Just Another Manic Monday

Another Monday morning brings another week.  It happens all the time, doesn’t it?

All through life I’ve been told, and have read, that one shouldn’t put human attributes on animals.  That they don’t have feelings, they don’t “think,” and they act purely on instinct.  Mostly I think this is garbage, a way for scientists to shield themselves from the experiments they do on them.  For instance, yestserday I was on the computer and sending instant messages to my mom.  I had Zoey, an African Gray parrot, on my shoulder poking at my ears.  Eventually she travelled down my arm and tried to eat my mouse, mousepad, and keyboard.  I put her back on the cage and she promptly went back inside, sat on her perch with her back to me, and made very sad noises.  Noises like, “Awwwww,” “step-up,” and “peek-a-boo.”  But very, very sadly.  I felt like absolute crap at that point, and I don’t believe for a moment that it wasn’t intentional.

My Linux installation kind of fell apart this weekend, but I fixed it.  In fact, I fixed it real good.  I found another overlay for installing KDE 4 from SVN and got 4.1 installed.  It works great. I don’t get a lot of glitches when I have compositing turned on, and that’s a major plus.  Otherwise, it all worked good except I couldn’t get the Utilities and PIM stuff compiled.  I’ll try again in a few days and see if it works then.

Updating KDE4

So it’s been a while since I wrote anything up about Gentoo, Linux, and KDE 4.  Where I got stuck at last time was that KDE4 wanted a newer version of QT4, but the QT4 in Gentoo’s Portage didn’t get along very well with KDE4.

I bit the bullet and skimmed through some articles on the Gentoo Forums and found the instructions for getting QT4 through SVN by adding another overlay.  It wasn’t quite as easy as getting KDE4 from an overlay, but hey, it worked in the end.

So I updated QT4, got KDE4 to compile, and it finished last night.  I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, so I can’t say much.  I know I’m still getting those graphical glitches.  If no one else is getting them then I think I need to delete everything and start over.  Maybe it’s just an oddball setting, I don’t know.

I do know that if you miss having a trash can on the desktop there’s a new trash can widget in extragear-plasma that should do the trick nicely.

 

DragonPlayer

Ah, okay, I found out why I couldn’t emerge DragonPlayer.  It’s part of the Gentoo SVN installation for it.  So, I checked it out and it seems pretty functional.  It’s small, loaded up pretty quick, and I haven’t had too many issues with it.

The only issues I did have was being in full screen and having graphic issues with the information bar at the top.  I kind of expect this because I’m still seeing graphical issues with the composite stuff turned on.  Otherwise, it looks pretty nice and I’ll more than likely end up using it as the default.  I’ll still use VLC for the odd problem child that turns up.

KDE4 SVN

I just updated KDE4 through SVN. Some good news is that you can now configure the task manager to show only applications that are in the current workspace. This is good news for anyone who feels like the task manager gets a little cluttered. You can also adjust the size so you can make it nice and small or quite gigantic. I’m sure these two changes alone will thrill many people.

The only downside I see so far is that I’m still getting graphical glitches. I suppose it could be because my xorg.conf is set up incorrectly, or it could just be remaining bugs. I’m sure I don’t know.

I also can’t emerge DragonPlayer. What a bummer

Weekend with KDE4

Okay, I did it.  Most of Saturday and most of Sunday was spent using KDE4.  Overall it was a good experience.  I only had two applications crash, but I’m not sure which ones they were (strange, but true).    If it wasn’t for the video screwing up in VLC and Mplayer I would have used it all day Sunday.  I forgot to try disabling the compositing, though.  I wish I had remembered to do that.

I think I’m ready to switch over full time, once I get that figured out.

KDE4 — Another Try For a Day

Today is Saturday, and we all know what that means.  Yep, this morning I updated my KDE 4 and I’m going to see if I can keep on using it for a full day.  A few things failed this morning, like kdeedu.  I couldn’t be bothered to figure out why, so I just skipped it.  However, I did emerge extragear-plasma which gives me a couple of new things on the desktop.

I also enabled the background slide show.  It’s pretty interesting but it does cause a slight delay before the next picture is loaded.  This may have something to do with the fact that my SATA drive isn’t working at full speed for some reason.  I blame the motherboard for that.

I still have compositing turned on so I’m still getting some funky video artifacts.  I’d turn it off but I just like the effects too much.  I’m willing to deal with them.

Sound and video are working properly, so I should be good to go for the day.  As long as nobody reboots the thing, we’ll be able to see how it works for the day.

I’m a bit disappointed to see that you can’t do an “Open with…” in Dolphins column view.  I was ready to switch over to that.

On a non-KDE4 related note, I’ve gotten quite used to using Windows Live Writer for writing my blogs.  I find it a lot easier to deal with pictures and stuff.  I really wish there was an application for Linux that worked the same way.  I’ve tried Drivel, but it’s not quite the same.  I think it’s the plugins that hook me, because I really like the Polaroid picture plug in available for it.  That’s what I used for the previous blog.

SimCity -> Micropolis

I wasn’t expecting this: SimCity has been open sourced and changed into Micropolis.

Before anyone gets too excited, note that it says SimCity and not SimCity 2000.  This is the original beast.

It’s available here if you want to try it.  I don’t think it’s ready to run for Windows, though.  I’ll wait until it hits the Gentoo Portage.

Now, when will they open source Little Computer People (the original Sims)?

KDE4 - Trying it for a day

I’ve installed the latest SVN for KDE4.0.  I figure today I’ll make a go of trying it for the entire day.

I may have to remove it and re-emerge it, though.  I’m getting some weird screen artifacts.  In fact, I can’t see anything when I log into it unless I hit CTRL-F8, otherwise I get a blank screen.  I’m pretty sure it has to do with the compositing. Maybe I’ll just wipe out my .kde directory first.  That seems a bit more sensible.

Other than being slow when I’m compiling something (which I’m sure has to do with my SATA drive and DMA that I don’t know how to fix) I kind of like it.  It’s different, and I like different.

Right now I’m re-compiling the network apps so I can get AIM working in Kopete.  Hopefully.

My other problem of programs bringing up KWrite with a .desktop file appears to have been fixed.  Unfortunately, I lost my icon for the Open Office word processor.  At least Firefox is working.

Oh, I kind of with the Task Manager widget thing had more options.  Right now it only has one, for the tooltips.  Hopefully soon I’ll be able to change the settings to more how the old Kicker is set up.

A Welcome Addition

There’s a new computer in the house.  This is happy news because, I hope, it means the stress will be taken off of this one a bit.  This one is my baby, and I’ve had it forever (in one form or another).

It’s been a couple of weeks since I update KDE 4, so I thought I’d give that a shot this morning.  I quite enjoy using it, although the composite effects are not quick when I’m doing other things.  Like updating the system.  Also, I’m getting a bunch of empty “icons” in the middle of the screen since updating to RC2.  Still, no harm no foul.  Just some annoyances, which I’m still expecting at this stage.

We went to see “I am Legend” last night.  I thought it was OK, but some things didn’t make a lot of sense.  I know the general flow of the movie, so I knew what was going on, but it seemed to me that they cut out some important bits.  I won’t spoil it, even though you’ve probably seen it before if you’re familiar with “Omega Man” or “Last Man On Earth.”

One More KDE 4 RC1

Okay, so if you’re not compiling stuff in the background, doing updates, downloading tons of junk, and definitely not compiling updates in the background, then KDE 4 RC1 is pretty swift.

I found how to enable the compositing effects, so I got that going and it’s pretty sweet.  It works as well as Beryl did for me, when I was using it.  Overall I’m pretty happy with it.  Would I use it as my main DE right now?  No…  not quite yet.  For one thing, I can’t get user switching to work and I do use that sometimes.

On the plus side,  I haven’t had anything crash yet.  My sound does work (as long as people don’t unplug my speakers, ahem) so that’s not an issue.  But there’s still some little things that should be polished before I’d jump all in.

Oh, I need to fix the menus so I can use them to launch certain programs, like Firefox (which has gone missing from the menu altogether) and Open Office.  I don’t know how to do that manually, yet.