Testing Desktop Managers

As I have mentioned here before I have been predomiantly using KDE 3.5 for my main desktop for sometime now. The last couple of days have seen me experimenting with some alternatives. I installed Fedora 9 with KDE 4.1.2 and Xfce 4.4.2. This isn’t the first time I have used KDE 4 and I have used older versions of Xfce. Neither have previously tempted me to move away from KDE 3.5 though.

KDE 4.1.2

My earlier experiences with KDE 4 had me deciding it wasn’t ready for everyday use. It is difficult to pinpoint particular issues that support this but it is the general feeling from using it. A good desktop manager will disappear, at least to the extent that it doesn’t get in your way when you are working. However if you are spending more time trying to get past the desktop than you spend in your apps there is a problem. So here are a couple of the issues I found.

The new menu format feels slow and clunky. I found using it with a mouse difficult and with the keyboard it was inconsistent. I had set up shortcuts in my Fedora 8 KDE 3.5 system and found the way to set them up here was similar. However they didn’t work. There were saved and could be edited but there was no response when I tried them. In 3.5 there was an extra step to use multiple keys which doesn’t seem to exist here so that may be the problem. After a short time I had reset the menu to the classic menu which helped a little. The help screens still refer to the previous versions too.

I didn’t like the look of Firefox and found a post on the Fedora Forums which describes how to make Firefox use the current KDE theme. This helped a lot. Open Office had a strange problem where icons on the toolbar disappeared unless the mouse was over them. I haven’t got around to look into that yet.

I found KDE to be a bit slow too although it is faster than the 4.0 I tried sometime ago. It is also much more stable. Maybe 4.2 will be more usable.

Xfce 4.4.2

Xfce is a light weight desktop that is quite minimalist when compared to KDE and Gnome. It certainly runs faster and uses less resources. This makes it useful on older computers and when you want to run resource intensive apps like video editors. I had used older versions and found them a little too basic for my liking. Also Xfce is less customisable than KDE. They always seemed stable and fast but I never kept them as my default desktop.

After using KDE 4 Xfce looked very simple and that isn’t a bad thing. Everything I have tried works with little attention. I haven’t worked out how to set up shortcuts yet. Also I haven’t found a theme I prefer but that is a small concern. It seems stable and is the fastest I have tried on this computer. My early impressions are that I could live with Xfce which is something I haven’t thought of older versions.

So Where Does That Leave Me?

My preferred desktop manager is still KDE 3.5. Undoubtably this is partly due to being familiar and therefore comfortable with it but even more due to the fact it is mature. KDE 4.1.2 is not quite there. Maybe 4.2 will do it for me. I look forward to trying it sometime soon. Xfce has come a long way and could become my choice when I update my everyday system from Fedora 8. I will install Compiz on it soon and see how that goes.

Themes for Gmail

Those of us who use Gmail appreciate the features it offers but may find the look of the page a bit boring. There have been extensions available to add themes but these come with a speed penalty. Now Google has added themes. They point out they could have just provided colour options but decided to go the theme route instead. See the Gmail blog for more details and screen shots. Now if only they would offer colours or themes in PicasaWeb.

As usual Google is slowly rolling it out and if you don’t have a themes tab on your settings screen check back in a few days.

I was tempted by the mountains but have gone with Shiny at the moment. That will probably change in a couple of days though! Which theme did you choose?

Conroy Bans Over 10,000 Sites

The list keeps growing, Senator Conroy has now admitted he will ban over 10,000 sites. Originally he claimed the sites would be limited to those listed by ACMA as illegal but now he has added ten times more sites, that he calls unwanted, to the list. Is this just the start of his real plans? See here for more details.

Stand up for your rights, click on the No Clean Feed link on the top left of this page.

On Net Filtering

As a follow-up to the previous post on the Great Australian Firewall. I thought you might enjoy this from User Friendly.

RPM Fusion Now Available

While Fedora has many applications available in its own repository its strict adherence to free software only means there are many packages that aren’t there. That includes many important proprietary video and wifi drivers we need until the free versions can offer the same features. Fortunately the 3rd party repos have stepped in to fill the gap. However this can lead to problems with incompatible versions and dependencies across the different repos. New comers have often been advised to enable only one 3rd party site. A solution to this has been in development for sometime and it consisted of the simple (at least on the surface) act of combining the more popular repos into one central place. This has finally been achieved and the new RPM Fusion is now in operation. This is a great step forward for Fedora and we can only hope that more repos will become involved. Congratulations to all those involved. Now if only someone would package Kdenlive for Fedora.

Below is the announcement from the Fedora forums, as you can see if you already have Livna correctly enabled you wont need to do anything. You will receive an update that will enable RPM Fusion and then you will receive several new updates from the new site. You probably wont need to keep Livna enabled after that.

“The RPM Fusion team is proud to announce the public availability of
our repositories that provide software which the Fedora project cannot
provide as easy-to-install RPM packages.

== What applications can be found in the RPM Fusion repositories ==

The RPM Fusion project provides a variety of different applications:

=== Sound and Video / Multimedia applications ===

We have all that is needed to play all kinds of media files, such as
MP3 or unencrypted DVDs
and ship additional multimedia applications such as MPlayer, VLC and Xine.

=== Kernel Drivers ===

We offer the ATI and Nvidia closed-source drivers in a
Fedora-compatible RPM package
for users whose video cards are not yet fully supported with the stock
open source drivers.

=== Games ===

We offer couple of games such as:
* Bub’s Brothers
* Secret Maryo Chronicles
* UFO: Alien Invasion
* Wörms of Prey, xrick
* GLtron
* and lot others !

=== Emulators ===

We offer emulators for most retro platform:

* VICE for Commodore 64 and other vintage Commodore 8 bit computers
* E-UAE for Amiga
* Nestopia and FCEUltra for NES
* ZSNES and Snes9x for Super NES
* and many many others!

== More Information ==

RPM Fusion provides packages for all Fedora releases that are
supported by Fedora project, which includes the development branch
“rawhide”.

We have two separate repository lines:

* “free” for Open Source Software (as defined by the Fedora Licensing
Guidelines) which the Fedora project cannot ship
* “nonfree” for redistributable software that is not Open Source
Software (as defined by the Fedora Licensing Guidelines); this
includes software with publicly available source-code that has “no
commercial use”-like restrictions

Please read our wiki page about how to enable these repositories:
http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

RPM Fusion is a project started by the Dribble, Freshrpms and Livna
teams. It aims to bring together many packagers from various 3rd party
repositories and build a single add-on repository for Fedora and Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. We hope to attract new Fedora packagers and hope
that other 3rd party repositories will join us.

Are you interested? Do you want to help? Don’t hesitate and subscribe
to our mailing lists at http://lists.rpmfusion.org or meet us in the
#rpmfusion channel on freenode.

==== Do you find problems? ====

Fill bugs at https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/

=== A note for Livna users ===

All users that installed Livna properly (e.g. by installing the
livna-release package) will get RPM Fusion free and nonfree
repositories enabled automatically. All packages in Livna that are
superseded by packages from RPM Fusion will soon be removed from the
Livna repositories.”

The End of the Internet in Australia?

The Australian government is intending to join a list of the world’s most disreputable governments such as China, Cuba and Iran by censoring the internet. It will set itself up as the sole authority on what Australians can access. But it will also refuse to disclose what it is blocking and why. The few reports that have reached the general media have talked of child porn and other illegal sites but already a staffer in the office of the Minister responsible for this has tried to block reports on whirlpool.net.au. So where will it end?

See here and follow the links for more info.
See also Nocleanfeed.