KDE4 User Review : better than expected !!!

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:31:41 GMT | 1 comment

I have been waiting for KDE4 for a while already.... And now it has gotten much closer to the goal and it's time for a real survival test...

Due to my old computer slightly lacking horsepower, I recently switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu. tried Gnome for a little while but wasn't for me, really. Then I installed kubuntu-desktop and followed the quick steps shown on kubuntu.org about KDE4 rc2. Really easy install...

From KDE 3.5.8 I could already see many applications in the menu which had got duplicate for their KDE4 counterpart letting me try them from within my desktop. but on the early morning of December 26th, without knowing if it would work at all, I decided to give the already installed KDE4 a try. Without expecting much it shine onto my screen promptly.

Fired up, I am looking at what is to become the next best and most popular desktop on the planet. Let see what Santa-san has in store... read on for more details ...

Read more...

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Trying out KDE4

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:35:30 GMT | no comments

So I wanted to have a sneak preview at KDE4 and also have the development environment ready in case I find some time to fool around.

So I compiled KDE on my gentoo system. I simply followed the various instruction found on the developer website. I created a kdefour user. Installed cmake and Qt 4.2.2 normally using gentoo portage system. and from kdelibs into the user home directory.

that's what my .bash_profile looks like

kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $ cat ~/.bash_profile
# /etc/skel/.bash_profile

# This file is sourced by bash for login shells.  The following line
# runs your .bashrc and is recommended by the bash info pages.
[[ -f ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
export YACC='byacc -d'
#export QTDIR=$HOME/usr/qt
export QTDIR=/usr
export KDEDIR=$HOME/usr/kde
export CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$HOME/unsermake:$QTDIR/bin:$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
function cmakekde { cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$KDEDIR \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debugfull $@ && make VERBOSE=1 && make install
}

kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $

and I created myself a small rebuild script

kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $ cat rebuild
#!/bin/sh

source ~/.bash_profile

modules="kdelibs kdepimlibs kdebase koffice kdegames"
modules="koffice kdeutils kdenetwork kdemultimedia kdepim"
build_dir="/home/kdefour/usr/build/"
src_dir="/home/kdefour/usr/src/"

for i in $modules
do
        echo $i
        #echo $build_dir$i
        #rm -fr $i
        mkdir -p $build_dir$i
        if [ -d $src_dir$i ]
        then
                (cd $src_dir$i; svn up)
        else
                svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/$i $src_dir$i
        fi
        cd $build_dir$i
        time cmakekde $src_dir$i
        if [ $? -ne 0 ]
        then
                cd -
                echo $?
                break
        fi
        cd -
done

kdefour@krypton ~/usr/build $

and here is a small screenshot for the curious

kde4 snapshot 1

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KDE has turned 10, lets celebrate

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:25:00 GMT | no comments

KDE, the world famous open source desktop environment is now 10 years old. WOW.

Matthias Ettrich's 14th October 1996 announcement original post

It's the great moment for KDE right now, KDE 3.5.5 just got released. The most powerful and stable release ever. and KDE 4 is just around the corner. KDE4 Beta Packages already available for Mac OS X and for Linux

I think its a great time to watch screenshots and try it out (Kubuntu, Sabayon) and get involved

KDE Happy 10 years and we wish you another good 10 years.

omedeto & gambatte

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kikkanji

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Wed, 17 May 2006 04:53:00 GMT | no comments

Here is my latest toy. I made myself a Kanji studying tool. It took me only few hours to build using QtRuby. I find it pretty amazing what I built in this short amount of time even though I don't have much experience with this technology. It is a really impressive technology.

I build up a small kexi (sqlite3) database, which I open with ActiveRecord. I could have used Qt's SQL module, but I'm so used to AR that I did not bother.

I named it kikkanji because I first intended to create a kicker panel applet. but, panel applets are not yet possible with QtRuby. so I had to wait. I instead used Qt Designer and created myself a main window.

kikkanji

download now

comments and feature request are definitely welcome.

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My new KDE desktop

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Thu, 04 May 2006 16:39:00 GMT | no comments

I changed my KDE desktop feels, I like it so much better :) And feel much more productive since then. it's been about a month now. and I totally love it.

I got rid of everything, make it simpler looking and giving me more screen space.

Read more...

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ALSA we love you

Posted by Mathieu Jobin Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:59:00 GMT | no comments

Anyone had fun with ALSA before ? Some would say its much better than OSS and much more powerful. Some would simply say the it supports more cards (well of course, development on OSS is kinda stopped for a while already) anyway.

Who need this kinda of configuration ? why there is so many options to this config file ? its like your computer could really have 5 different sound card and reroute them in some weird way. well, buy a mixer. got true use for all the power ALSA offer ? please comment below.

I'm just to a point where, even though you are a geek programmer, if all you want to do is software or web development. You don't really want to understand the fully underlying sound system of your operating system to chat with your girlfriend. There is advantage Linux has I can't live without but there is huge whack of extra time that you have to spend in order to get things working. And some of you who does not have problem, well either you have not used it long enough or you are just as picky as I can be.

anyway, I did not want to troll about anything today. I'm just very tired of rebooting on windows when I have to do my phone calls. And the good news is: I found this little hack that I need to get both my soundcard device and my USB microphone as default device.

somekool@krypton ~ $ cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
        type asym
        playback.pcm {
                type plug
                slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
        }
        capture.pcm {
                type plug
                slave.pcm "hw:1,0"
        }
}
somekool@krypton ~ $

that's it. so now I can just use arecord to record my voice without needing any options to specify the proper device.

somekool@krypton ~ $ arecord file.wav

well am I happy ? not really. skype needs OSS or OSS emulation to work. it does not use ALSA directly. but OSS is too old. and I can't really switch my system to it. so I'm not sure if I can get an OSS-emulated device for my USB microphone or If I really need to get arts to see my microphone. arts seems the easiest way to get everything working. but for some reason, it still does not see my microphone.

Hey you out there who knows all about it but are just a little to shy to help. show yourself off it will be highly appreciated.

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