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amazing.......

bigjohn — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:06:48 GMT

By way of a bit of an update......

So, I've been through various distro's, most successfully but some not so.

I've currently settled on Ubuntu and got the 9.10 version installed.

I was using KDE for my desktop, but when "they" started using KDE4 by default, I got so frustrated trying to understand how to do stuff that came naturally with KDE3, I said "bollocks" to it and installed gnome.

I don't quite understand why, because until then, whenever I tried gnome, I was getting myself so confused, that I'd have just gone back to KDE, but for some reason, on this occasion gnome "just clicked". More stuff worked "straight out of the box" and it seemed more straight forward than it had previously done.

I've got used to the default stuff, like having the taskbar at the top of the screen, and the open windows listing buttons on the bottom and all that kind of stuff, so I'm now happily plugging away with gnome and KDE is only installed for my partner as she is so stubborn that she won't try gnome.

Hey ho!

I still don't like having to use sudo, I much prefer the more traditional "user and root" arrangement of most other distro's (having an extra root password/account is more reassuring to me.....) but it's too much hassle to change it and try to uninstall/remove sudo so I'll just have to lump it won't I

Is KDE 4 supposed to be such a dis-organised pile of shite ???

bigjohn — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:03:45 GMT

Ok, so over the last weekend, I was doing my regular updates - a habit I picked up when I was using sidux, but it made sense to try and update regularly.

Anyway, I reload the Kubuntu 8.04 sources and it tells me that there's a dist-upgrade available i.e. to 8.10 (whatever they've called it).

Ok thinks me, I might as well, so I fire it up........

It gets all the way through and then says I have to reboot the system - well it had installed a newer kernel version......

Then f*** my boots, it opens up and it seems that Kubuntu 8.10 has KDE 4 as it's interface.

Ok thinks me, well it's been out for a while so it must be Ok by now.

Well it is, sort of. Yes it looks nice and pretty. The new design look is excellent, but then I try to do a few things like I've always done......

Only to find that I either can't do them or the method of these minor customisations is so well hidden as to be impossible.

Again, "Ok thinks me", well I understand that from stuff I've read, it was a major "re-write" of KDE, so someones bound to have written a new "howto" type document so those who've never used linux systems should be able to work out how to do a few things to make their interface a little more personal.

Have they f**k!

So far, the only stuff I can find has been a few suggestions and ideas posted on forums.

do the KDE developers really need a good f*****g kicking to realise that it's ok if you're aiming an application at people who are "up to speed" with the possible ways "they" might be thinking, but when it's as counter intuitive as it is at the moment, then I'd call it "not ready for general employment".

Hell, I mean, where the hell is the facility to reduce the width of the toolbar/dock ? so it's not right the way across the screen, or how in hells name to I move some of the toolbar icons to group them as I normally would ?

By f*****g magic ?

It's just more proof, IMO, that as long as linux application developers don't understand that you need to write nice, easily understood instructions and help guides then linux generally still will have a long way to go.

Yes, and by that I mean make modifying desktop stuff as "idiot level" as windows!

That's one of the reasons why it's quite hard to get windows users to adopt linux, not because you can't do everything under linux that you can with windows, but because it's such a complete f*****g "balls ache" to do things like that.

Lets face it, experienced linux users KNOW, generally how stuff works and might be made to work or be modified, but those like me, who don't give a f**k how something works, and just want it to work are still screwed. Irrespective of how much effort Canonical and other put into their development efforts!

So, again! come on you developer types, I know that you can do it, damn you've worked minor miracles so far, now focus on userf*****gbility!

;):rolleyes:

Ha ha! something else to drive me up the wall!

bigjohn — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:08:25 GMT

Since my last post on this....I spent quite a long time using sidux - which was excellent.

But I'm now back with Kubuntu, because the sidux lot, decided to use a different network configuration tool. Which I found out doesn't like my network card at all - there was a work round for it but it would only work with the live version of sidux, not the installed version.

And I only found that out as I managed to screw up when I got a new monitor and was trying to configure it (don't ask) and ended up having to try and re-install the sidux!

Anyway to cut a long story short I ended up having to install Kubuntu 8.04, which is where I'm at now.

I've also got a "T-Mobile G1" a.k.a. "googlephone". It has the android OS and in theory should work like any other linux based distro, but it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of documentation for it. Plus lots of the info that came from T-Mobile is very vague so I can't, at the moment, transfer any music to it and yes, it's driving me up the bloody wall.

Ah well, I suppose "shit" has to happen from now and then!

Kubuntu and sudo ???

bigjohn — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:46:07 GMT

Well I'm really starting to get pissed off with kubuntu and it's use of sudo to run/administrate things.

It would appear that the only way round this issue, is to modify the sudoers file so that only root can do stuff with sudo - which defeats the object of making it work like that i.e. if I still have to use sudo to run/administrate the system, but I've set the sudo to only be used by root, then what the bloody point of having sudo installed other than it's what "they" want in the first place.

The only thing thats stopping me saying "fuck it, I think I'll install gentoo" is that there doesn't seem to be a packages CD available for i686. I'm not confident enough with CLI to be able to get the system installed and then to be able to just find all the GRP packages that I'd need to run my system i.e. I'll have to look to see if theres a list of the GRP packages that are available from the mirrors because I can install them via a net connect and then update/fine tune later, but I can't afford to be without a working system (which is a complete PITA).

Anyhow, thats enough moaning for the moment!

TTFN.

Well, thats part of the "strangeness" that I've had with Kubuntu sorted.

bigjohn — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:36:37 GMT

I don't understand why, but the problem with disappearing taskbar/kicker panel, that I had in my partner Clares' user account, has been cured by moving the .kde file and restarting the X server.

I'm not completely happy with that cure, because I don't understand why it should have worked. Surely anything that gets changed as a user should still mean that the basic "desktop facilities" work, but they didn't. I'm left "none the wiser", but I suppose it will keep Clare from nagging me with those "you've been meddling with that bloody computer again haven't you?" comments.

Now all I need to do, is work out how to get the sudo disabled - I'm given to understand that I probably can't remove it, but I can stop the users using it! and just make it so that only root can.

We'll see.

Well Kubuntu does do a few strange things afterall!

bigjohn — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:39:22 GMT

Well, I've been happily using Kubuntu 6.06 - and have found a few "oddities".

It (the kubuntu) uses sudo for system management. Ok, got that, but I'm familiar with the more conventional root and user account system of long established linux wisdom.

Can I turn it (sudo) off ? Like fuck I can! I'm guessing that it was included as an aid to "ease of use", I just can't get used to it.

I have found a couple of possible solutions, but they're proving problematic to implement.

Plus, I've made a second user account for my partner. Now it so happens, that as she's a teacher, she often takes our digital camera into work, to photograph her "little cherrub's" in action - keeps OfSTED happy to have evidence of learning activities.

Anyway, I uploaded some pictures from the camera, and when I went to check them, I found that when I tried to select digicam from the menu, the whole taskbar/kicker/whatever it's called properly, just disappears.

Don't think it's a permissions thing, as she has the same groups selected in the User/Account manager facility. I also suspect that I'd have got some sort of warning or error, but I get nothing.

I've tried to look at the logs, but nothing jumps to mind and I don't really know what I'm looking for.

The sudo "thing" is starting to pray on my mind a little. I hate it, but if it's gonna be too much of an issue to do something about it, then if it's not carefull, then bloody Kubuntu will ed up "going".

I can't be arsed to have to dig for Britain, just to find the solution to what should 9logically) be an easy thing to correct.

Where I'm at currently......

bigjohn — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:02:43 GMT

Well, I just clicked the "my blog" by accident. I'd forgotten that I'd started one.

So, it's about time that I updated it. Where am I (linux wise)?

I'm now using Kubuntu Dapper 6.06 which I arrived at, via a "soujourn" with SuSE 10.1

How did I get here (at kubuntu)? Well, I'd been happily using Mandriva 2006 - fully upgraded with the Thac/Ze packages to be able to benefit from their kde 3.5.2 packages, when I started reading stuff about Xgl/Compiz and all those fancy GUI effects that they create. Except when I looked into it, nobody seemed to have done too much about implementation.

A friend of mine, happened to have installed SuSE 10.1 - and as Novell had done a fair bit about implementing support for Xgl/Compiz I thought WTF and installed that instead.

It wasn't quite as smooth a transition as I'd hoped, as it took me a while to get my head round doing things "the SuSE way", but a little effort and I had SuSE 10.1 up and running, with Xgl/Compiz installed.

The eye candy was very impressive. The only thing that was rather a nuisance, was that it meant that video player apps like xine and mplayer, well, they "played up". Playing an mpeg, meant that I was getting a double vision like effect that had quite a distorted picture. If I tried to play video produced in the "devils format" (.wmv) it was even worse. I found it more important that the video player apps worked properly and the novelty of the Xgl eye candy soon wore off.

So I uninstalled them and carried on.

Now I can't remember what I did too mess up the SuSE install, but I managed too.

I've been hearing good noises about Ubuntu recently (recently? well for about 6 months, from some of the chaps at my LUG). So I figured that I'd give it a go - having previously used a debian derivative for a while, I was aware that it had "potential".

The install went smoothly, the only initial gripe being that installers seem to detect my nvidia graphics card and automatically "plump" for the generic "nv" driver. Now that's never worked well for me with this system so I had to piss about to change that to the "vesa" driver until I'd got my head round the distro enough to be able to install the proprietary nvidia driver.

It seems to offer everything a new user might need when first starting out. The graphic package manager is good - which helps. I don't really know how much of a pain it might be to configure dial up or dhcp, as I my ISP provides nice easy static IP addresses etc. So configuring my network card was a "doddle".

It also uses sudo - which I'm not a fan of. I fail to see how it's any safer/better than using the traditional root/user method - it may just be that it's easier for the new user. I fully intend getting rid of it.

The other irritation, was that after about a week, there was some updates, which I duely installed. One of them was a kernel update/upgrade. It all installed fine. The PITA was that there was some packages (2 actually) that didn't seem to be available to make use of the new kernel with the nvidia driver. I did eventually sort it out - after many hours of digging - the cure entailed adding some additional repositories to my /etc/apt/sources.list - I never did work out which of the newly added sources actually had the packages I was looking for.

After I'd got this problem sorted, I found a good site that helps in sorting out problems with the sources.list file at http://www.ubuntulinux.nl/source-o-matic you just tell it which version you're using, tick a couple of boxes and click the button at the bottom and it generates the sources.list for you, then you just copy/paste and off you go.

So far, the only problem I've encountered is the screensavers. Apparently theres a bug so I have to revert to the "low tech" solution of the O.N.O.F.F. button.

Otherwise, it's a good piece of kit. N00b friendly, straight forward to manage etc. 9 out of 10.

pip pip!

KDE 3.5.2 rpms for Mandriva 2006

bigjohn — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 20:56:05 GMT

Well, today I've been hovering over my system as I've noticed that there have been new RPMs made available for KDE 3.5.2 (for mandriva 2006) during the last couple of days. You'll have to search over at mandrivausers.org for links to the repositories.

It was a relatively painless experience. Just a case of running the software manager, going to the section where you configure where you want to download packages from, hitting the "add custom" button, pasting the repository address, add the hdlist.cz bit to the box below and hitting OK.

The software manager then interrogates the mirror for package listings etc. When it's finished, hit OK.

You have to delete the older kde packages so that theres no conflicts. This is easily done (if you have other window managers/environments installed).

All I did was to close the session in KDE, start a session in Gnome, open the software manager, remove all the kde 3.4.2 packages, go into the rpmdrake+ part of the software manager (for adding packages) and selected all the kde 3.5.2 packages that I wanted and installed them. Bingo! KDE 3.5.2

It's fair to point out, that the package listing is huge, because it will list all that your system thinks is available i.e. some packages may show 2 or 3 different versions of the same package(s). Mine shows the kde stuff available as 3.4.2 (which is probably coming from the "main" mirror) as well as listings for KDE 3.5.1 and KDE 3.5.2 I just pick the latest/most recent ones.

All I'm now waiting for, is the KDE 3.5.2 "Kontact" facility to be available. It seems that the packager hasn't posted the libkontact-3.5.2 library yet - something to do with not having kdetoys-weather available for 3.5.2 though that doesn't matter so much, because I've installed the individual bits of the "kontact-suite" that I use regularly i.e. kmail and kpilot.

This is also a big TVM to the two characters who seem to be the packagers (or at least the main persons involved - as far as I can make out) know as "Thac" and "Ze". A big fat, "well done" and thankyou very much.