Jared’s Blog

KDE is known for it’s high level of customizability (Gnome users/developers hate this, for whatever reason). However, with the 4.0.0 release of KDE, I found a desktop that was neither usable in it’s default configuration, nor was it otherwise customizable (not even close to the level of KDE 3.5). This “release” is not feature-complete (not even close), and I won’t be moving from KDE 3.5.8 any time soon. Some people need to re-focus on what release cycles are supposed to be like…

• Alpha Release -> Not feature complete; a taste of what the final product has in store; perhaps (very) buggy
• Beta Release -> Feature complete, but still needs polish (and bug-fixing); stable enough for normal users to test (but not use in production)
• Release Candidate -> Feature complete with all (known) major bugs fixed. This could be a final release, if no one finds any major problems
• Final Release -> Everything that the users have been salivating over, and MORE!

I hate to say it, but KDE 4.0.0 seems to fit in what we’ve traditionally classified as an “alpha” release. I’m not saying that because it’s unstable; KDE 4.0.0 is stable for the most part (still can’t get Konsole to start up without crashing). The reason I’d call it “alpha” is that it’s not feature complete.

For example, the first time I logged into KDE 4.0.0, I noticed the panel…OK, well who couldn’t notice the panel? It’s rather large with a massive digital clock on the right side. I mean, a blind man with two missing fingers would notice the panel right off the bat. So, since I don’t like my panel to be so monstrous, I right-clicked the panel and chose “Task Manager Settings.” A configuration dialog popped up with (wait for it)…ONE OPTION!! The one option was weather I wanted tool-tips or not! So, I thought maybe the panel will size down automatically if I reduce the font size of the digital clock. So, I right-click the clock and chose “Digital Clock Settings.” In that dialog I saw options for choosing a font, weather it should be bold or italic, the clock color, weather or not to show the timezone/year/day-of-the-week, and weather to show in 24-hour format, but NO FONT SIZE OPTION!!!

You might say: “Well, Jared, perhaps the people working on the panel just were having a bad year or two…why not give the rest of the release a chance?” Oh, my friend, I have indeed given the rest of the desktop a chance. I set aside my experience with the panel so that I could give the rest of the Desktop my full, undistracted attention. Next, I turned my attention to the icons I saw on the desktop. These icons were the ones that I had there while running KDE 3.5 (the contents of the “Desktop” folder in my home directory). The first thing I noticed was that they weren’t lined up nicely; they were kind of there in no particular order, at least none that I could determine. Odd perhaps, but something I could once again overlook.

Each icon had a translucent backdrop with rounded edges: “A nice touch” I thought to myself. One thing that troubled me, however, was that the icons were on the other monitor from the panel. I have gotten used to having both on the same monitor, so I tried to move them. I tried to select multiple icons and drag them to the other monitor. Much to my surprise, I could only move ONE icon at a time. So, I resigned my self to just move them one-by-one. After trying to move the first icon, I found that once the icon left the screen that it was on, it became invisible on the other monitor. After playing around with it a bit, I suspect that the desktop background on the second monitor was being rendered over top of the icon. But this isn’t the worst of this part of the story: after trying to move the icon back THE ENTIRE DESKTOP STARTED TO MOVE!!!!11111one!

Now that I’ve given you a good horror story of KDE 4.0.0, let’s get back to the topic that I started with. Aaron Seigo, who seems to be the voice of the KDE team these days, has been on the war path of KDE 4.0.0 these days. He has been saying that people aren’t expecting the right thing when they expect KDE 4.0 to be a full replacement for KDE 3.5. They shouldn’t expect that until later releases of KDE 4. He says that people are used to the “closed source” method of software releases. He says that Open Source has generally worked different than closed source software. I agree with Aaron, but only to the point that open source projects are _usually_ a LOT more careful about what they label as a final/stable release. They release early and/or often, sure, but they usually do so with labels like “alpha” or “beta” so that would-be users know that it’s not what they might expect from a final/stable release.

I think that KDE 4.0.0 was released so that the KDE developers could get back into heavy development without users constantly clamoring about when KDE 4 was coming out. It was a bone to those of us in the community who have been waiting for years (literally) for KDE 4. Well, I must say, I’m not impressed with 4.0.0. It has potential, but potential never won any awards, and it certainly isn’t what should constitute a final/stable release of a major Linux Desktop contender.

I’ve been playing around with Compiz-Fusion on several of my machines. Compiz has improved in quality very quickly since they merged the code base with Beryl. It’s been a lot easier to get it installed and working recently. One thing has been missing from all the recent releases, however. When combining Intel video chipsets, Compiz, and KDE-Window-Decorator, a white border appears around several screen elements (on top of the Kicker, around tool tips). After hunting around for solutions, I found a good combination of things to work around the problem. If you change the configuration backend in CCSM to Gconf, enable the DBUS plugin in CCSM, and change the Shadow Radius in the Window Decoration plugin to something other than a value between 7.5 and 8.5. However, the final value needs to be changed each time Compiz is restarted (which means opening up CCSM, and adjusting the Shadow Radius).

Now, I wouldn’t be writing this post if I didn’t have an even better work-around. The better work around is to add the following to the /usr/bin/compiz startup script:

Replace this line:
${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}${COMPIZ_NAME} $COMPIZ_OPTIONS "$@" $COMPIZ_PLUGINS || exec $FALLBACKWM $FALLBACKWM_OPTIONS

… with the following:

${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}${COMPIZ_NAME} $COMPIZ_OPTIONS "$@" $COMPIZ_PLUGINS &

sleep 2s

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  exec $FALLBACKWM $FALLBACKWM_OPTIONS
fi

sleep 3s
gconftool-2 --type float --set /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/shadow_radius 6.0
sleep 1s
gconftool-2 --type float --set /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/shadow_radius 6.1

After this, the Shadow Radius adjustment will be made a few seconds after Compiz starts, and you will be on your way to a better Compiz experience.

More than a year ago, I wrote a post called “Linux is awesome,” in which I chronicled my move to Linux as my main Desktop platform (I had been playing/hacking with it for many years before that).  In that post, I also talked about my disappointment about not having a media player available that could compete with Winamp (2.x) in its simplicity and usability.  I tried BMPx, but found it to be too unstable for general use.  I ended up using Amarok (an excellent media player, to be sure).

I’ve been using Amarok solidly ever since, but recently I’ve been itching to return to my Winamp roots in usability/simplicity.  I got this itch again because I saw an article about the release of Xmms 1.2.11, the first update to the aging media player in over 3 years.  As far as I know, it’s simply a point release with bugfixes only (no GTK2 conversion, sadly).  While looking into this, I inadvertently stumbled upon Audacious, a fork of Xmms that I had seen a few years back, but it was as unstable as BMPx was at the time I tried it.

I looked at a few of the screenshots of Audacious, and it looked very promising: a media player forked from Xmms, which supported Winamp skins, and the GUI was upgraded to GTK2.  So, I downloaded and installed.  I was immediately able to pull out my old Winamp 2.95 Classic skin, make a few adjustments to the default settings, and I was in heaven.  The simplicity was wonderful.  I don’t need a media library (my storage server is quite organized already), and it even supported my Microsoft (gasp!) keyboard’s multimedia keys with an included plugin.  I loved it!

So, the moral of the story is, don’t give up on Linux.  If you want something, chances are that someone out there wants the same thing, and all you really have to do is wait (or, perhaps write/fork it yourself, if you feel up to it), and it’ll probably show up.

My love of Linux began many years ago when a cousin of mine brought down a copy of Debian for me. Later that year, he sent me a package for Christmas that had several network cards, a 5 port hub, and a book on Linux. Since then, I’ve been doing all I can do learn of this great OS. I’ve been on a search across the spectrum to find the easiest, yet the most flexible distribution. That search led me across (in order) Debian (no X11), Red Hat (pre-Fedora), Mandrake (pre-Mandriva), Lindows (pre-Linspire), Debian (Woody - this time I had more packages with a full X server), Fedora, and finally K/Ubuntu.

There were some shorter experiments in there too. I gave Gentoo a try twice. The first time, I was not able to get the system installed. I tried again about a year later, and I was able to get a system installed this time, but I wasn’t happy with the portage system. I know that sounds like blasphemy to those that swear by Gentoo, but it just wasn’t for me.

I eventually settled on K/Ubuntu for my preferred distro. I like it because I don’t have to go all over creation to get certain things working correctly (e.g., Intel wireless drivers), but I still have the power through APT to control exactly what’s installed on my system. Add to that the 18,000+ packages available in the various Ubuntu repositories, and I have everything I need.

Up to this point, it has been hard to give back to the community that I have gotten so much from. Sure, I filed or commented-on the occasional bug report, but I was never able to give back anything tangible. But then I realized one of the things that probably is very hard for Canonical (the corporate presence behind Ubuntu) is shelling out money for download bandwidth. If you think about the thousands, possible millions, of people that download Ubuntu with each release, that could be a significant chunk of change to support.

So, I’ve decided that this time when downloading the latest install ISO, I would use the Bit Torrent method, and I would make sure to leave my Torrent client open to upload at least 150% of what I downloaded. This act is something any user can do to help Canonical defray the cost of providing what I think is the best mix of power with easy-of-use features in a Linux-based OS. In fact, I came home tonight and found that I’d already uploaded 170%, and I’ve decided to just leave my client uploading for at least a few more days to make sure there are enough seeds for those that still want to get ISOs in this manner.

I found it interesting that Steve Jobs thinks we should get rid of DRM.  And, while I agree with him whole-heartedly, I think he’s just the slightest bit two-faced.  I mean, he thinks that the music companies don’t have a right to tell you what you can do with the product you purchase from them, but he thinks he does.  I’m speaking specifically about the restriction in the Mac OS X license that keeps its customers from installing the product they purchased on a non-Apple-branded computer.  Am I the only one that sees this as a contradiction?

Now, I don’t think that people should be given the right to copy software and give/sell it to whom they choose, but they should not be made to give up their law-given rights (see 17 USC 117) just to use the software they have purchased.  This attempt by Apple isn’t the only example of big software companies trying to control the users by “contract.”  Take Microsoft, for example.  They have stipulated in the Windows Vista Home Basic license that users are not allowed to run the software inside of a emulator/virtualizer.  This is simply outrageous, as Microsoft has absolutely no right to dictate how a user may run the software they have purchased.  Even worse, Microsoft also stipulates that the software may only be re-sold once after the initial sale (so, if you bought Windows off the store shelf, you may sell it to one person, however, he may not sell it).

The validity of these types of stipulations have not been tested in a court as far as I know.  However, this Wikipedia article on software license agreements links to several cases where other license issues have been tested.  Every user of computer software should be aware of these issues, and make themselves aware of the intricacies of the concepts involved.

I know the many folks that read my blog have been wondering when I’d post again. Well, tonight, I’ve decided to break my silence. I’m doing much better now that summer school is over (at least for me). I pulled out of 2nd semester Civ (History of Civilization) with a B———-. I say it that way because I’d been keeping track of my exact grade the entire semester, and I ended up with a 79.6% (which, thanks to my excellent teacher, rounds up to an 80%). Every point in that class accounted for about 0.2% of my overall grade. So, if I had lost one more point, my grade wouldn’t have rounded up, and I would have ended up with a C+ (which at BJU is the same, GPA wise, as a C or a C-). So, I am grateful to God for handing me that grade. I know it was God’s doing because I just don’t make B’s in History (well, not since 6th grade anyway).

On the Linux front, I’ve got Xgl/Compiz working on Ubuntu Dapper. This helps me do wonderful GUI effects on my favorite OS. I did with the help of my GeForceFX 5200 (and excellent binary drivers, care of nVidia). I wanted to set this up on my Thinkpad T40 as well, however, Xgl currently doesn’t support the open source ATI driver that my Thinkpad’s ATI Mobility 7500 uses. However, AIGLX (an acceleration architecture similar to Xgl) does support that driver, and Compiz (the compositing manager I’m using) works just as well on AIGLX as it does on Xgl. So, I got it working there as well.

I’ve also been told, at my place of employment, that they’ll be changing my job roll slightly. I’ll be going from PC tech support to Linux/UNIX server management. This, to me, is an wonderful change. I really wanted something like this to happen for a long time, but I never felt like I had enough real qualifications to ask to work in that roll. I still feel like that to a certain degree, but hopefully I’ll be able to learn a lot more than I know right now.

Anyway, that’s my life in a nutshell right now. More to come when I know more.

Yeah, I know, I’ve been using it for 7 years, and I still find it really, really cool.  Today I spent a lot of time actually converting myself to Linux (as opposed to just learning it and using it on the side, as I’ve been doing for the last 7 years).  I moved my Thunderbird stuff over to Ubuntu Dapper as well as Gaim.  I’ve also dropped Winamp (since there is no Winamp for Linux sadly) in favor of amarok.

On the issue of Media Players, I was originally looking for a player that had a winamp style layout, but also had a Media Library.  The only thing I found that came close was BMPx, however, it was much too unstable (it’s not really finished yet, so I don’t blame the authors ).  It does look promising, however, so I’ll keep checking in on it from time to time.  For now, amarok has all the features I want (supports ogg, mp3, and wma, not that I have any wma anymore ).

I’ve also finished moving my Firefox configuration over (bookmarks, et. al.).  Tomorrow, I plan on making sure that all the media formats that I’ll run into are taken care of (Quicktime, Realplayer, Flash, et. al.).  A lot of that will be taken care of  VLC Media Player which has a nice Firefox plugin.

A clipping of a comment on the BBC bashing President Bush by a user on Digg.com:

And anyone who can look at a man who graduated from Yale, became a fighter pilot, kicked alcoholism, owned a baseball team, served two terms as governor of a very large state and two terms as our president, and call that man an idiot, is an idiot.

I must say, that sums it up as well as or better than I could have said it.  I can’t say that I agree with everything that the President has ever done policy-wise (in fact, I absolutely disagree with his current stance on illegal immigration), but I just can’t imagine what this Country would be like with Al Gore or John Kerry at the helm.  Have any of you people ever thought seriously on that?

Just try to imagine what John Kerry would have done after 9/11.  After he got through telling the news media that he had a plan, he would probably try to bribe the terrorists in the world with a lifetime supply of Heintz 57 Sauce!  And Al Gore is no better: he would spring into action by telling the country that he would suggest putting the terrorists of the world in a “lock-box,” and that in this “lock-box” they would be safe from the other 39 soveriegn nations of the world that wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet.  However, this might be a cruel-and-unusual punishment (because they might feel too isolated), so he’s going to forego that plan, and we’ll just have to hope that they decide not to pursue any more flying lessons.

Well, I feel better now.

I’ve done my part in this strange system we call economics: I’ve decided that a product is not worth my time, and I’ve informed the company responsible. This all started with a trip to digg.com. There, I found a link to an article over at scienceaddiction.com. The article covered how the MSN AdCenter product didn’t support browsers other than IE. Since I’m running a small hosting company, I decided it was worth a look. I was appauled to find out that this site filters users using the UserAgent string (a small piece of information sent from your web browser to the site you’re visiting, telling it what browser you’re using).

Upon discovery of this fact, I typed up a small message to Microsoft to inform them of the problem. I’m sure I’m not the only one to do this, but the power comes in numbers. Anyway, I tried submitting this message using the feedback link on the AdCenter page, but this too only supported IE. So, I decided to go to the Microsoft.com main page and submit my suggestion there. Here is the text of the message.

I was a potential customer of your MSN AdCenter product. However, since it does not support my browser of choice (Mozilla Firefox) I am chosing not to sign up. This is a problem for you (Microsoft) since you won’t be getting any of my money. The easiest way to for you (Microsoft) to solve this problem is to code your pages according to web standards, so that you can support the greatest user base.

You (Microsoft) will probably respond in one of three ways to this email:

1. You may throw this email away, and not think anything of it. This would be bad for you, since it would show me that you don’t really care about my opinion. As a result, I would think even less of you (Microsoft) than I already do.

2. You may send me a reply understanding my concern and suggesting that I use Internet Explorer instead of my current browser. However, this would be unwise, because it suggests to me that you (Microsoft) are not willing to change your current business practices to meet customer demand. The result of this would be similar to the previous point: I would think even less of you (Microsoft) than I already do.

3. You could realize that the web standards are not dictated by a single company (like you) just because it happens to have a large market share of web browsers. Web standards are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/), and most other web browsers support these standards to a reasonable degree. This might lead you (Microsoft) to change the way you develop your own pages, so that you can reach a greater number of people, as more people could view and interact with your pages. If you were to take this action, the result would be much different than the previous two points: I would reconsider signing up for this program, and your revenue might increase as a result.

I hope that you will make the decision that is best for you investors, as they are counting on you to make sure that you maximize the revenue in the markets where you exist.

Thank you for your time.

I thought it was quite diplomatic, but you be the judge.

Yes, today I had the last of my exams.  As for the classes that I can calculate a grade, I’m in the clear.  As for the others…We’ll see what the verdict is in the comming days.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’ve learned something from every one of my classes this semester: some more than others.  I think the most helpful class was Digital Electronics.  There, I learned the basics of electronics that I’ve been missing most of the time I’ve worked with computers.  The chance to do layout was especially helpful, but I think that in the near future, I’ll be sticking with programming.

Calculus II has been helpful as well (the second time around for me).  The first time I took the class, I didn’t really understand a lot of the concepts I was expected to know.  That was mostly my fault.  I didn’t put the effort into it that I needed.  This time, I got most of the important ideas, and I think I’m a more rounded mathematician in the process.

As for the rest, I’m sure I learned something; I’m just not sure what that something is at the moment.  I’m sure it will come to me after my brain has had a chance to rest.