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