“Thanks most sincerely, R.B.A., Missouri”

I know that some other people have already blogged this, but it’s important. I originally saw this letter when it got passed from the Ubuntu-Devel mailing list to Kubuntu-Users (the original is here). My friends will tell you that I can be kind of a hardass, and they’re not wrong, but this letter touched me.

The writer is a gentleman named Robert from Missouri. I won’t squander more space on introductions, as he tells his story more eloquently than I could.

Earlier this week I installed Kubuntu on a refurbished AMD computer I purchased for $184 from a discount online vendor, it came with no OS…

We can’t afford much and this was my 14 year old daughter’s birthday present… She is overjoyed. And she is already trying to tackle Adept Manager and exploring Linux, adding bling and her music…

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the work you all have done… If I could thank each and every one of you, I would.

You have given her the world to learn and explore.

So if you get frustrated or tired in your work for Open Source/Free Software, just remember that somewhere in Missouri there is a 14 year old girl named Hope, and A student who runs on the track team, who is now your biggest fan…

Thanks most sincerely,

R.B.A., Missouri

No, thank you. Thanks for reminding me what I’m doing here. To me, this is the core of what makes the Ubuntu community so amazing, and the heart and soul of what I try to do on my own tiny scale with Guerrilla Tech. It’s not just about writing code, it’s not just about building a startup or building a resume or scratching an itch or feeling l33t or “sticking it to the man,” although those are all honorable goals. It’s about making a difference, and helping people. It’s about eventually leaving this world a little better than it was when we showed up. All of us, with whatever modest gifts the gods gave us, we’re making a difference. We’re helping people. At our very best, we’re changing lives.

Let’s keep going, everyone.

-pd-

MiniHOWTO: Save and recover full list of installed packages with dpkg

Oh, the things you catch flying by on the mailing lists! This tip comes from Ulrich Grün:

To make installation of your favoured packages more easy, you could save your list of installed packages from your old system, and then use this list for your new one:

dpkg –get-selections > list-of-installed-packages

dpkg –set-selections < list-of-installed-packages

then with aptitude with option ‘g’ or with synaptic or other packaging programme: installation of this list of packages. Maybe, an apt-get upgrade will do this as well (not tested)

One very important thing to note, as another poster in that thread brought up, is to always check the list and make sure you know what you’re doing before you use it as basis for an upgrade, especially if the list is from a different version (Gutsy to Hardy, for instance), or you could really hose yourself. But god damn, I can’t count how often I’ve looked for something like this! Thanks, Ulrich!

Ubuntu Brainstorm

If you haven’t heard the word, there’s a new site up where you can submit your brilliant ideas for the future of Ubuntu, and vote on others’! It’s called Ubuntu Brainstorm, and I think it’s the best idea since… well, since user-friendly desktop Linux! Go check it out! Now! Quit wasting your time reading my nonsense and make your voice heard!

(Image shamelessly swiped from here.)

HOWTO: Install _only_ KDE4 on Ubuntu 7.10

UPDATE: Please stop using this howto, it is obsolete and only being kept up for archiving purposes. The Kubuntu-KDE4 8.10 beta is out! Use it instead!

…

Yes, I know I can install KDE4 on top of KDE3.5 in Kubuntu. I know that the final release of 8.04 will have separate install discs for KDE3.5 and KDE4. But I want what I want and I want it right fuckin’ now. Here’s how I did it.

1. Install the server edition of Ubuntu 7.10. I will not detail this process here; if you don’t already know how to work with the debian-installer, don’t take it personally, but this howto is probably a little beyond you. Go forth, read the fabled manual, and come back when you’ve built your first lightsaber, young Jedi. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.
2. Reboot, log in. Install the generic kernel. This step is not strictly necessary, but the generic kernel is optimized for low latency desktop use. What this means to you, Joe User, is that applications can pre-empt the kernel, resulting in slightly lower overall processing power, but increased desktop responsiveness. Oh, the things you learn hanging out here!-> sudo aptitude install linux-generic. _Reboot_ into the generic kernel (you’ll have to select it from the GRUB menu just this once) before moving on to step 3.
3. Remove the server kernel. -> sudo aptitude remove linux-image-2.6.22-14-generic linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22-14-generic linux-server linux-image-server. GRUB will update itself. (Note: By the time you read this, the kernel version may have changed, in which case you’ll have to change the version number above. You can find out what kernel you’re running with -> uname -r.
4. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list and add the line “deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu gutsy main universe multiverse restricted” (no quotes)
5. sudo aptitude
6. In aptitude, press “u” to update the package list. Press “/” to bring up a search bar, and search for kde4-core. Press “+” to install. This should automatically install the x server with it, but check to make sure by searching for xserver-xorg and making sure there’s an “i” next to it. Also search for and mark kdm for installation.
7. MUY IMPORTANTE! Search for kdm-kde4 and press “-” to cancel the installation. I have a showstopper bug with kdm-kde4, wherein when kdm starts, it kills all my other ttys*, which I cannot live without. I have seen no known fix for this, and I haven’t even seen anyone else with the problem, so your mileage may vary, but you’ve been warned. After all this is said and done, press “g” to install. It’ll pull down about five million package, so if you need to go to the corner store for a pack of smokes, now’s a good time. EDIT: Okay,my ttys vanished again.kdm-kde4 is not installed, it happened after an update to xserver-xorg-video-intel. I think it may be related to this bug, but I’m not sure. I have a seperate bug report filed here. EDIT TO THE EDIT: This seems to be fixed in Feisty.
8. Reboot into KDE4! Right now, only the base KDE4 desktop is installed, but wait there’s more! First, install Adept (there isn’t a KDE4 version yet) with -> sudo aptitude install adept. Then check out extragear-plasma, kdepim-kde4, koffice-kde4, kde4-amusements, kdeadmin-kde4, kdeartwork-kde4, kdeaccessibility-kde4, kdeedu-kde4, kdegames-kde4, kdemultimedia-kde4, kdenetwork-kde4, kdegraphicskde4, and kdeutils-kde4. Etc, etc. You may just want to search for KDE4 in Adept and go down the list.
9. Enjoy!

-pd-

A ten-minute tour of KBlogger 1.0 alpha

This is a test run of KBlogger 1.0 alpha2 for KDE4. I’m fairly pleased with the wordpress.com interface and probably won’t be using this very often, but I wanted to at least kick the tires on this, so I’m going to try (really, I just opened this program for the first time, this is being written as it happens) to compose and publish this post from inside KBlogger. Before I begin, if you want to try KBlogger on K/ubuntu, it’s in the KDE4 repository. If you have questions, comments, or bug reports for KBlogger, please take them to the project’s KDE-apps page. On with the show!

Good stuff:

Autoconfiguration for the most common blog formats. (fig. 1) Enter your blog URL, username and password, and go.

A two-pane, tabbed interface that’s really nice. (fig. 2) On the left is the compositionn pane, with tabs for “visual editor,” “HTML editor,” and “post preview,” updated in real time. No more waiting for a new page to load to see a preview, or switch from visual to HTML editing! Sweet! The right panel contains a drop-down menu for handling multiple blogs if you’ve got more than one, and a “categories” selection menu. Well put together, no complaints here.

Speaking of the post preview tab, there’s a cryptic button in there called “get style.” Guess what it does? (fig. 3) Cool!

Handy-dandy image uploader Note: I noticed on the author’s kde-apps page that the image uploader is still very rough. I’m glad I read that before trying to publish this. A good idea, though, I hope the developers can work it out.

Not-so-good stuff:

When the composer window is open, you can’t activate the main window. I assume this is a bug.

Saving drafts is real dicey. Once KBlogger forgot my categories, the next time it seemed to forget all my changes. WTF? Not Good.

The visual editor, not to put too fine a point on it, totally sucks. No hotkeys, like nine options, no bullet lists, if that’s not enough for you, of course, you can use the HTML editor…

Or can you? Just now I tried to go to the HTML editor to make this a bullet list. Went to the preview tab, and it looked good. Went back to the visual editor, and my formatting was gone. Well, maybe the editor can’t parse it, oh well. Went back to the HTML editor and my formatting was gone! Okay, the visual editor not being able to handle it was acceptable, if not thrilling. But this is not at all what I expected, and completely uncool behavior. If you go from the HTML editor to the preview and back, the formatting remains intact. I haven’t tried to publish yet, so I don’t know if that works or not.

“Publish” doesn’t seem to publish. It just sits in Local Entries. I don’t know if this is a problem with the publish function or the blog autoconfiguration.

Some wishlist stuff (Note that I have no idea if the developers are working on any of this already or not):

It would be nice to run it in the system tray and be able to pull it up with a global shortcut.

Support for tags as well as categories, and the option to add new tags/categories.

There’s no documentation that I could find, and I did look. The documentation link on the homepage is for 0.5.

The reason I looked is that it’s not at all clear what the “Set Publish Date” does, or what its relationship, if any, is with the “Publish” checkbox.

In all it’s a good beginning. Yeah, it’s rough, but it’s an alpha, and the outline of something good is there. If there are more items under “bad” in my list, I don’t want that to reflect poorly on the good work being done here, these are just a random sample of issues I had in my ten-minute tour of the program. Also keep in mind that I’m running alpha software on alpha software (Kubuntu Hardy alpha 4), and made no effort to debug any problems. This is just the view from the cheap seats, folks. Anyway, the point is, the parts of it I like I really like, and I’m going to keep my eye on this project.

Note: I’m going to copy-paste this into the wordpress web page now, to give a demonstration of the visual editor. I did this post in the visual editor, then copied the code out of the HTML editor. The images are the only part of this post not done with KBlogger.

-pd-

fig.1

fig.2

fig.3

KDE4 progress…

KDE4 continues to shape up on Kubuntu Hardy alpha4… The pager got configuration options today, huzzah! Stay tuned for the dime review of KBlogger for KDE4, later tonight.

-pd-