Amarok 2.0 Released!

Amarok 2.0 has finally been released! Amarok is an excellent music player and manager for Linux (primarily). Version 2.0 features a complete interface redesign and beta support for Windows and Macintosh.

Removing Plasmoids when Plasma crashes

I had some trouble with Plasma the other day. For some reason, it suddenly crashed and wouldn't start up again. I tried pressing Alt+F2 to bring up the run dialog, and typing "plasma", but it still wouldn't start. I then tried the command line.

david@suse:~/.kde4/share/config> plasma
plasma(5728) KWallet::Wallet::openWallet: Pass a valid window to KWallet::Wallet::openWallet().
plasma: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/kde4/plasma_applet_showdesktop.so: undefined symbol: _ZN6Plasma14ToolTipManager4selfEv
plasma(5727): Communication problem with "plasma" , it probably crashed.
Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "

Something seemed to be wrong with the plasmoid "Show Desktop". Only problem is - it's pretty hard to remove a plasmoid when plasma won't even start. With a bit of help from Google though, and a few bash commands, I found the configuration file that plasma uses to configure the applets:

david@suse:> kwrite ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc

In this file, I simply had to search for the text "plugin=showdesktop", remove the configuration section associated with this, and start plasma again.
This is a simple way to remove a plasmoid (plasma applet/widget) without starting plasma.

Plasma Theming - Doesn't even compare with Vista

Yes, some people have been complaining that KDE4's Plasma looks like Windows Vista. Well, complain no longer. Liquidat has posted a gallery of KDE4 Plasma themes, and boy do they look good! As you can see, you're not even restricted to single colours for the theming!

KDE4 Rocks!

KDE 4.1 looking promising

KDE 4.1 alpha 1 was released yesterday. The adoption of Qt 4.4 will bring some significant new features to the Plasma desktop shell, but the bumpy transition has made this release very fragile. Ars looks at alpha 1 and the impressive feature set that is being developed for the final 4.1 release, scheduled for July.

KDE 4.0.0 Tagged Ready for Release!

Today KDE 4.0 was officially tagged for release. Now the tarballs will be prepared, and pre-released to the big distros. In about a week (next Friday to be precise) the announcement will be made to the public and the tarballs and packages will be released. But I'm going to see if I can get hold of the svn version first...... ;)

Linux GUI difficulties

Sometimes you encounter problems with the Linux user interface that you just don't get on Windows or the Mac. Today I was downloading my photos with digiKam, when the process suddenly came to a halt. The reason? "digiKam could not import the file 'dsc.......'". Not really a very good explanation. I tried restarting digiKam, and re-plugging the camera. All to no avail.

As it turns out, the problem was simply a full disk. On Windows, you would have had countless annoying messages saying "You are running out of free disk space on drive C:" long before the disk was full, but on Linux the program just stops functioning all together. You're not even told that the disk is full, and there are no easy tools to empty your trash and clean up unused files like there are on Windows. It's a pity when your favourite operating system lets you down like this, but I have to admit that most users are not likely to think of typing "df" at the Konsole terminal when their program stops working. Let's hope KDE4 solves this full disk problem.

KDE 4.0 release draws near

KDE 4.0 is now nearing completion, with the release event scheduled for 17 January 2008. The desktop interface is being finalized now, and the 2nd Release Candidate has already been released, providing an early look at the new Plasma interface.

Although the background APIs and data structures underlying KDE4 were finalized a while ago, Plasma is only nearing completion now. From the various previews around, it looks as if KDE 4.0 is going to be the introduction to a new era in the evolution of the Linux GUI. Plasma looks really smooth, and the APIs behind it are just as neat.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to build the RC2 properly. I keep getting a segmentation fault. So I can't give you a first hand account of KDE4 (yet!), but for more info check out the official announcement - it's got heaps of screenshots.

Finally! A total switch to Linux

Previously, I haven't been able to rely totally on Linux because the only computers available to run it on have been old (Pentium II or earlier!), and therefore haven't been able to run KDE (or GNOME) smoothly. But now we have bought a new computer with Windows Vista installed, so that can be the only WIndows machine, and I can now install Linux on the old (Celeron 2.6Ghz, 750MB RAM, 80GB HDD) computer!

I'm going to be using SUSE running KDE as that is the best integrated and supported version (except for Ubuntu, the "beginners OS' in my point of view). I'm waiting in great anticipation for KDE4 to be released October this year (more about that one of these days), and using SUSE should guarantee a smooth upgrade process. So, stay posted, I'll be relating my experiences living in a Linux world as soon as I get it installed (a few days time hopefully).

Long Live Tux!

Links:
SUSE Linux
KDE Home
David's Nature Photography Gallery