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KDE 4.5... nice.

KDE4, openSUSE No Responses »
Aug 112010

Yesterday, the KDE team released 4.5 after a one-week delay to fix some last minute bugs.

What can I say… that delay was worth the wait ;)

Upgrading a 4.4.4 to 4.5 (from suse build service, so unless you do it the same way, YMMV) was painless enough, and the result looks pretty, and feels a lot faster than 4.4.4.

On top of it, two major annoyances seem to have been fixed:

  • kopete doesn’t time out on you anymore if you donÄt enter the kwallet password fast enough
  • the icons on my desktop don’t rearrange themselves on each login.

good job, guys.

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Posted by lemmy at 12:38 Tagged with:

openSUSE 11.3... some of the changes are for the worse.

Rants, openSUSE 1 Response »
Jul 302010

…actually, one change only, as far as I’ve discovered.

The openSUSE guys decided to drop SCPM from 11.3.

“Instead” there is network manager.

Whoever made that decision has no idea at all about what scpm is, and what you can do with it…

To make it short, NetworkManager does exactly that… it manages network connections, after the user has logged in.

SCPM stands for “System Configuration Profile Manager”… and it does exactly that… it manages system profiles… at boot time. You pick the profile you want right at the grub screen, and based on which of your profiles you choose the system replaces configuration files and runlevels and starts daemons or not.

As an example:

With Network Manager I can set up different configurations for my wireless network card.

With SCPM I can set up different configurations for my whole system… as in “in this configuration start the network card with dhcp, and start NIS, and start the automounter with NIS maps, and the time server is that, and the proxy is this, and the local hostname is whatever, and Oh i want runlevel 5 with kdm4 with that theme and this xorg.conf with 1680×1050 with the nvidia driver” versus “in that configuration, start the network so that the user can configure it with network manager. No NIS, no Automounter, runlevel 5 with a different theme because its the internal display at 1280×800, and automatically log in that user” versus “in this configuration, no network config at all, not even network manager, and text mode (runlevel 3).”

Or in short… replacing SCPM with NetworkManager is like replacing a whole kitchen with all appliances with one single spoon.

Posted by lemmy at 16:28 Tagged with: , ,

openSUSE 11.3 ... I am impressed.

openSUSE 2 Responses »
Jul 232010

Just after we came back from our summer vacation I started upgrading a few computers to openSUSE 11.3, and I have to say, I found that to be pleasantly painless.

When I did that with 11.2, I found some major pains, but in 11.3, the "zypper dup" upgrade is officially supported, and "just works". So far I’ve done four machines, three of them had given me major headache when I upped them to 11.2 (as seen here).

With 11.3, the upgrade simply worked, seamless, even while still using the laptop in case for my daily work!

Now here are some few pros and cons that I’ve discovered so far:

The Pros

  • Like I said, you can upgrade a running system from 11.2 to 11.3 with the "zypper dup" approach described in the suse wiki. Take note to change EVERY repository to the 11.3 version, and disable/remove the ones that you won’t need.
  • Automatic X11 configuration works like a charm
  • The whole desktop (I’m using KDe 4.4.4 which is included with 11.3) feels very polished

The Cons

  • It took some time for the nvidia drivers to appear; without them the automatic X11 configuration would have failed, or rather, defaulted to that noveau driver which is not quite ready for use. Who in his right mind would include a driver at that state in a release.
  • SCPM config management will have to be redone in two cases… Time to rethink some settings anyways.
  • In one case I need a kernel parameter at boot time to disable the internal display of my lenovo laptop at work, because the thing doesn’t disable it from the bios if the laptop its in its docking station with the lid closed. Not exactly openSUSEs fault here.

Summary:

Go for it. It is good.

Posted by lemmy at 09:40 Tagged with: ,

KDE 4.4.4... or not.

KDE4, Rants 12 Responses »
Jun 072010

A week ago or so, KDE 4.4.4 was released. So far there are NO binary packages at all, except for (k)ubuntu 10.04… One might wonder why.

Let’s have a look at the changelog: Some sorting bugs in dolphin fixed… Lots of bugs in games and toys fixed… The height of the kopete contact list fixed…

Let’s have a look at the KDE bugtracker now, something like the "most hated bugs" report or something like that… We’ll find that some of the most hated bugs have in fact been around since KDE3, and will stay with us for quite some time longer… For example that nasty bug in kmail/imap that duplicates mails. Has been around since TWOTHOUSANDANDFOUR (2004).

Or how about the incomplete total lack of SSL certificate management for konqueror. That has been around since KDE 4.0.0, makes Konq4 unfit to be used in any serious environment, and noone seems to care. Instead, the KDE devs squabble endlessly over how to file bugs about this on the kde bugtracker…

I am starting to think that most big binary providers think "so what" about KDE 4.4.4.

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Posted by lemmy at 10:49 Tagged with:

UPS added to the site

Site Status 2 Responses »
Mar 082010

Newest site addition: UPS (see it on the left side of the page). To keep it running, the hamster has to be fed regularly, so please people, click…

Posted by Site Admin at 13:24

KDE 4.4.1

KDE4 3 Responses »
Mar 032010

Just updated my laptop at work to kde 4.4.1… and I have to say, that was refreshingly painless.

Even with that akonadi pim storage and strigi/nepomuk desktop search indexing going on in the background.

I’ve seen others saying that (at least on the first run) either of those two can totally lock up your system by eating all memory and then some. But that was in KDE 4.4.0.

Edit:

Seems that composite effects are much faster and way more stable in this release… switched the stuff on and it’s still damn well usable, on a cripple graphics chipset intel graphics chipset…

Now i actually have to read the "what’s new" docs for kde 4.4.x….

Posted by lemmy at 11:32 Tagged with:

ACL magic

Tips & Tricks No Responses »
Feb 112010

as root on the server:
mkdir /eregion/temp
cd /eregion/temp
setfacl -d -m g::rwx acltest/
setfacl -d -m m::rwx acltest/
setfacl -d -m g:netusers:rwx acltest/
setfacl  -m g:netusers:rwx acltest/

… now the folder /eregion/temp/acltest has mode 755, owner root:root, but still users in the netusers group can create folders and files within, that are group-owned by netusers and writeable by the netusers group…

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Posted by lemmy at 12:43 Tagged with:

Opinions...

Rants No Responses »
Jan 192010

Opinions are all well and fine, but when they are based on data "from the last millennium", or in numbers, from more than 24 months ago, they are a nuisance.

Just login as root, type apt-get and it downloads and updates everything you need. I’ve tried RPM based distros several times since 2000, but the situation hasn’t improved as much as I had hoped. To date, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva just feel wrong to me.

Seriously, could someone point out the difference between

zypper install xbmc

and

apt-get install xbmc

to me? Thanks.

At some point there’s not much reason to continue reading certain websites anymore…

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Posted by lemmy at 13:55 Tagged with: ,

openSUSE 11.2... the day after.

openSUSE 4 Responses »
Jan 092010

So now it’s been a few weeks since openSUSE 11.2 hit the street.

Here are a few impressions / factoids that i discovered so far:

  • upgrading through zypper with "zypper dup" as described on the openSUSE wiki: epic fail on 2 out of 3 tries. Both failed machines used the "desktop" kernel, maybe that is the reason.
  • upgrading from DVD through yast: works fine. BUT I also picked the "default" kernel right from the start so maybe that is what made the upgrade work.
  • clean install: no problems.
  • ext4 is damn fast in deleting huge subdirectories.
  • KDE4 needs to be upgraded to 4.3.4 to be usable; oSS is going to release 4.3.4 as a patchset for OSS 11.2 any day now.
  • the "desktop" kernel breaks openVPN. Not a good thing.

On the whole, openSUSE 11.2 is pretty good after you find the little tripping stones…

Posted by lemmy at 09:06 Tagged with: ,

Coming soon... openSUSE 11.2

openSUSE No Responses »
Nov 122009

openSUSE 11.2 should be available any time today…

So far the last few milestones and RC releases have been pretty good… Can’t wait to see if “zypper dup” can upgrade cleanly from a 11.1 with additional repos to a 11.2 with the 11.2 versions of the same repos… might be an ugly job though, better do that with a computer that i don’t really need, like the laptop @ work XD


… ob-link to the opensuse site…

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Posted by Site Admin at 12:39 Tagged with:
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