14th, December 2009.

Kaffeine in the current version of Kubuntu seems to be hard wired to play DVD's from only one particular device in the system. The way Kaffeine references the DVD drive is through a file in the dev directory and this device is referenced as /dev/dvd. Read more......

(Permenent Fix)

Kaffeine DVD Playback in Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

26th, November 2009.

Enabling a composited desktop with Xinerama on Kubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10.

12th, November 2009.

Unfortunately for Linux users who want to use more than one graphics card in a multi monitor setup, there's a bit of a catch. In order to make your desktop seamlessly span the multiple cards, you need to enable Xinerama. And, when Xinerama is enabled, you can no longer use a composited deskop. Read more......

Kubuntu Samba Share Fail.

3rd, November 2009.

Sharing a file or folder on a network should be a nice, simple procedure on any modern Desktop these days. And it is on some, but not Kubuntu. Their policy in the past has been to not ship this functionality in the default install, and instead, assume an end user will have the know how to enable this for themselves. Read more......

The trouble with running kdesudo dolphin with Kubuntu 9.04.

7th, May 2009.

There's a problem when running Dolphin as root via the kdesudo command in Jaunty Jackalope 9.04. This can be rectified temporarily by executing a simple command. Read more......

The Classic Gnome Desktop on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

2nd, May 2009.

The netbook remix of Ubuntu is a wonderful thing for sure. It's performance on an Atom based netbook is noticably better than the standard Ubuntu distro however some people don't like the noobaliscious program launcher and this discourages them from running it. Well there's good news for those folks, and that is that it's trivial to switch to the standard style desktop that you know and love from standard Ubuntu. Read more......

Creating a Kubuntu 9.04 USB Key.

30th, April 2009.

As of this wrinting I'm unaware of a USB image for Kubuntu 9.04 so in order for me to install it on my CD Driveless Apire One, my options were to either get a USB DVD Drive or make my own USB memory stick installer. I chose the second option, and here's what I did to make it. Read more......

Running Video4Linux 1 Software with Video4Linux 2 Devices.

25th, April 2009.

As per the documentation for the v4l library, the wonderful video4linux developers have created a compatibility library that makes various applications that only support v4l1 devices work with v4l2 devices.

I've tested this myself with both Kopete and Skype and can confirm that it does indeed do what it says it does. Read more......

Fixing KDE's broken filesharing.

19th, April 2009.

When it's working, the file sharing in KDE 4 works rather nicely, but both Intrepid Ibex as well as Jaunty Jackalope both ship with it in a broken state. It's fixable thankfully, so all is not lost. This guide starts at the point you'd be at if you'd just installed your O/S or just haven't yet installed the file sharing packages. The second part deals with the final steps of deborking file sharing, which, if followed correctly should have you file swapping before you know it. Read more......

USB Hub 5V Boostage.

10th, April 2009.

Most people have USB hubs connected to their computers and more than a few of those would have noticed that not all devices work with them, This is usually because there's not enough voltage coming out of each port on the hub. The four port hub I was using for instance only provides about 4.5V from each of its ports instead of the required 5V. This is usually solved by powered hubs using an external power supply that plugs into the wall to supplement what comes from the PC. I'm not happy with the wall-wort solution however. Read more......

Kubuntu on Aspire One.

13th, January 2009.

Went shopping the other day. I was off to find myself a nice security camera for my PC based security system, and while I was in the local Office Works, I noticed they had the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One on special. And well I just couldn't resist. Read more......

Turn Off KDE3 Menu Shadows in KDE4.

Anyone running any KDE3 programs on Kubuntu 8.10 with its KDE4 desktop will probably have noticed annoying shadow artifacts around drop down menus. They appear as a consequence of a clash between KDE3's menu drop shadows and compiz or KDE4 kwin's shadows. There's an option to switch them off in KDE3 that doesn't seem to be available in KDE4 but there is a way to switch them off manually.

Amarok 2 Beta Installation.

Amarok 2 beta pre-built packages are available for both Kubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.

I thought I'd give it a go to see just how far down the track they've gotten with the new version. I was pleasently supprised by how stable it was but there were some issues in installing it thought.

Copyright Bullshit.

Ars Technica has a rather good article relating to the state of US estimates of the cost of piracy.

It's nice to see more and more balanced and rational public debate on the subject being posted to the bigger sites on the interwebernets these days. There needs to be a lot more though. And mores the pitty that the crap that spews from the mouths of the RIAA, MPAA, etc. not only influences American legislation, but Australias' legislation as well. Makes you wonder about the level of critical thinking that goes on in the heads of out legistalors. Me thinks more sense would come from children sometimes. Anyway, for a good examination of the figures bandied around by the copyright gestapo, click here.

KDE4, Compiz and nVidia.

Using KDE4 with Compiz on an nForce 430 based system with nVidia 6150 embedded graphics.

Specifically, this is a short story about the problems you can have when using Compiz with KDE4 as shipped with Kubuntu 8.10 beta.

When using desktop effects on an nVidia based system, naturally you'll want to install the nVidia drivers. Only problem is that the hardware drivers app suggests you install the 177 series drivers and normally I would agree. But not when your system is based on an nForce chipset with the embedded nVidia 6150 graphics. In this case, I found that the 173 series drivers are the ones to use. I'm talking about the drivers as shipped with the distro and can't yet speak for the abolute latest drivers from nVidia site.

Problems

The system suffered from slow logins, very sluggish performance at the desktop, laggy application startup and slow navigating between programs. Some applications also misbehaved. The performance replicated what you would find on a hopelessly undermemoryed system, however this box had 1 GB so shouldn't have been like this. The screen redraw was fine, as in the frame rate was excellent but loading new programs was appaling.

The Fix.

The fix was easy. Switching to the 173 nVidia drivers made all the problems go away. There was no problem with KDE4's own composititing effects and the 177 drivers, but Compiz didn't like them for some reason.