Last week I had some undiagnosable problem at bootup and I decided to just backup my home directory, /etc and some other key files and reinstall Gentoo from scratch (stage 1). It turned out to take longer than I remembered, but it has proven to be well worth it.

Having run Gentoo before (for a few months now) I knew to set up the /etc/make.conf file with optimized USE tags. Basically, I put in everything I knew I would need and disallowed the rest. Being a fan of KDE my tags looked something like this: USE="kde kdeenablefinal qt -gtk -gnome".

Eleventy-billion hours later I had compiled my system (with only two commands, thanks to Portage). I noticed immediately when I started X that things were different from before. Window response was much faster, applications loaded much faster, and I had more free RAM. Sweet.

I’ve been looking into every distro that’s featured on DistroWatch for a while now and I just can’t imagine giving up my Gentoo. Now, if the Portage tree contained Yast2 for system configuration this would be a flawless OS.

The KDE Project has released KDE 3.4.1. They’re calling it a ‘maintenance’ release because it’s mostly bugfixes and small alterations. Despite this, the release has some much needed changes. One of the bugs that it solves has been slowing down my work all week.

The KDE Project emphasized fixes in its 50 translations in the official release, but they also listed a page full of bugfixes at their changelog.

Some of the excellent ones:

• ftp will try active if passive fails
  (I’ve been having to use the terminal ftp client alongside Quanta to upload to an IIS ftp server that only does active)
• many good fixes in khtml
  (khtml is to KDE what Gecko is to Mozilla - it’s their web page layout engine)
• a hundred other fixes

I’ll be installing it as soon as it appears on the Gentoo servers.

As of KDE 3.4 there’s a new feature where windows can have transparency and shadows. It’s way to computing-heavy for my laptop but it was cool enough to try out for a few minutes just the same. I’ll post an article in a while about how to get the transparency extension working with KDE 3.4.

The reason KDE can do this transparency stuff is because of great new advancements in the X11 renderer. X11 can make shadows and make things transparent but can also mutate windows and do all of the wacky visual effects that OS X is proud of.

Here are some screenshots that display the power of the new X11. These are using some still-experimental X11 programs, but we’re bound to get the full extent of this technology soon.

xmms-kde is an applet that runs in the KDE taskbar and allows you to control XMMS through some small buttons and volume sliders. It’s handy if you want to run XMMS out of sight but have a need to change the volume or switch songs often.

If you run XMMS and KDE regularly, xmms-kde is essential.

I’ve used KDE for the length of my Linux use. It’s been the most comfortable desktop environment for someone like me who needed to be weaned off of Windows but I’m now considering switching to Gnome. I may begin trying out Gnome in various distributions and posting about the benefits/compromises that I see in it.

One thing I’ve noticed already is that cursor focus seems to be much faster in Gnome than KDE. I’ve written about problems with Firefox response speed a couple of times and upon only cursory (heh) overview it seems as though the cursor and response time problems are greatly mitigated with the Gnome desktop environment.

KDE, short for the “K Desktop Environment”, is at heart no more than a single letter. It’s around this letter that many thousands of people have gathered to develop an excellent window manager for Linux.
KDE 3.4 was release just a few days before the writing of this article. Version 3.4 offered great improvements in accessibility features and many hundreds of bug fixes, stability improvements and such but what I care about is that it made itself even more visually appealing.

Windows XP was a decent effort
Microsoft tried hard to make Windows XP have an aesthetically pleasing interface. It was a great improvement from the days of Win 3.1 or even Windows 2000. Still, a fischer-price theme and some rounded edges aren’t quite enough to make converts of the artistically minded.

Apple computers are pretty
Jaguar and Tiger are excellent window managers that Apple has built to run on top of their Linux-based OSX. They offer every possible visual and functional feature, but it’s completely closed source. Apple’s development will only ever grow at the speed that their small corral of developers can push it.

KDE is the future
There is an increasing demand for virtualization engines like Xen and VMWare because users desire the ability to run all programs on their main computing system. In a few short years there will be a strong desire for a unified window manager. It’s a herculean task for any proprietary software company to tackle. A unified window manager would require tens of thousands of hours of development time just to port from one system to another, but then even greater amounts of work to optimize it for both systems.

KDE will be a global effort
KDE has shown itself to be able to meet the needs of its users on a fast development cycle, while keeping a mind to aesthetics, productivity, accessibility, and system integration. Only KDE, being fully open-source, is in position to become a multiple-system window manager. In a short while I hope to see it functional on my Windows XP machine as a replacement to explorer.

Until then I’ll probably just keep running LiteStep.

I was thinking of trying out Ubuntu a while ago. It’s received excellent reviews from everyone I know who’s tried it and it promises to be a very friendly distribution.

There are two reasons that I didn’t try Ubuntu:

• Ubuntu’s homepage has ugly colors.
• Ubuntu only contains Gnome - not KDE

I’m not one to prefer a Mac just because it’s gorgeous, I need substance too. However, KDE has really hooked me with it’s power and slickness and I can’t give it up.

Luckily, there’s Kubuntu. Following the wonderfully vacuous naming scheme for KDE Kubuntu provides everything that Ubuntu does - but does it with KDE.

As of the time of this article KDE 3.4 is being uploaded to the Kubuntu servers. If somebody tries it out let me know how Kubuntu runs this excellent new release of KDE.

The shortage of posts recently has been because I’ve been attempting to install Gentoo on my laptop and been having a ball. While enjoying myself, however, I’m often too browser-lacking to do any posts.

Right now I’m doing an emerge (Gentoo-speak for ‘install’) of the entire KDE package on my Dell 600m laptop. I started it late last night and i’ll be done sometime this afternoon.

When it’s done I’m going to do as many packages as I can quickly. I’m following the advice of Clete who’s updating his whole system before KDE 3.4 comes out in three days. It’s a good idea to only have KDE to update when it comes out - because it takes 16 hours on my 1.6GHZ to install.

BSSteph at The Internet Hammer Enterprise has provided us with some beautiful screencaptures and video captures of the cutting edge of KDE 3.4. I’ve always been a little jealous of Apple computers with excellent graphic rendering and a very pretty GUI, but it looks like that’s all over now. Check out the KDE eye candy

In this round of eye candy, the active window (i.e., the one I’m working in) is drawn normally, but the other windows, which you can faintly see, are transparent. This is an experimental feature for an experimental feature, so it’s more than a bit buggy, but it’s fun to play with.

The video captures of the newest KDE (KDE 3.4) in use are also also available on The Internet Hammer Enterprise. There are versions with both Xvid and MPEG.

I can’t wait to use the next release of KDE.

If you’re running KDE on Linux you can set each virtual desktop to have it’s own background image.

I find that my different desktops are used for different purposes and should have different atmospheres to them. To make this effect I have two or three desktop wallpapers that I use across my six desktops.

Assigning a picture to a desktop is pretty easy. Right-click somewhere on your desktop (not the little virtual windows, the regular big one) and enter “Configure Desktop”. At the top of the screen that comes up you’ll see “Settings for Desktop:”. Select one of your desktops in this menu and give it some settings. Repeat this for each desktop.

To get good wallpapers for Linux, I recommend Google’s Image Search. Here is a page that will get you some good wallpapers for Linux.

If you’re running Linux with KDE there is a way for you to separate the programs that you run. You can choose to have different ‘desktops’ or screens for your programs. In all new installations of KDE there will be by default four virtual desktops in the taskbar. They are in the shape of a four-square and you can modify both the number of desktops and the number of rows. My favorite setup is six desktops all in one row.

You can name your virtual desktops and have their names display on top of them in the taskbar. Right-click on one of the windows (one of the little squares in the tray at the bottom of the screen) and select “show” and “rows” to select number of rows. I recommend also clicking on “name” and “preview.” After that, right click on one of the windows again and select “Configure Virtual Desktops.” Here is a screen where you’ll be able to choose both the number of total desktops as well as their names.

I happen to like choosing goofy names for mine, but do whatever you like with yours. Some ideas are “Desk, Shell, Web, Dev, Files, Task” or “Web, Chat, Pictures, Music” or whatever the main things you do with your computer are. Note: you have to open the appropriate program at the appropriate window for it to go there - it won’t automatically know which window you want it to use.

I’ve found that the main benefit of multiple desktops is connected to the session feature of KDE. When you shutdown/restart your computer KDE will save the names and position of as many windows or terminals as it can. When KDE starts again it’ll try to restore all of those. This means that my file browsers in one screen always stay there and my shells in another screen stick in their place. This saves a lot of time in the long run - and it makes my workspace much more predictable.

A note to Windows users: if you want to use virtual desktops on Windows, it’s unofficially supported. Just go to the Windows XP Powertoys website and select their Virtual Desktop Manager.

Here’s another good article about virtual desktops.