Posts Tagged firefox
KDE to GNOME – I’m going through change-eee-es
* post should be read with the Black Sabbath song ‘Changes’ playing in the background *
For nearly two years now I’ve been using Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) quite happily. It was a happy marriage between us, but yesterday we filed for divorce.
Kubuntu Gutsy, and Hardy, had been fine. I’ve even been using KDE4 since 4.0, but recently KDE would just, for no reason and with no warning, corrupt the screen and return to the login screen. When this happened yesterday in the middle of some (as ever, unsaved) work, I snapped.
The courtship of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) began, and the divorce papers were served to Kubuntu.
Another reason to abandon Kubuntu was that most of the applications I used were all GNOME based, so essentially I had a KDE/GNOME hybrid. It had the look of KDE for things like Amarok and K3B but the look of Windows95 for things like Firefox, Thunderbird et al.
After a quick test of the Ubuntu 8.10 in LiveCD mode I saw that most of my needed apps (GIMP and those mentioned above) would be installed by default. And I’d only need to manually install Scribus and Thunderbird.
One quick backup later and Ubuntu was installing.
my spanking new Ubuntu desktop
What was yesterday. I’ve been using Ubuntu now, exclusively, for a whole day and, I have to say… I like it! I can definitely see a speed increase in Thunderbird and Firefox, in KDE they were ok to use, but a bit clunky and ugly – hence why I, at one point, switched to using Opera as my browser. I can get a decent screen resolution too, which I could never get in KDE. Ok so I lose Amarok, but Rhythmbox seems quite adequate. Not tried it, but Brasero seems more than capable of burning a CD/DVD.
All in all, I feel like a new man.
Wait, that sounded a bit…
We meet again old friend
After posting my ‘KDE4 is dying’ sob story on the Kubuntu mailing list, I was advised to rename my hidden .kde4 directory then try logging in with KDE4. But just after reading the above solution I saw that KDE 4.0.1 would be released soon.
Sure enough, KDE 4.0.1 was released yesterday (Wed, 6th Feb) and I installed the updates, renamed my .kde4 folder and gave it a whirl…
Whoopee!
Ok, so I’ve only been using it for a few hours but already it seems much faster and polished. There’s now a separate resize icon and the border for the plasma widgets is now pale rather than dark, although I personally preferred the darker faded box but, what the hell, I can live with it. I’m not sure if it’s just me having not seen it for about a week but the K button appears smaller (to me anyway). The little ‘add a widget icon thingy’ at the top right of the screen is more faded now and the menu items swing in diagonally. I’m sure it may be handy later on but said icon thingy seems pretty useless at the moment I can add widgets by right clicking on the desktop.
One thing I noticed right away that they’ve fixed is the widget border thing, apart from now being pale, it doesn’t linger after you’ve moved off the icon, like it used to.
And Dolphin seems a bit faster too but, again, that might be just me…
Anyway, welcome back old friend… I did kinda miss you…
Google Calendar, why do you hate me so?!
*sob*
I’m have no luck at all this week end.
First was my KDE4 debacle and now an argument with Google Calendar!
I read a nice tutorial which was about getting Google Calendar working in Thunderbird.
‘That’d be handy’, says I.
Downloads the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird, which gives it a built in calendar, then downloaded the Provider add-on which allows Lightning to read and write to a Google calendar.
Installed Lightning first then Provider. Fine. Now to configure Provider. Gives it the Private XML URL and a calendar name and so on, click ‘Next’…
Nothing.
That’s odd.
*scratches head*
After a bit of detective work it seems that there’s a conflict between Lightning and Thunderbird due to Thunderbird having installed from the Gutsy repo’s and Lightning having come from the Mozilla site. Ah crap!
Time for Plan B: get Lightning from the Gutsy repo too!
Ah HA! See? I’m a smart cookie me…
Not so. The Lightning in the repo’s is v0.5. The Provider add-on needs v0.7 (the one on the Mozilla site).
Crap, crap and thrice CRAP.
I give up. No more Linux h4×0r1ng this weekend, screw it… 
KDE4.0 – Day 2
Well, i’ve been using KDE4 now for two whole days and i’ve been noticing some ‘quirks’ which i’m not too keen on.
Why is it so difficult to create a new folder? I right click in Dolphin/Konqueror and choose Create New from the menu and… no, there’s no New Folder option. Ok, what about the File menu? Nope, not there either. Only way I could find to create a new folder was to right click in the left (tree view) panel in Konqueror and create a new folder there. How annoying! Especially ironic since both Konqueror and Dolphin are ‘file managers’.An update has been released which fixes the ‘New Folder’ problem. Hurrah!
- I still can’t find a way to make the items in the task bar smaller. They’re huge and I really preferred it when they were linked to the desktop they are running on. So for example I could have Thunderbird running on desktop four and it wouldn’t show up on desktop 1, 2 or three.
But on the bright side:
- I do like how you can download new widgets and make an uber-pretty desktop. That I do like!
- Dolphin has the option to have a mini console window at the bottom of it which is quite funky. Clicking on a folder automatically enters the command into the console so the console is always up to date with where Dolphin is. Nice!
But even with the gripes I still like KDE4, I’m sticking with it but just need to find where I should file bug reports as I’ve noticed a few things that I’d like to point out although I’m sure most of my small moans have been reported by now…
KDE4 – First Impressions
KDE4 released – Check
KDE4 installed fast as humanly possible – CHECK!
Just got back from work and my KDE4 install is up and running
First impressions are that it is really nice. I am, of course, taking in to consideration that this is 4.0 and will have some rough edges. It has a few ‘quirks’ though: apps such as GIMP and Firefox, while having a nice fancy border, look like old Windows 95 applications for some reason. One other thing is the Desktop Effects, turning them on really slows things down, which is odd considering I’ve ran Compiz Fusion on this machine before with no slow down, but see my last comment about knowing that KDE4 would be a bit rough.
The new K menu thing is taking a bit of getting used to. The confusing thing with it is that it seems to also include some of my KDE3.x apps. So going in to K > System gives me File Manager and File Manager KDE 4. File Manager is my old 3.x version of Dolphin while the other is the new Dolphin. Very confusing!
The task bar now seems to effectively be a new fangled ‘widget’ and as yet I’ve no idea how I make windows unique to a desktop, ie: if a window is on desktop 1, I don’t want it to show on the task bar in desktops 2 to 4. But I’m sure the option is hidden in there somewhere.
But all in all, I like it. I’m writing this post in Firefox running in KDE4.
Let the good times roll! 
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