And there Amarok goes again…

Of course, after yesterday’s post, I notice that Amarok doesn’t load half of my music when it starts. Only a complete rescan of my music folder solves the problem.

Funny, it always “deletes” the same music… . Anyway, back to square one.

San

From Gtk to Qt: Amarok, Knetworkmanager, and Kopete

I’ve blogged before how I think Gtk applications are superior to their Qt counterparts, but since I’m using KDE pretty much exclusively since October last year, I’m always on the lookout for good Qt apps.

The main application I keep returning to is Amarok because, and let’s be honest here, there’s not alternative in Qt. I keep on installing it, and I keep rejecting it, and then a few months later I install it again. The last couple of times I noticed an improvement: instead of a buggy, slow, unintuitive mess it’s now quite stable, fast and…well, it’s still unintuitive. But at least it works now.
Another thing I mentioned before is how much I detest the default layout. Let’s have a look at the screenshot of version 2.2.2, straight from the Amarok homepage.

Amarok: Default layout

The main focus here is the information pane, which is just wrong. It’s a music player. It plays music, ergo the focus should be on the music you’re playing. Right now there’s so much information showing in that screenshot it doesn’t even have enough room to show it all. Are you constantly scrolling up and down when you’re listening to music? I know I’m not. I’m doing other things, and the music’s in the background.
Fortunately, the layout is now very customisable, which means you can choose something more sane (and doesn’t show album covers everywhere). Case in point:

Amarok: My layout

I’ll be the first to admit that looks a lot more boring. It also shows a lot more music, and I find that this layout works for me, so I’m keeping it. Behind all that form-over-function and visual hoopla, there’s actually a very decent music player. I keep on discovering more and more features I really like. It seems like my long, long search for a decent Qt media player is finally over.

Another Gtk application I’ve replaced is wicd, the lightweight network manager. I didn’t replace it because I didn’t like it (I still run it on my netbook), but because I kept ending up without any network connection at boot. A reboot would solve the problem, but understandably it drove me absolutely crazy. I even suspected hardware failure, but a quick install of Sidux on a seperate partition showed no problems at all. At long last, I replaced wicd with Knetworkmanager. It’s a KDE front-end for Networkmanager (duh), developed by SuSe, and it has the good sense of putting itself in the systray where it belongs, instead of the plasmoid with the same function.
To my utter amazement, there’s no package available for Arch, not even in the AUR. Installing the Chakra package will complain about some missing dependencies, but it works anyway, so that’s what I’m using now. The network problems haven’t returned.

One app I didn’t replace is Pidgin. Kopete works fine for me now (it used to complain that my password for MSN was wrong when it wasn’t), but it doesn’t have a couple of features I want. One I can forgive is that it doesn’t allow you to save and use other people’s moving smileys. However, I want to be able to cycle between chat-tabs using ctrl-tab, something I couldn’t even find in the Kopete shortcuts. That means that at the moment, I’m staying with Pidgin.

San

Howto: User Windows 7 desktop themes in Linux

Okay, this one is actually incredibly easy, but still, it was fun when I found out.

Windows 7 is by no means my favourite OS, but in my opinion it has some very “desktop themes”, packs of wallpapers which after install will rotate on your desktop. In Windows, it’s as simple as clicking “Download”, after which the pack will unzip itzelf and show up somewhere in youre Appearance settings.

When I downloaded one in Arch, Ark recognised it as a zipfile, but didn’t recognise the .themepack extension. After some googling, I found out that the zip format is actually 7-zip, so simply renaming the extension to 7z does the trick (if you have p7zip installed, of course). KDE and GNOME can do rotating backgrounds too, so the rest should be easy.

Like I said, obvious really, but I liked it.

Latest KDE with a wallpaper from one of the Eastern desktop themes

San

Linux on the desktop: it’s so good it’s boring

I believe that at this point there no use anymore in asking the question “Is Linux ready for the desktop?”. It is, and it works so well it’s boring.

Mind you, I didn’t say Linux does all the stuff Windows or OS X does, or that it’s the best choice for everyone. It’s just that there are pros and contras to any operating system, and those of the best Linux distributions aren’t better or worse than those of its competitors.

But god, it’s boring. I don’t spend hours anymore trying to fix a problem, like getting a webcam to work or trying to figure out why there’s no sound. I have found my distribution of choice (Arch), and nothing else really comes close. I’m perfectly happy with KDE at the moment, so that means endlessly tinkering with the look and feel of Openbox is out too. In fact, the most interesting “new” application I use is Yakuake. It’s very useful, but not exciting no matter how you look at it.

I don’t even spend that much time in front of the computer anymore. I browse a bit, play Starcraft using wine, which needless to say works mind-numbingly well, and read comic books.

So, Linux on the desktop: it’s there!

Now what?

San

The Black Screen of Death

I hate to point and laugh, but…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8388253.stm

From the article:

Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a problem described as the “black screen of death”, which affects its latest operating system.

The problem has different causes, appears in every Win OS since 2000, might be caused by a security update two weeks ago, and might be fixed by another patch now…

I like Windows 7. It’s better than XP. But it’s still Windows.

San

Where is the love?

I’ve been holding this in for a couple of weeks, but now I feel like I’m ready to burst: I’ve been incredibly annoyed at all the negativity I see on linux message boards lately. No matter if it’s the Ubuntu trash talking everywhere, the idiotic criticism of Distrowatch’s review of OpenSuse, the vitriol filled comment section on Steven J. Vaughan-Nichol’s blog…seems like some people don’t have anything to do all day execpt trolling the internet.

I realise of course all to well that this behaviour isn’t limited to Linux related websites. I see it in the comments on the website of a local newspaper, the BBC website, comicbook message boards…but that doesn’t mean it’s any less annoying.

I guess the fact that you can remain anonymous on the internet makes it the perfect place for all the hate, bias, bickering and and small-mindedness I see everywhere. I can do nothing else but conclude that people in general are idiots.

Unless of course there really is a large group of intelligent, tolerant internet users who think it’s not worth the trouble to feed the trolls… One can only hope.

San

Amarok 2.2.1: Incredible

It’s actually working.

Seriously, this is the first time since I don’t know when I’ve been able to use Amarok. There was one heart stopping moment at 57% when it was scanning my collection, but unlike 2.2.0 it simply paused, then went on to scan the reminder.

I’ve been able to throw the playlist and context menu around to get something I can live with, the playlist is sorted more or less to my liking,…I still think it’s overly complicated, and somehow it thinks that “The very best of 2 Unlimited” is the art of every album ever made but it’s working.

Bonus points, because it’s displays/sorts my collection in a different way, I’m playing music I haven’t heard in ages.

Amarok 2.2.1

San

Very quick look at Mandriva 2010

I wanted to see what KDE looks like in  other distributions than Chakra (which is, after all, the default look), so I downloaded Mandriva 2010. I just had a look around, meaning I just ran the LiveCD and didn’t install it. I mean, why go through all the trouble when I know I won’t use it anyway?

Mandriva had improved since the last time I tried it:

• It looks better, but that’s probably because I installed the KDE version this time, instead of GNOME. Mandriva has a very consistent look, which is a good thing, but I agreed with my girlfriend when she said it looked “a bit boring”. It’s okay, but it doesn’t wow you.
• Unlike last time, the nvidia driver was loaded. The resolution wasn’t right, but easily changed through Mandriva’s excellent Configuration Center
• Performance was good, even for a liveCD
• Wireless worked straight out of the box
• Adding software was easy and pretty fast

I was just beginning to think that with distributions like this and Ubuntu, there’s really no need for the hordes of rabid bloggers, screaming that Linux has lost out to Windows 7, that Ubuntu 9.10 is the worst release ever (why does that sound so familiar?), that Armageddon is upon us, etc etc…and then I noticed sound wasn’t working. And I didn’t get a popup this time when I clicked an mp3, asking me to install the necessary codecs (which did happen in 2009). And Amarok crashed (but I won’t hold that against MAndriva because it fails to do anything even remotely useful in Arch too).

I probably could have solved this…maybe it would have been okay after install, but since I didn’t want to install it, I guess I’ll never know.

San

KDE makes me happy

I’ll be honest, I’m surprising myself by not returning to Openbox. I’m still running Chakra with KDE, and I still love it. It needs a couple extra seconds to boot, but afterwards it feels just as fast as Openbox. More specific, applications feel as fast in KDE as they do in Openbox. Of course, Dolphin is slower than Thunar, Kate slower than Leafpad, etc, but Emesene, Firefox, Transmission, and all the other applications I normally use feel just as fast.

Other nice points:

• K3b: simply the best burning software out there
• Gorgeous, GORGEOUS Air theme
• SmoothTasks
• Dolphin is actually a very decent file manager, with tons of nice little options, like the + and the – to select files and directories, which means I can finally see the attraction of single click behaviour, and a twin panel mode.

I’ve been meaning to use the spare partition on my HD to install Arch, XFCE and a dock, just to try it out, but I feel like I can’t be bothered. KDE as it is now is just too easy.

What I could do is install the latest Mandriva, Kubuntu and OpenSuse to test their KDE flavours…hmmm…

San

After Arch + KDE, there’s Arch with GNOME: KahelOS

I’m still happily running Chakra (essentially Arch + KDEmod), but browsing the Arch forums I discovered that Chakra isn’t the only distribution with Arch as its base. Meet Kahel OS, which combines Arch with GNOME.

Now, while Chakra is modest and states it’s essentially Arch with a few added tools (like an installer, GUI front-end for the package management, GUI config tools), Kahel OS claims it’s a whole new distribution. It isn’t…it’s a rebranded Arch, with GNOME added, using the Arch repositories and the Arch installer. If you clicked the link to the Arch forums, this rubbed a few people the wrong way.

I haven’t tried it yet, and I don’t think I will…simply installing Arch and adding GNOME myself is easier for me. But the idea is good…it’s surprising to me not more distributions use Arch as a base.

San