP with their’s.

Finally, run “sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart” and you should be connected!

IRC Support Solutions for Others, Episode 1

One of the biggest problems with IRC user support is the fact that the solutions to peoples problems are usually not generally available or searchable for future reference. I intend to try to reverse that somewhat for the channels which I am in (#kubuntu, #kubuntu-kde4) by posting the solutions to problems which have been solved by our awesome support team . Of course, not everything will be posted (go google up the logs up for that) but solutions to problems which others may have should be extremely useful. Naturally, since this is IRC, please do not correct me on spelling, grammar or such. Do please warn me about chat-talk though..

So, to start, lets have a log of a problem with KDE4 konqueror.


theunixgeek> How do I get Konqueror to stop opening HTML links in new windows? KDE 4.
nosrednaekim> settings->general-> check "open in new tab instead of new window"
theunixgeek> whenever I click a link, first it downloads it, and then it opens it.
theunixgeek> but I don't want Konqueror to keep downloading HTML links
nosrednaekim> could it be in your file-associations?
theunixgeek> that's why it opens in a new window?
theunixgeek> *.
theunixgeek> It knows to open HTML with Konqueror.
theunixgeek> but it tries to download everything.
nosrednaekim> right... but click edit on konqueror in the file accociations config dialog for xhtml
theunixgeek> ok
nosrednaekim> it has the exact command to open the link with
theunixgeek> with command konqueror
nosrednaekim> mine says "kfmclient openURL %u text/html"
theunixgeek> I'll try that
theunixgeek> with or without quotes?
nosrednaekim> without
theunixgeek> ok
theunixgeek> THANK YOU!!!!


For reference, file associations in KDE4 is in system settings->advanced

I hope to bring you many more useful solutions (and not just from me)

Kubuntu Membership!

Well, I am now a official Kubuntu member. Mostly i’m still going to be doing what I have been doing for the past year: IRC support and some python coding. Its nice being a part of such a welcoming and helpful community, thanks mhb and Riddell for your help and putting up with all my newb bzr questions. Forward and upward!

Repairing a Toshiba MB, or the tale of “I wonder where this screw went”

Hopefully this blog post will help anyone with a laptop realize what its weakest link is.

A friend of mine gave me her laptop to fix. It was having problems coming on, and it would shut down randomly.  When I took it out of the bag, I found the AC adapter still plugged in, and immediately had a suspicion what the problem was. Two other Toshibas that we have had also did the same thing, and when we finally took them apart to find out the reason (they were broken anyway, so why not? ) it was the result of a very questionable engineering decision on the part of the Toshiba: They soldered the AC jack directly to the MB. While this at first may not seem to bad, consider the physics and stresses on these three critical solder joints. How many times do you place books on your adapter plug? Leave it plugged in while its in the bag? In both cases, the stresses can have fatal results.

So, I started taking this laptop apart. Its a decently old one with a 500mhz P3 and a 6GB HD, and the case is entirely plastic (not even a aluminum chassis). Its quite amazing where they manage to hide screws. The key to the whole case was a pop-off 1/4″ plastic strip right below the keyboard, which took me over 30 minutes to find…. I hate laptops.

When I finally got the MB off, my suspicions were confirmed. A quick inspection of the bottom of the board showed that the the stress of being abused had caused the trace itself has separated from the fiberglass. A quick  job with the soldering iron fixed it, or so I thought. The power LED would still not light up. an hour with a ohm-meter finally showed that the trace on the bottom actually wasn’t connected to anything! The power was actually supplied by a trace on the top, which had also broken. So I scratched though the sealer over the trace and soldered the trace back together (with a little reinforcement). Viola! power LED comes on. I then epoxied the jack to the metal port guard across the back as well as the motherboard itself.

Why doesn’t Toshiba do this in the first place? I’m picking on Toshiba because they are the only ones that I have seen have this problem, but other manufacturers probably do this as well. It seems to be a far smarter design to attach the adapter to the case and have some jumper wires connecting it to the MB. Maybe there is some manufacturing thing going on here that I don’t know about, but seriously, this must cut into their warranties (and annoy people like my friend who hasn’t a clue what is happening to her computer)!

So anyway, then came the hard part, remembering how it all went back together. 5 misplaced screws, three complete re-retries and several almost-stripped screws later, it was all back together and working beautifully.  I have one screw left over, and no, I am not the least bit curious where it goes/went

Anything is possible with Python. Proven!

well, with stick figures that is. (from xkcd)

Acer 5050 with Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy

Linux support for the Acer 5050 has gotten much better with the Kubuntu Gutsy release!
My previous post on running kubuntu (7.04) on the Acer 5050 has mostly been obsoleted, as every piece of hardware on this laptop now works!

Sound

In a nice reversal from Edgy and feisty, speakers and headphone jack are automatically detected as separate channels, with PCM as the “master.”

Wireless

Wifi now works fine with the default madwifi driver, just don’t mess with the wireless switch! If your wireless does somehow die on you, it requires the loading of the 2.6.22-7 kernel. Install that kernel and boot into it and everything should be good again(and no, there are no regressions as far as i’ve seen). You may first need to turn off the computer and pull out the AC adapter and batter for about 3 minutes to reset the wireless on/off state.

Graphics

I also recommend installing the AMD 8.43 driver, which makes this low-end ATI card AIGLX capable. Do NOT install it via debs that you can auto-create from the .run as those seem to have problems with libGL. Install it straight from the .run, and if you need to uninstall it, there is a script in /usr/share/ati. Compiz fusion works very well with the AIGLX, though you will have to run it with the no checks options since it does not recognize fglrx as a AIGLX capable driver.

And thats about it, if you have any problems, please do ask. Thanks for making the last entry the top search result on Google for “acer 5050 linux.”