Kubuntu 13.10 is for Keeps!

Based upon my overall favorable experience, with just a few minor reservations, with Kubuntu 13.04, I opted for a full install of the latest golden egg from the golden goose, Kubuntu, in the process overwriting my PCLinuxOS install. As described in previous posts, I had been dismayed by the lack of certain programs in the PCLinuxOS repository. Kubuntu offers a much wider universe of programs due to its compatibility with Debian. I wanted to return to the light, and luckily for me, the latest Kubuntu 13.10 has just rolled out the door. Using Ktorrent, I torrented the 64-bit version of Kubuntu 13.10, thus ensuring a clean copy, burned the .iso with K3b, and booted the disk. The installation almost went smoothly.

Patience is a Virtue

Upon reboot, the screen froze at the brightening-and-darkening Kubuntu logo. I suspected user error immediately. After all, Kubuntu is a class act. There's no way they would release an install that would not boot, at least on my mainstream hardware--an AMD E-350 apu with ATI Radeon 6310 graphics, 4 gigs of Ram, and a 1.5tb Western Digital Green Drive. I remember popping the dvd out at or near the end of the install when I thought that it was done accessing the dvd. But was the install really finished? Maybe not! I decided to perform the installation one more time to be sure. Kubuntu is always worth a second chance and the benefit of the doubt. This time, I let Kubuntu eject the dvd on its own, without my help, and only when it had done so did I take the disk out. Another change I decided to make was to wait patiently until I saw text on the screen that said "shutting down all processes," or something to that effect. Then I rebooted, and Kubuntu was fine. I've been working with computers long enough to know that user error is the first thing to examine whenever there is trouble. Of course, dear Mr. Kubuntu Developer, to make the install easier, perhaps there should be an instruction on the screen asking the user to keep the disk in the drive until it is no longer needed.

Customizing KDE the Igor Way

After install, the first thing I like to do to any Linux distro is uninstall those prepackaged apps I don't use and install those apps that I do use that the developers did not include. By uninstalling unneeded apps, the frequency and length of future updates can be minimized. In any KDE distro, there is going to be a bias for KDE-specific apps, such as Rekonq for web browsing and Kmail for email. I like many of the KDE choices, such as K3b for cd/dvd burning, Dolphin for file manager, Ktorrent for torrents, and Okular for PDFs, but not all. I can't survive without my Firefox and its universe of add-ons, and I prefer VLC to handle video files, Thunderbird for email, Jedit for coding, and Filezilla for FTP. I decided to keep Kubuntu's default web browser, Rekonq, because even though I prefer Firefox for daily use, Rekonq has its niche. I have found it to be a very lean and agile browser that can handle big, hairy web sites like blogspot, where I compose my posts. Blogspot's "Compose" window can actually crash Firefox on low-spec machines. In cases like that, Rekonq can be a savior. It is a good idea to have a primary and a secondary application for an important purpose like web browsing. Thankfully, Kubuntu has LibreOffice, my choice for office software, already installed.

Kubuntu's solution for package management is Muon Package Manager. Here's a snapshot of Muon (the name, by the way, refers to a subatomic particle):


Muon has really matured since Kubuntu 13.04 and is looking and feeling better than ever.

Muon Package Manager can also update the system and serves as an alternative to the Muon Update Manager, which may not be quite ready yet for prime time, from what I have observed. To use the upgrade option in Muon Package Manager, simply click its "Check for Updates" icon. I expect the Muon Update Manager will be fixed later, but until it is fixed, users should make a note to run Muon Package Manager on a weekly basis to check for and install available updates. Let us give Kubuntu some slack here, because apparently, Canonical sets the release date for all the Ubuntu distros, ready or not, and the problem is after all relatively minor, as there is a workaround. Also, 13.10 is not a long-term support release, but intended for enthusiasts like myself, and it is expected that our enthusiasm will paper over little rough edges in the development snapshot that 13.10 represents. I hope to see Muon Update Manager working soon, but I think I can hang on until it is.

Muon Discover offers more elaborate, user-friendly categorization and presentation of the programs available in the repository. I have not yet determined all of the differences between it and Muon Package Manager. Perhaps Muon Discover intends to offer new features not found in Muon Package Manager. Out of curiosity, I used Muon Discover to install GUFW, a GUI tool for configuring the system firewall. Muon Discover installed GUFW, although I had to search for the little installation progress bar at the lower-left of the screen. After Muon informed me the installation was complete, I noticed that the "Install" button was still enabled beside GUFW, which was confusing. Certainly a user would not wish to install an application twice. Also, when I tried to exit Muon Discover, I received a notice that the application was not responding. I opted to wait for Discover to close on its own, because I did not want to imperil GUFW's installation. After a moment, it closed by itself.

With GUFW, one can configure the firewall with a few clicks and then forget about it. GUFW does not need to autostart every time, but is a run-once utility, although one occasionally may refer to it to open up ports to play online games or torrent. One of the peculiarities of Kubuntu is that it does not include any graphical firewall configuration utility by default. Linux Mint does, and if memory serves me correctly, so does PCLinuxOS. I think that GUFW's absence from Kubuntu may have something to do with GUFW not being a KDE-specific solution and thus posing a bit of an embarrassment, but I'm not sure. For my part, I think it is a no-brainer to include a graphical firewall configuration tool in any modern operating system, and in my opinion, PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint are both correct to do so. I like KDE, but I don't think one has to be a purist about it.

After my visit with Muon, next I like to click on System Settings and begin customizing right away, because I know my preferences. A new user might prefer to get used to the system for a couple of days before they begin customizing. The first thing I do is remove unnecessary services that get loaded at startup. The "Startup and Shutdown" options are found in "System Settings" under the header "System Administration." After loading the "Startup and Shutdown" menu, click on the "Services Manager." Do you use Bluetooth? If not, then you can certainly do without that service loading every time. The same logic applies for such things as the Wacom Tablet and KDE Touchpad Enabler Daemon. If unnecessary services are disabled, slightly more memory is available to programs and, in theory, there is less that can go wrong with the system. I would not classify this as essential for a user like me with four gigs of RAM to play with, but it helps a little bit and satisfies my geeky nature. Here is a snapshot of the "Services Manager" options:


As you can see, I have unchecked some options above.

The "Autostart" sub-menu is rather more useful for the average user and another wonderful aspect of KDE, because I can easily add programs to execute immediately upon boot, thus saving me time. In the morning, I like to hit the power button, then leave for the kitchen and get myself a cup of tea. When I come back, my system is loaded with Thunderbird having checked for new mail, Firefox ready to roll, and Dolphin ready to open any documents I might want to read. Setting these programs to autostart is a true no-brainer. The defaults work fine and no typing is needed. One of the things I like about KDE is that I can get the computer to do what I want it to do without that much effort. Those who remember Windows XP may recall the awful anti-intuitive procedure needed to add a program to startup. I always had to search the internet to jog my memory on how to do it. Not so with KDE, which honors the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.


Adding Programs to Startup is Easy

I disapprove of using AM and PM for time, when military time seems more logical from every point of view. It is surprising the number of people who confuse 12AM with 12PM and vice versa, but this human tendency toward error can be avoided and our daily discourse simplified if we all convert to using military time. Right click on the clock, choose "Digital Clock Settings," and under the "Appearance" option, click on the wrench beside "Date Format," which will open up another menu, the "Locale" menu that can also be found under "System Settings." In KDE, sometimes there is more than one route to an options menu, but that is for the sake of user convenience. In the "Locale" menu, of course we want to modify Date & Time, even though military time has nothing to do with either locale or date.


Use the above settings to convert to military time

I also like for the desktop clock to display the day of the week, followed by the alphabetic month, the day, and the year. That is a setting found, intuitively enough, in "Digital Clock Settings," accessible by a right-click on the clock. Under "Appearance," choose the "Long Date" under "Date Format." This will produce a rather unsatisfactory appearance, because the font of the long date is, by default, rather small. The secret to increasing the font size, and it is indeed not intuitive at all, is to look in "System Settings" under "Application Appearance" (not Fonts). Only after you have clicked on "Application Appearance" should you choose the "Fonts" option found there. The font that controls the size of the date is not called anything obvious like "Date" or "Time" but instead is named "Small." Alright, you have found the worst problem in KDE! That's not really so bad, now, is it? Really, it's not. A very minor detail, and now that you know, it is no longer a problem. Hopefully, a KDE developer will read this review one day and tweak the Settings menu just a wee bit!


To change the size of the date in your desktop clock, increase the size of the "Small" font

Desktop Effects deserve attention. I am not sure of the reasons why Open GL 2.0 is set as the default instead of Open GL 3.1, but I suspect the reason has to do with keeping things as compatible as possible. I have reasonably modern video hardware that I think can cope with Open GL 3.1, so I enable it. I also feel it is wise to suspend desktop effects for a fullscreen window, because if I am fullscreen in any application, then obviously I am not going to be appreciating any desktop effects.


Why not use Open GL 3.1?

You may have noticed from the above screenshot that my background colors are dark. I suffer from eyestrain if I stare at a bright screen all day long. I have had mixed experiences with dark backgrounds in both Windows and Linux. They tend to work great for some applications, but not so great for others. In my last review of Kubuntu, I praised "Krita - dark," but I later discovered I could not read text on the screen in some applications. If a dark background is to be used, then the foreground text certainly must be brightened, not left dark. To change the background color, choose "Application Appearance" under "System Settings" and look under "Colors." My preference for this release is "Wonton Soup," which seems to be the most sensible setting I've tried so far, although I notice many text foregrounds are still distressingly dark. I have not yet found the killer dark background that slays all competitors, but when I do there will be a coronation in the form of a blog post dedicated to that style.


Wonton Soup provides a nice dark background

Why Do I Love KDE?

I honestly don't know why Ubuntu went their own way with Unity and why Linux Mint defaults to Gnome-derivatives Cinnamon or Mate, but I suppose the wise developers had their own reasons, and that these must be popular options for the desktop. For my part, I see no reason to bother with any other alternative to KDE except to conserve system resources for a low-spec machine, in which case XFCE to me seems like a good choice. KDE is beautiful, sophisticated, powerful and I love that I can customize every aspect about it. At first, the power to customize is double-edged. With great power comes great responsibility. The panel, in particular, remains vulnerable to getting messed up if a user is not careful. I messed up my panel in PCLinuxOS, but was able to restore to default by copying /etc/skel/.kde to my home directory. There is probably a similar failsafe in Kubuntu. At any rate, I will share the present state of my desktop after an afternoon's tinkering:


My desktop uses the tasteful default KDE wallpaper, because it is easy on the eyes

Note the application icons on the left-hand side of my panel. They are, from left to right, "Show Desktop," which simply minimizes the active window, "Dolphin," the default KDE file manager, "Thunderbird," the Mozilla email reader, "Firefox," the Mozilla web browser, "Filezilla," which I use to ftp files to and from the web sites I maintain, and "Jedit," a programmer's text editor, which I love because it has very good support of macros, a terminal icon which simply opens a terminal for command-line input, and of course, where would we be without System Settings, which is used for tweaking everything in KDE.

My clock, as you can see, displays military time, and beneath it we have the day of the week, followed by the month, and then the day, and the four-digit year. The desktop I keep empty, because I've decided I don't want my desktop cluttered anymore. I prefer to launch apps from the panel nowadays, because the panel remains visible more often than the desktop.

Networking in Kubuntu

After customizing the desktop and the installed applications, next on the agenda is introducing Kubuntu to my already existing home network, so that I can print using the network printer and share files between computers.

I do not use wireless and am not that keen on the idea for desktop users, but those users who do may share their experiences in the comments section below.

After a single file copy from my handy-dandy 2GB flash drive, Kubuntu now communicates with my wired, networked Windows and Linux boxes without any problems. New users, please understand one thing about networking in Linux. There is really only one secret that you have to know. Whenever a Linux distro is installed for the first time, there is a file called /etc/samba/smb.conf that needs to be either edited or replaced. The default is not set up to communicate with your network. It can't, because it has no way of knowing what your workgroup is called, although I think it might be a nice touch for a distro to ask, during or after installation, and maybe offer to setup some directories with network sharing. If you already have a network in place and just want to enable networking on your Linux machine and don't care too much about security, you can edit /etc/samba/smb.conf in the following way:

1. Change the workgroup to reflect your actual workgroup name.
2. If your workgroup already exists, then set wins support = no.
3. Set name resolve order = hosts wins bcast lmhosts
4. To make a directory on your Linux home directory visible and modifiable on the network, all you need is something like:
   
   [Downloads]
   path = /home/igor/Downloads
   force user = igor
   force group = igor
   read only = no
   guest ok = yes
   available = yes
   browsable = yes
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   
   

I hardly ever edit smb.conf anymore. I have used the same smb.conf on Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS and now in Kubuntu and it works without fail and gets my machine up and running on the network. This is a file that you will definitely want to backup and keep for any future installation. As a matter of fact, it is the only system-related file I ever backup. The rest, for me, are disposable.

Printing in Kubuntu

A lot of reviewers don't cover the printing angle, because I guess they never sell anything on Ebay or Amazon, but I do. The only way I can explain positive reviews of Open Suse is that the reviewers didn't use their printers. Kubuntu played nice with my network printer, as always. That is a huge reason for me to use Kubuntu. There is something to be said for ease of installation and configuration, particularly when there is no downside to those shining virtues. To configure the printer, I simply clicked on the Printer icon in "System Settings" and clicked on "Add a new Printer." It found the network printer on its own. I did not have to enter the IP address. Kubuntu detected the correct printer driver, too. How's that for service?

I did not experience any problems in Kubuntu until I went to purchase postage on Amazon for something I sold. There the packing list printed without a hitch, but the postage refused to print to my network printer, because the web site's Java application was unable to detect my printer and refused to let me select the printer myself, which I think is the product of very poor programming practice. This is not the fault of Kubuntu but rather seems to me due to a design failure on stamps.com, which I suspect is not performing any testing on Linux machines. I have printed out postage on Ebay many a time, so I do not know what the problem is with Amazon, but maybe they can ask Ebay for help in sorting out all of their program errors. I printed the postage out on my Windows machine instead. I sold a used book for $8, Amazon took a hefty $3 cut, the media mail postage cost $3, and I spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to get the label to print in Linux. After an hour's work tinkering with the printer settings, I was left with a net of $2 and a firm resolution not to sell anything on Amazon ever again, because they don't support Linux and are greedy with the fees. But Kubuntu comes out of this all right in my opinion.

Kubuntu's Long-Term Prospects

Perhaps differences in philosophy are at the root of the MIR/Wayland controversy. I like technology, but believe philosophy is more important. In reality, however much one might like to cast the issue in philosophical terms, the problem has a very practical impact. We observe the classical Linux case of reinventing the wheel. Instead of one display server to suit all distros, now a new wheel must be invented twice, by different teams of developers working presumably in isolation from one another. That is unnecessary diversion of development resources. In addition, it is by no means certain that an application developed for the Wayland environment will also work well in the MIR environment. Thus, there could very well be in the future two classes of Linux applications, those that work in Wayland and those that work in Mir. Of course, I have only touched on two outstanding and obvious points on the controversy. There are others.

Anyone reading my blog can detect dismay over the choice by Canonical to go alone with Mir rather than Wayland in the future. I don't really care about Ubuntu and their Unity, but there is a pertinent question as to how this might impact Kubuntu or for that matter Linux Mint, both of which are based on Ubuntu. I am pleased that Kubuntu's developers have declared on their web site that they will use Wayland in accordance with the same decision by KDE developers and all of the other Linux distros and desktops in the Linux community. I think if Kubuntu ever starts experiencing a lot of friction due to future changes made in the Ubuntu MIR-centric codebase, then they will simply fork from the last stable (stable from the Kubuntu/KDE point of view) and continue as they always have been, perhaps even stronger than before. I think, as they are now employed by Blue Systems, that their long-term prospects are excellent.

Where is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup on PCLinuxOS?

I was dismayed to discover that there is no Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup available in PCLinuxOS's repo. Not even a version from five years ago. Not even Linley's Crawl, which was released a decade ago. This puzzles me, because the open-source game is available in Debian/Ubuntu, ArchLinux (which has the very latest release, thanks to Jakob Gruber), and now Fedora. I'm afraid that this is going to be a deal-breaker for me, because access to the latest version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is absolutely essential and non-negotiable. With perfect timing, Kubuntu just released version 13.10.

I tried my hand at being a fledgling PCLinuxOS packager myself and managed to compile Wesnoth 1.10.7 successfully, of which the geeky side of my nature is proud, but this will probably benefit no one but myself. I like the idea of helping the community, but I'm no longer sure what the process is for getting packages accepted into the repo. My hunch is that you have to know somebody. I don't really want to get into the business of having to compile the programs I want anyway. It seems tedious to me. I like having access to a well-stocked, updated repo that is accessible from a well-designed and intuitive update manager. In PCLinuxOS, the update process has proved an annoyance, because a lot of mouse clicks are required, and I am not informed of the descriptions of the packages being updated. In the Ubuntu world, the user can at least read a little blurb about each of the packages being updated.

Although PCLinuxOS provides a stable and fast KDE environment, in part I think due to the strategic decision to remain with an older Linux kernel (causing problems for users with newer hardware), my chief concerns are about the update process and the lack of software available. Just from a few weeks of use, I have noticed a glaring omission (no version of Dungeon Crawl whatsoever, outdated version of Wesnoth) and I wonder what other software I will have to learn to live without or resort to compiling myself if I continue down this road. Based on my experience here, in the future I think it may be wise to remain on the well-trodden paths of either Arch Linux or Debian.

I Recommend Linux Mint to All Computer Users

My brother and I were praising the virtues of Linux yesterday and discussing why Microsoft remains so popular. My non-techie friends will go out of their way and pay a bundle of money just to get the latest version of Windows on their computer, which invariably they dislike. When I mention Linux, they just associate it with geeks and with technical difficulties and lack of software. I mention that one can run Firefox or Chrome on Linux, but they worry about the absence of Internet Explorer. I mention LibreOffice, and they worry over the absence of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has done a number on the general public.

I told my brother that I would feel 100% comfortable installing Linux Mint for my mother. That says a lot. My mother is the opposite of me where computers are concerned. If I feel comfortable having her run Linux Mint, it means I am satisfied Linux Mint is safe, secure and very, very easy to use. Actually I find Linux Mint easier than Windows, and why? Because Linux Mint sets all the drivers up, sets up Firefox with Flash, and does not require any anti-virus. Most of the software comes pre-installed. New software, instead of having to be downloaded and installed from, perhaps, dubious sources, is pulled in from trusted, verified, tested, scrutinized repositories, thus minimizing any chance of malware, the bane of Windows systems. I do not believe Windows is safe for use by the general public, which is using something that will, in the end, cause them heartache and misery, as their systems become compromised, hacked, slowed down, and outright broken. I see this time and time again.

For my brother, the stepping stone into the wonderful world of Linux was Clonezilla, a Live CD that is extremely useful for Windows and Linux users alike. With it, one can create a perfect clone of an operating system. Once he discovered how nice Clonezilla was and how powerful, Microsoft's spell was broken. I seized my opportunity and mailed him a DVD with Linux Mint Xfce. I know Xfce will run fast on any old system he has lying around, and Xfce is perhaps the most problem-free and problem-resistant desktop available for Linux Mint. I love Xfce because it is a wonderful compromise between barebones efficiency and user-friendliness. I also love how fast Xfce boots. When he compares Linux Mint Xfce's boot-time with Windows, I think every Linux user knows which horse wins that race.

I do not grasp the utility of the newer desktops, Mate and Cinnamon. These are defaults with Linux Mint. I believe a lot of time has been invested in developing these desktops and ironing out all of the bugs. They work all right for most purposes, but I fail to appreciate where Mate is in any way superior to Xfce. Where Cinnamon is concerned, I do not see a compelling reason to prefer it over KDE. Xfce and KDE have been around forever, and I don't see any good reason to abandon them now for a new desktop. One of the problems in Linux is that so much effort seems to be scattered shotgun-style, when it might be better to focus the energies of developers on perhaps one or at the most two desktops and a smaller number of apps. I think the central problem revolves around the human ego and the difficulty developers have in working together, sharing the credit, and sharing the decision-making, and arriving with wise and fair decisions that can be accepted by everyone in the group. Diversity of opinion causes developers to break off from a project and form their own project rather than subordinating their preferences to the team. Of course, the personality of a technical person is likely to be divergent and independent to start with, because who but a pioneer would open up his box to find out how it works and how to make it better?

I mentioned that I use PCLinuxOS for one of my desktops, but that is not a distro I would recommend to a beginner. The update process is not as smooth as Linux Mint, and I view the "MiniMe" edition as a potential pitfall for the unwary. If I were to recommend PCLinuxOS to anyone, in the same breath, I would have to warn them not to use the MiniMe version. I would also have to explain the update procedure in some detail. Linux Mint is pretty good about eliminating potential "gotchas" that can cause problems for beginners. In fact, I think that the developers invest a lot of time thinking about how they can make Linux Mint easier to use. However, what I like about PCLinuxOS is that I can compile from source in order to access new versions of software that Linux Mint doesn't have ready yet. I also like that PCLinuxOS apparently runs forever without requiring reinstallation. We will have to see about that over the long term. I also feel better about PCLinuxOS for not following Canonical's descent into Mir.

Gimp Seems Limp

I have not been impressed with the Gimp. My image modification needs are modest. Usually, all I need to do is resize or crop an image. Gimp insists upon saving images in .xcf format, which I have never heard of, and this .xcf format cannot be read by many other programs. That bizarre decision on the part of the developers prohibits use. I suspect that there is a way to teach Gimp how to use the universally accepted .jpeg format or there is a hidden option in Gimp that is not easily found, but one can find by googling "gimp jpeg." Whatever the case may be, I have zero motive to even bother learning Gimp's ways. If I ever have a heavy-duty image editing need, then I turn to Windows 7 and ACDSee, which is intuitive, fast and powerful enough for almost any need of the average user. In Linux, I have found that ImageMagick, a quirky, modest little program, works great for resizing .jpeg pictures and is very fast, too. I also strongly recommend Digikam, which is powerful and capable of handling digital cameras.

PCLinuxOS

I have been pleased with PCLinuxOS so far, although there was a bit of a learning curve for me, arriving from the universe of Linux Mint/Ubuntu. I think what I like most about PCLinuxOS is that I found what appears to me an easier and better-documented path to compiling programs from source, which means I will be able, after educating myself, to access the very latest versions of my favorite Linux programs, such as Wesnoth, something that I was not able to do in Linux Mint without a lot of trial and error. In PCLinuxOS, much of the overhead in setting up the system for building from source has been automated, meaning I can get started rapidly, whereas with any Ubuntu derivative, there is a lot of guesswork involved in determining what dependencies and compilers are needed, and I am not aware of any process that automates all of the overhead. I did manage to compile Ktorrent 2.3.1 before it was made available in Kubuntu 13.04, but I spent a couple hours tracking down its dependencies, and I had to make educated guesses in most cases, because the dependencies named on the Ktorrent web site do not match the names of the dependencies found in the Ubuntu repositories.

First Impressions of SolydK, Manjaro, and PCLinuxOS

Canonical's decision to embrace Mir and abandon X and Wayland has consequences for Ubuntu derivatives such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Linux Mint. Also, I've noticed that Canonical's development has been focused on features that mean nothing to me, such as the Unity desktop. I feel that Shuttleworth has a vision for my desktop that differs dramatically from my own. This means Ubuntu and I must part ways at some point in the future. For that reason, I've been exploring other distros in the hopes of finding one that can replace the various Ubuntu derivatives I have been using.

I evaluated Open Suse 12.3 several months ago, but Open Suse still hasn't figured out intuitive printing and a lot of other basics, which is curious. I have the impression that Open Suse doesn't really want new users. Open Suse seems to be the beta-testing sandbox for Suse Enterprise, just like Fedora is the beta-testing sandbox for Red Hat.

I tried SolydK (version "201309," released 9/23/2013) out the other day. I was impressed that it offered to install the ATI proprietary driver for me. A most auspicious beginning! Not every distro offers that kind of service, for sure. I was very pleased seeing it download ATI's fglrx.

But then when I rebooted (as recommended), I got the black screen with nothing visible. Nothing to be done there. Pressed the power button. Second time around, I chose Recovery Mode and got the command line. I typed in "StartX" to see what happens and got the "Solyd blacK" screen again with nothing visible. I can't work without seeing what I'm doing, sorry, I'm not a Jedi Knight yet, only in training. Hit the power button. I then rebooted again in Recovery Mode and uninstalled Plymouth via "sudo apt-get remove plymouth", based on suggestions in the SolydK forum for someone who also used ATI and had a similar problem. No dice. I've now rebooted four times to a "Solyd blacK" screen. I am guessing this is a problem that only affects users with ATI graphics who choose the recommended options of installing the proprietary driver and using Plymouth.

One more thing I'll note is that early in the install process, Solyd identified my hard drives as sda and sdb, and the description for both was "Model". That would deter any Windows user right away, because it is unclear which drive the system will be installed on, and clicking "Forward" might very well begin the install process for all the user knows. As a Linux veteran, I knew to boot up Partition Editor to find out what sda was, but not every user will know to do that. Yet I noticed on several SolydK reviews, there were screenshots where the drives were clearly identified during the install process, so maybe this too is a problem that just impacts my rig.

My next experiment was Manjaro Xfce 0.87.1. With dismay I noted that it was using the same installer as Solyd. Sure enough, I got the same problem with my hard drives being identified only as sda and sdb. This time around, I opted to disable Plymouth, but install the proprietary driver. Manjaro installed, and I rebooted, but Grub spat out an error and went into recovery mode. That was the end of my experiment with Manjaro.

Next, I tried PCLinuxOS, 64-bit KDE version. I first heard of PCLinuxOS and indeed about Linux in general through Piers Anthony's excellent and entertaining blog. The fact he used Linux was a big factor in persuading me to give Linux a try, especially after Microsoft dumped Vista and then Windows 8 on an unsuspecting public. I have been pleased with Linux and glad I learned about it, and I wish with all my heart that more people used Linux.

PCLinuxOS installed without any problems. As one reviewer noted, the installer could use additional refinement, such as a Back button in addition to the Forward button, and maybe a few other little things, but it worked out well for me in the end. "Unrefined" is perfectly okay, when set in contrast with "not working at all." Possibly the most important aspect about a distro is ease of installation, because without the initial install, nothing else happens, and installation forms a strong first impression.

For me, PCLinuxOS's main charm that sets it above the Ubuntu family of distros is the premise I won't have to reinstall later, a major headache for Ubuntu users. I also like how easy it was to update and to install my network printer. Setting up the printer was a trial with OpenSuse 12.3 and influenced me to abandon Open Suse. I've been pleased with PCLinuxOS so far and appreciate some of its features, such as installing everything including the kitchen sink, which annoys some reviewers but pleases me. I can easily uninstall what I don't like, and I think it is helpful to have the apps there to play with, because otherwise I might never find them on my own. I thought the option for changing the wallpaper could have been more intuitive--I had to google for the solution--but that's a minor demerit.

The update procedure for PCLinuxOS is a bit cumbersome, although in my brief experience, it has worked without error. The user is notified about updates by an exclamation mark in the taskbar. Contrary to expectations, clicking on this does nothing. However, by right-clicking on the icon, a menu pops up with several options, none of which read "Install Updates." I gave up at this point and researched online in order to learn how to update PCLinuxOS. The procedure is as follows. After right-clicking the red exclamation mark icon, one selects the option, "Run Synaptic," and enters the administrative password for root access. Once in Synaptic, one clicks the "Refresh" button to refresh the data. After that, one clicks the "Mark Available Updates" button, followed by "Apply." In total, several clicks are needed, with delays following each one. I wish the update process were as seamless as that of Linux Mint's wonderful Update Manager. Every Linux distro tends to reinvent the wheel, but not all of their wheels roll equally well. Of greater concern, I did not notice any descriptions of the updates. Usually, Ubuntu derivatives offer at least a sentence or two of description about the packages being updated and their function, which can help the user troubleshoot any future problems. However, I weigh this inconvenience against the much larger inconvenience posed by new releases in Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derivatives such as Linux Mint, which require the user to completely reinstall the operating system and reconfigure everything at the cost of several hours' work.

Uninstalling applications in PCLinuxOS has been unintuitive as well. When I tried to uninstall KFloppy, Synaptic informed me that I would also be uninstalling an important kde library used by many other applications, which surprised me. This is not behavior that one might find in Linux Mint. I clicked OK anyway, just to see what would happen. I expected various applications to break. What actually happened was nothing at all. After uninstalling KFloppy, Kfloppy was still there in the menu. I clicked on it, and it loaded just like before. My conclusion is that uninstalling is buggy in PCLinuxOS. There is a possibility that it works sometimes, but it certainly does not work all of the time.

I was disappointed to find that all of the energy-saving features activate during video playback in VLC, an annoying bug that was also present in several versions of Linux Mint. I suppose distro developers never watch videos and only read books, which is commendable, I suppose, depending upon the nature of the books they read. My solution to this bug has been to disable all of the energy-saving features, which means that PCLinuxOS costs more to run than any other operating system, including Windows. I have read that Caffeine is one potential solution to the problem, but if this is the only solution, then I think it should be installed by default.

In conclusion, I think that PCLinuxOS deserves to be higher on the DistroWatch list than it is at present. In general, it is a solid, easy-to-use distribution, which is what I want and expect from a distro. As Canonical's strategic decisions continue to impact Ubuntu-based derivatives, I think more and more people are going to migrate over to other distros in the years to come.

Ah, rekonq!

For months, I have been experiencing an annoying problem with my laptop. I have Linux Mint 14 KDE installed on it. I'm a big fan of Ubuntu derivatives, because I've experienced what the competition has to offer. I only have a 1.8ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs RAM on this old laptop, but am able to do just about everything through the power of KDE. Some people say KDE is too bloated and slow, but I have not found this to be the case, with one exception. Blogger (this blog) does not like my laptop. I can read a post, usually. But if I try to write a post on my blog, then Firefox bogs down and eventually the system dies. Yes, the dreaded system crash where the computer is no longer responsive. Argh! What to do?

For a couple weeks now, I've been casting about for a replacement Linux distro. I thought maybe Open Suse, Mageia, PCLinuxOS, Manjaro, and the list goes on. And on. And on. A glance at Distro Watch boggles the mind. Why so many distros? Personally, I think many should merge, pool their talents rather than reinventing the wheel all the time. But that's another issue.

In the end, I decided I was looking at the problem the wrong way. The issue is not really with Linux Mint 14 or KDE. Granted, KDE is a little bit slower, especially during boot-time--it takes my slow laptop over a minute to boot. But that's no big deal. Once it's booted, everything is fine and dandy, again with the exception of Firefox on Blogger. Granted, my Firefox includes some heavy-duty add-ons, such as Flash, but I think that Blogger itself, which is run by Google, has some kind of memory-eating bug. Writing text on a blog almost completely devoid of graphics should not eat up the processor, not unless Google is doing about fifty things it shouldn't be doing. In my opinion, Google is the culprit here, not Firefox nor any of my add-ons. Probably Google wants to crash Firefox, to make their product Chrome look better.

Someone will have to pry this laptop from my cold, dead hands before Google Chrome gets installed on it. My solution, which I am verifying with this post, was to install rekonq, the forgotten web browser offered by KDE as a fast alternative to Firefox, Konqueror, et al. Now I can blog with no problem. Rekonq is easy to use and as fast as I want it to be. I am particularly glad that I can stay with Linux Mint KDE and not go through the pain of installing a brand new distro.

My only other beef with Ubuntu-derivatives centers around privacy concerns, but since I'm not a big shot or a secret agent, I don't think anybody is going to be too terribly interested in little old me. But definitely it is the case that Canonical has been getting too big for their britches. Putting ads on the freaking desktop is cheeky and makes me want to dump Ubuntu and try another distro. At the same time, I don't want to encounter a mountain of gotchas by using a distro that is not ready for prime time. There are a lot of distros listed on Distro Watch that are not ready for prime time. I sure hope that the other distro developers wake up and smell the coffee at long last. I don't see the reason that there are hundreds of distros hopping around, when they really need to merge and pool their efforts into solving problems. There is something to be said for teamwork and for not reinventing the wheel all the time.

Fixing a Broken Shutdown Shortcut

Kubuntu 13.04 offered some updates today that broke my shutdown shortcut. After a bit of poking around and trying various things, I found that this syntax fixes the problem:

sudo chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown

I don't notice any improvements from the updates. Devs, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And here's my corollary to that general rule: if you can't help yourself from fixin' what ain't broke, then don't break it.

At least I was able to fix their fix.

Copying Large Numbers of Files Over a Network in Linux

Linux and Window desktops are ill-suited to copying thousands or millions of files over a network. I don't know why. It's a weak spot in all desktop GUI's. I know that KDE's file manager, Dolphin, does nothing but spin its wheels when I try to copy much over a thousand files. I think KDE goes crazy just at the thought of so many files. You expect me to do all that work? For what you're paying me? Hmph! I have found that the easiest way to copy files over a network is to archive them into a single file and then copy that single file across.

Linux? I Don't Even Know What That Is

I told one of my clients today that I use Linux, and they replied, "I don't even know what that is." My client was sick of Windows 8 and wanted to dial back to Windows 7, so without thinking twice, she bought a copy from a local retail store. Of course, Microsoft wins; they sold her both Windows 8 and Windows 7, which makes for quite an expensive operating system--about $150, all told. Microsoft is being rewarded for making a turkey out of Windows 8.

In my view, she'd be better off with Linux, but how can I suggest a thing she never even heard of? Linux deserves better name recognition, but what can be done? One can point out that most of the web sites in the world run on Linux, and that mobile devices often use Linux, but that is not quite as apparent as the brand one sees on almost every laptop or desktop.

What deters me from recommending Linux even more is that mainstream Linux distros have little issues, and Linux gurus or even Linux journeymen are thin on the ground. She can't ask her friend, neighbor or nephew for help with a Linux system. That's quite a disadvantage.

Could I in good conscience recommend Kubuntu? Nope. My Kubuntu 13.04 system running KDE 4.10.3 is now booting up with two blankscrn.kss windows for no apparent reason. Do I really want her calling me on the phone asking what is wrong with Kubuntu and how did it get infected by a virus? Then there was the problem I wrestled with where Kubuntu dialed the clock back three hours. I had to use the command line to fix that problem and some pretty arcane syntax, too.

Could I recommend Open Suse 12.3? Nope. Open Suse won't install a printer for anybody but a bonafide geek. Open Suse will give an error message the minute she tries connecting to the Internet. Open Suse will give an error message on her very first update after installation, because even after all these years, the devs haven't learned to remove the dvd from the repository list. I wouldn't recommend Open Suse to anybody.

The only Linux distro I'd feel safe recommending to a low-tech individual would be Linux Mint Xfce or Cinnamon, but there again, Linux users are thin on the ground, so anybody who ventures into the Linux world has to be comfortable browsing and researching online forums and wikis in order to resolve the occasional unforeseen and the unexpected. I am comfortable and I think extremely good at performing online research, but the average user is not. The average user wants to speak to somebody on the phone or better yet, ask someone in person. At least with Windows, everybody and their brother knows a little something and the herd can help each other cope with Windows' eccentricities.

No Blog Writer in Linux

Today with my Muon Software Center, I explored Blog Writers in the Linux world. The first one I tried is apparently the flagship blog writer for KDE, Blogilo. Unfortunately development appears to have ended in 2010 from what I observed in the About window. Blogilo doesn't have any help screens despite having help buttons, and won't auto-config Blogger, instead reporting error messages that don't make a whole lot of sense. If Blogilo's devs haven't figured out the auto-config or help screens, but left these options in the program anyway, then maybe they haven't figured out how to keep the password safe either. I wonder whether Blogilo would save me any time at all over writing posts directly in Blogger. I suspect not.

The other apps available seem no better than Blogger itself from what I read in the reviews section on Muon. Come to think of it, using Blogger isn't half bad. The only thing I don't like about it is that Blogger sometimes will erase a line at random. I think this is some kind of bug either in Firefox or KDE. I'm not sure, but I can restore the missing line by highlighting the text, so it is not a severe bug. This problem remains in KDE 4.10.3 and cropped up while I was writing this post. I tried to take a snapshot of the window, but when Ksnapshot popped up, the text was corrected. The bug seems to me to be related to the display driver. Having an AMD/ATI kludge may be the reason I have this issue. AMD/ATI does not provide decent support to the Linux world, which is why I only buy Intel nowadays.

Kool! KDE 4.10.3 Ready for Kubuntu

Kubuntu has sorted KDE 4.10.3 and released it for all of Kubuntopia, to include Linux Minties, one would assume, although their mileage may vary.

I admit to having been a trifle impatient, but you know what? I'm actually glad Kubuntu waited until they sorted everything out. Rush to release, the developer's version of the classical end user mental disorder upgradeitis, just about kills a KDE system every time. I have learned to prefer taking things slooooooow. Not Debian-slow, as in kernel version 3.2, but slow-er at any rate.

After upgrading and rebooting, my Kubuntu 13.04 greeted me with not one, but four blankscrn.kss windows. As I suspected, a second reboot eliminated the problem. I'm going to upgrade my Linux Mint 14 KDE laptop next. Hm--no updates available for Quantal tonight. Perhaps they found some problems with that.

Dear Kubuntu Developers

Dear Kubuntu Developers, if you're going to open a document in read-only mode, don't open it at all. Give an error message explaining about your lack of expertise in creating a desktop environment and suggest that the user delete Kubuntu from the system and install Linux Mint in its place. There's no pointing opening a document in read-only mode. It's a practical joke even to give the option at all. I can't count how many moments I've wasted watching LibreOffice open, only to find that I can't modify a document.

One thing I've decided is that Linux Mint 15 will be the death knell of my Kubuntu install. I'm going to wipe the drive clean of Kubuntu. I don't think the developers actually use the system. They just stick their names on the distro as a bragging point on their resume. If they used the system for more than a day, they would find all these gotcha's that I have found, and they wouldn't put up with it.

I have mixed feelings complaining about a free OS like Kubuntu. On the one hand, I didn't pay anything for it, so do I have the right to complain? With Windows, I have no such compunction, because I paid for Windows, so clearly I have a right to complain about it. I also voted in the Presidential election and every other election, so I feel like I have a right to complain about the President and other elected officials. I suppose in the case of Kubuntu, my complaint is more along the lines of disenchantment and disappointment. I want a Linux-based OS that I can recommend to friends and family. Kubuntu was just so close to being that magic bullet. But when odd screens pop up at boot-time called blankscrn.kss, what is that? That's a support call, that's what that is, and a very confused end user who will wonder how he got infected by a virus. That's how users think the world over--anything amiss is a computer virus. Then they start thinking they can't trust the OS and need to move back to Windows. The other thing about Kubuntu is that it opens documents in read-only mode. That will be a very lengthy support call, and everybody who adopts the OS is going to be asking why does Kubuntu open the document in read-only mode. The reason is Kubuntu is stupid. That's the only reason. When a user double-clicks on a file to open it in LibreOffice, the reason ninety-nine times out of a hundred is that he wants to make a little change. Kubuntu is making the grand assumption that people only want to read files. They never change files. That's a pretty arrogant assumption and an incorrect one, too. The actual result is that users are going to keep using Windows and not try Kubuntu for more than two hours. Users don't want to learn about sudo in order to get work done. They want a GUI that works the first time. If Linux wants the user to enter a password, fine, but at least offer the option to open as root. I think that's a good compromise between paranoid security and usability. And yes, I know there are add-ons available for Dolphin that will do this, but the vanilla install of Kubuntu does not, and that's another support call for every Kubuntu install that is ever used by a friend or family member.

An operating system should be what? An operating system should be elementary to understand and easy to use. That is rule #1. The second rule is to re-read the first rule to make sure it is not forgotten, because it is awfully important. If something is hairy and complicated, geeks might use it, but most people won't. I want an OS that I can recommend to most people, like my mother and my non-techie friends, not one that I have to modify to make usable.

May 16, 2013 Update:

One of Kubuntu's updates apparently fixed the blankscrn.kss issue. Today, the buggy windows didn't pop up. I don't know why, but that's nice, at any rate. My thinking now is I might weather the storm, stick with Kubuntu, and avoid the pain of installing a different distro.

Wesnoth 1.10.6 - Northern Rebirth - Stolen Gold - Bug - Can't Win

In Wesnoth's "Northern Rebirth" scenario, "Stolen Gold," the scenario objectives have a bug in the code. The player is supposed to win by resisting until turn 37. Instead, on turn 37, the player is defeated, contrary to the scenario objectives, which clearly state that only the death of the three unique commanders can cause defeat. I gave up on "Northern Rebirth," because there's no defeating the vast troll hordes without many hundreds of gold in one's purse, and mine only had about 200 g.p.

So in Wesnoth Solitary, I am stymied by trolls of one variety, and in Wesnoth Multiplayer, trolls of quite a different kind.

I suppose it's just about time for me to capitalize on having Kubuntu 13.04 by installing the development version of Wesnoth. It wouldn't work on Linux Mint 14, but I have a feeling that it will work on Kubuntu 13.04.

Wesnoth seems about the best game around for Linux. I've tried plenty of others, but Wesnoth is really fantastic. It exceeds expectations for a free open source game. In many ways I like Wesnoth better than Crawl. For one thing, Crawl is handicapped by a design flaw that the developers refuse to remedy--the game restarts at ground zero after a character's death. I coded a batch file to circumvent this undesirable behavior. Wesnoth's developers wisely opted not to go that route. They have an auto-save feature which saves the player a lot of time and trouble and compensates for the inevitable unfairness and arbitrary nature of the game. The point of a game is of course to have fun.

Does KDE Test at All?

From the number of problems I've noticed in my Kubuntu install, I'm starting to wonder whether KDE tests their stuff before releasing it. Maybe the end user is considered to be the tester? When Linux Mint 15 gets released, I think I'm going to give Xfce or Cinnamon a try and see whether it can boot up clean. Every boot, Kubuntu 13.04 gives me two empty blnkscrn.kss windows and a buggy error report on Thunderbird. I don't think KDE is ready for prime time yet. Certainly Xfce seems more stable than KDE and less error-prone.

Linux Kernel 3.8 Working with S/PDIF

Last time that I updated my htpc's Linux kernel to 3.8+, S/PDIF fell silent. I had to fall back to Linux kernel 3.7.10, and I wrote about the cliff between 3.7.10 and 3.8. After 3.7.10, silence.

Reading the notes on alsa dev, it was implied that only in systems with HDMI, the new 3.8+ kernel reserved a slot for HDMI, leaving none available for S/PDIF. That suggested to me that if I disabled HDMI in the BIOS, then my S/PDIF would work, even without further modifications to the system. Tonight I confirmed my hunch. Since my htpc does not use HDMI, disabling it was not a problem. I upgraded the kernel in Linux Mint Nadia Xfce to 3.8.11, rebooted, and played a video to test the sound. No problem.

Kudos for Kubuntu 13.04

Getting Kubuntu

I've been working on my spiffy new Kubuntu 13.04 system, which replaced the older Linux Mint Nadia KDE. Kubuntu was released April 25th, 2013. I recommend torrenting any large file like the Kubuntu .ISO, because by torrenting, one is assured of receiving a valid file without errors, and there is no need for comparing MD5 checksums. I used Ktorrent to download Kubuntu, and K3b to burn the install DVD. I installed Kubuntu on my desktop, which has an ASUS E35M1-M motherboard with a sluggish AMD/ATI E350 apu and four gigs of RAM installed, the standard ration nowadays, a cool and quiet Western Digital 1.5 tb Green drive, and an awesome Acer X223w widescreen LCD monitor.

I'm old school when it comes to distros. Unlike some reviewers, I don't play around with virtual machines or live CD or a different partition of the drive. I go whole hog--format the drive to ext4 and let Kubuntu have every last byte. Having a couple of drives to play around with helps. At all times, I have one to three floaters that aren't connected to any system. Their mission in life is to serve as backups. I think this is the best way to go about things, especially with drives so cheap these days. There isn't much reason to be cheap on hard drives, when one weighs their trivial cost against the hassle involved in losing a Windows install or a multimedia library.

Kubuntu 13.04 is not any worse than Kubuntu 12.10, and I think the developers have done a few things better. I was pleasantly surprised that Wesnoth was indeed updated in the repositories to the current stable version of 1.10.6, as that was my main motivation for upgrading in the first place, along with the latest Ktorrent, 2.3.1, which I also found. Very good, Kubuntu! New versions of all the apps is reason enough to upgrade. Also, KDE 4.10.2 is certainly better than 4.9.5, although clicking on a petty option or two in the settings menu, like syncing with the internet time server, triggers an error report, an unpleasantness I first observed in Open Suse 12.3, but it is nothing serious in my opinion, because of course one can avoid clicking on these things. An avoidable bug that does not cause hardship is not a big deal. When I say "error report," I mean just that. KDE does not crash--one merely gets a popup with an error message, clicks "OK" and that's that.

April 28, 2013 Update:

The time bug seems more severe, at least on my system, than it at first appeared. For two days now, my system has been displaying a time four hours in advance of real time. Originally, I selected Eastern Time / New York, which usually works for me, but apparently New York time is based in a Universe four hours ahead of my Universe. I spent about an hour playing around with KDE's settings trying to fix this, because correct time is important. After many reboots, I concluded that New York time actually is broken, although whether this issue will impact all Kubuntu users I can't say, because this problem may be fall-out related to the error reports I mentioned above. Once I changed the time zone to Louisville, Kentucky Eastern Time, all was well.


The New York time zone was four hours ahead of New York time. If you live on the East Coast of the U.S. or at any rate in a region that subscribes to Eastern Time, I recommend selecting Louisville, KY as your time zone rather than New York.

April 30, 2013 Update: The Clock is Still Broken

Once again, the time has regressed to being four hours ahead of local time. I thought this problem was fixed, but apparently not. My display has changed, too. Instead of displaying only the date, it now displays the date followed by "Local."

May 2, 2013 Update: Fifoxtasy's Fix

Fifoxtasy left a comment with a working solution to this problem. I confirmed that the time remains fixed even after a power down and cold start. If your system is impacted by this problem, read on. Otherwise, count yourself among the fortunate ones and enjoy an otherwise superb KDE 4.10.2 experience.

Open a terminal and type the following commands:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org
cat /etc/timezone

The last command merely displays the contents of /etc/timezone. If the time zone noted there isn't right, edit this file via sudo kate /etc/timezone, thus bypassing the buggy GUI. Fifoxtasy also suggests a graphical way of changing the time zone: "KDE's systemsettings didn't let me change anything, but when running as root via kdesu systemsettings, I could at least change the timezone."

I'm pleased that the time is fixed, because I was thinking about replacing Kubuntu with something else. Time is important. I'm sure it's not on the short list of cool things developers want to work on, but to the end user, a computer that can't tell time is a poor old thing. Here is a link to Fifoxtasy's Blog.

Despite this initial teething pain, I'm still a fan of KDE and of Kubuntu, for three main reasons: Dolphin, Ktorrent and K3b can't be beat; KDE offers the best desktop experience under the Sun; and KDE is free, so morally I should have to sweat a little to make things work, or else I'd be witness to a violation of Heinlein's TANSTAAFL principle, which states there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Defiance of such a fundamental law of the Universe might result in the disintegration of the bonds that hold molecules together, ending reality as we know it.

Tweaking, Uninstalling and Installing

Do you find that the mouse pointer is far too slow in KDE? I do. First thing I do in KDE is change the pointer acceleration from 2.0 to 12.0 and dial the Drag Start Time down to zero (look under Input Devices | Mouse in System Settings). As with Linux Mint KDE and Open Suse 12.3, I spent the better part of a day darkening the background and replacing default KDE apps such as Kmail, Kwallet, and so on with Thunderbird, Firefox, and VLC, and installing Jedit, which I consider absolutely essential for its macro support. I would never have a system without Jedit, which I find similar to Notepad++ in Windows. Amarok may be the best thing since sliced bread, but I don't think Amarok plays local files as well as VLC, and I don't need Amarok's newfangled features, thank you very much. Rekonq might actually be a faster browser than Firefox for all I know, but I am a Firefox diehard because of Firefox's universe of add-ons. Firefox is the most extensible, the most powerful browser. I chose KDE because of Dolphin, K3b, and Ktorrent, all great programs in the KDE universe and to my knowledge without equal in the Linux world. KDE's settings menu is also great, allowing me to customize just about every aspect of the desktop.

Firefox Sync did not work the way I expected it to do for some as yet undetermined reason, and I can't rule out Ubuntu's little tweaks to Firefox at this stage. I decided not to troubleshoot the problem, but rather to start Firefox afresh, because I've been experiencing a strange problem on Blogger where my text sometimes disappears on me, so I thought a fresh start might not be such a bad thing.

Kubuntu's biggest difference with Linux Mint KDE may be the Muon Package Manager. I find it has a betaish quality at present. Information displayed to the user is not always accurate. For instance, the Install button remains even after an application is installed. Also, I experienced a few error messages with Muon, the precise nature of which I forget now, but I do not think Muon is as reliable as Synaptic Package Manager. However, certainly Muon has more features, and bottomline, it works. I never found a case where Muon did not install (or uninstall) a program as told.

I noticed today that Linux Mint has the firewall icon accessible in System Settings | Network and Connectivity, but Kubuntu doesn't. I prefer Linux Mint's accessible firewall. I don't know why I should have to resort to the command line in Kubuntu in order to configure my firewall. Also present in Linux Mint's System Settings, but not in Kubuntu's, is the Partition Manager, found under the System Administration header. Little touches like that propelled Linux Mint up to #1 in Distro Watch.

KDE 4.10.2's default wallpaper seems pretty good, so I didn't change it, unlike last time. I wouldn't say the wallpaper is better than OpenSuse 12.3's, because it's not. Open Suse 12.3 has the best wallpaper of any Linux distro ever made in all of history, but that's faint praise for a distro.

Kubuntu Introduces More Color Schemes

I love dark backgrounds so much that I coded dark style sheets for my favorite news sites. Color schemes in Kubuntu 13.04 are much improved, especially for the dark side:


Kubuntu 13.04 has six new color schemes, including new dark backgrounds. My choice was Krita - dark.

Comparing my Kubuntu 13.04 desktop side-by-side with my Linux Mint Nadia KDE laptop with backported KDE 4.10.2, I find that Kubuntu 13.04 has six flavors of Krita, a superb scheme with competent dark flavors, whereas Linux Mint doesn't. For dark background fans, Linux Mint offers only Obsidian Coast and Zion (Reversed) schemes, which render some text invisible due to an unresolved black-on-black problem. What I wound up doing in Linux Mint Nadia was spending an hour customizing the Oxygen scheme to be what Krita - dark is out of the box. However, I expect Linux Mint 15 KDE, when released, will also have Krita. The reason Linux Mint Nadia didn't get Krita probably has to do with its KDE 4.9.x origin; backporting KDE 4.10.2 wasn't sufficient to install Krita.

Krita - dark is reason enough to prefer Kubuntu 13.04 above any operating system that does not have it.

Here's a shot of my Kubuntu 13.04 desktop as of now:

Customizing Kubuntu 13.04

There are a couple finishing touches I like to perform on every KDE system I install. One is to adjust the time and date in the lower right hand corner so that it supplies something useful to me. I want military time, none of this PM and AM nonsense. I also want the day of the week, followed by the month, the day of the month, and the year. Right now, all of that is in a tiny font, and I haven't yet found the option to increase the size to something more readable. I do not understand why the KDE developers do not display the date by default, because time has no meaning without a date.

April 29, 2013 Update:

The font parameters, including size, for the taskbar's time and date are found in System Settings | Application Appearance | Fonts, as shown here:


The font used for the time and date is not the taskbar font, but the small font. I think that the time and date is so important that it should have a font that is named "time and date", and that it should be in a class by itself. By increasing the small font from 9 to 12, I produced a legible time and date that can be read at a glance. I increased the taskbar font as well while I was at it. My desktop has 1680 x 1050 resolution, so there is no reason to use tiny fonts.

Adding an Off Button

The other innovation I like to add is an off button, which really is a no-brainer. Every OS should have one. To install an off button in KDE, open Konsole and enter the following command:

sudo chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown

Then create a new link on your desktop called "Off" and copy from the following screenshot:


The "application" being loaded is actually just a command-line program, shutdown.

The Language Barrier

While editing this post in Blogger, I notice that Firefox underlines many words as being misspelled because they deviate from the Commonwealth spelling. I am not sure whether this is related to Kubuntu's installation of language packs. All Ubuntu distros and even Linux Mint install the South African language pack by default, and Kubuntu also installs the GB language pack. I disabled these and installed the U.S. language pack, but the spellchecker remains foreign, underlining common words like "favorite" and "color" because they lack a superfluous vowel.


Unfortunately, adding the U.S. language pack does not fix Firefox's broken spellchecker.

Another KDE Gem: Okular

Unfortunately, for some reason, Krita was the default app in Firefox to print out .pdf files, which cost me about an hour one morning, because whatever its other merits, Krita does not print .pdf documents at the proper scale by default, and I was not in the mood to learn how to use a program I have never used before. Sometimes one simply needs to get things done.

I use my printer for one main purpose, to print out postage either from Ebay or directly from the United States Postal Service's web site. By doing so, one receives a discount of ~ 16%, saves fuel and time, and enjoys the convenience of staying at home. The USPS delivers online postage in .pdf format. In Linux, the application that works best for printing .pdf files is Okular, and it is extremely important that all Linux operating systems default to Okular for .pdf files, because to my knowledge, there is no better app than Okular for viewing and printing .pdf. I have used Okular extensively not just for printing but for searching through long and hairy .pdf files. Okular has proven extremely fast and has a very intuitive interface. Windows does not have a better app for searching .pdf files. Linux has the best app, and it is Okular. People that read .pdf files on a regular basis should erase Windows and install Linux in order to access Okular.

Ensure that Okular is the only app for viewing .pdf files in KDE:



I also advise adjusting the application preference in Firefox itself:

Esoteric Weirdness

Of interest only to fellow geeks, I triggered weird behavior in Kubuntu 13.04, booting up to this screen:



I cannot call this behavior a bug, because intuition led me to suspect my recent changes to fstab were the culprit, as indeed they were. I have gotten into the habit of optimizing every linux distro's fstab in the following manner:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=blahblah / ext4 errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=blahblah none swap sw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=2G,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /var/lock tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=384M,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /var/run tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=1G,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

I feel that Linux systems, by default, access the hard drive for rather insignificant reasons and behave as though we were still living in a world where memory was measured in kilo- rather than giga- bytes. I have four gigs in my system and I expect it to be used. Let's not run the hard drive ragged, because the hard drive is the bottleneck.

Kubuntu 13.04 does not like the last two lines above, the ones that change /var/lock and /var/run to tmpfs. Commenting out those lines eliminated the weird startup problem. I'm not alone in tmpfs'ing /var/lock and /var/run--I read about this in the ArchLinux wiki--but it is far from mainstream practice. I will never do so again, now that the potential for problems is clear. I discovered through further experimentation that the tmpfs for /tmp causes no problem, I think because it is closer to being mainstream practice now, what with Fedora having adopted the practice a version ago or so.

Conclusion: Kubuntu 13.04 is for Keeps

I am sticking with Kubuntu 13.04 for the foreseeable future on my desktop. It is better than Open Suse 12.3 because I know, with any Debian derivative, that printing will be a no-brainer, as printing should be in 2013, for all love. Kubuntu works out of the box with my wired network, requiring zero adjustments. And Kubuntu does not enroll the install dvd into the library of repositories like Open Suse does. Although I picked at a few things with Muon's package management, Muon seems better than Open Suse's package management, which gives really hairy and I think frequent error messages. Open Suse's biggest problem is that it does not have Debian behind it. Its second biggest problem is that they are preaching to the choir, to users that have used Suse since back in the day, and don't seem very interested in recruiting new users by making the system easier to use.

Comparing Kubuntu 13.04 with Linux Mint 12.10 KDE doesn't seem quite fair, because Linux Mint only has an older version available at present, but I will say that I didn't notice the lack of Mint. I don't miss the Mint menu, and I feel like I can work with Muon Package Manager. Mint always messes around with the Firefox search box, too, so using Kubuntu saved me about five or ten minutes not having to jump through hurdles to revert the search box to Google. I like the right-click options that Linux Mint adds to the file manager, the "Root Actions," which are missing in Kubuntu. Another way that Mint saves the end user time is that the devs are kind enough to install Firefox, VLC and the firewall by default, but like Kubuntu, Linux Mint KDE still has the Kmail and Kwallet monsters lurking in the shadows. In the past, I did not have a good experience with Kwallet. For some odd reason, it forced me to enter my email password each and every time that I loaded Kmail. The reason that I use a mail reader in the first place is that I do not want to enter my password. Tweaking Kwallet's or Kmail's settings didn't help. My solution was to permanently uninstall Kmail and Kwallet, and that is the first thing I do every time I install any KDE distro. Overall, I would say that Kubuntu 13.04 is comparable to Linux Mint KDE, and given a choice between the two, I'd probably choose Kubuntu, because it is released sooner and does not mess around with the Firefox search box. But the final verdict remains to be seen, because Linux Mint 15 KDE should be released later in 2013.

Kubuntu 13.04

With anticipation, I have been monitoring Distro Watch on a daily an hourly basis, awaiting the release of Ubuntu 13.04, and specifically its handsomer brother, Kubuntu 13.04, which has the elegant KDE desktop. No Gnome for me, thank you very much. I'll pass on Unity, as well. I suspect the lion's share of Ubuntu development since 12.10 has been squandered on Unity, which means nothing to me, but I have other reasons to want 13.04.

The latest development version of Wesnoth, my favorite game nowadays, won't run on my Linux Mint Nadia KDE without segfaulting, and nobody seems to know why. I expect Kubuntu 13.04 will be more compatible with the development version of the game. Also, although I've upgraded KDE to 4.10.2 on my desktop, various KDE apps remain at old versions, such as Ktorrent, and I expect 13.04 to have all the latest versions. If it doesn't have Ktorrent 2.3.1 by now, then that will be a serious demerit indeed. I'm torrenting the 64-bit version of Kubuntu 13.04 right now and aim to install it today.

My desktop is the only computer I plan to upgrade at this time. My laptop works great with Linux Mint Nadia KDE, and I compiled Ktorrent 2.3.1 myself from source and installed KDE 4.10.2 without a hitch, so there is no rationale in favor of overwriting such a perfect install with anything else. My htpc runs Linux Mint Nadia Xfce, which I've upgraded to Xfce 4.10.2 (weird how Xfce and KDE share the same version numbers). It runs well too, and I don't plan to touch it other than to install Linux kernel 3.9 when it comes out. I may even wait until a later edition of kernel 3.9, because it is rather cumbersome upgrading the kernel in a ubuntu-based distro--command-line all the way and much wgetting.

Clonezilla Works With Windows 7

I used Clonezilla again last night to clone my Windows 7 hard drive. It is prudent to keep a clone of Windows, because that operating system takes an enormous amount of time to install and configure. A conservative estimate would be twenty hours in total. I don't want to lose another twenty hours due to hard drive failure or malware infection, so Clonezilla gave me peace of mind by creating a bootable backup. There is no cloning feature built-in to Windows 7, and the backup feature I think is a joke. I don't work with backups, I work with clones. A clone is a byte-for-byte copy of a hard drive. If a drive won't boot, it's not a clone. A clone can be popped right into a computer with a failing hard drive and make it whole again in less than one minute. A clone is what the end user wants and needs. The end user is always right.

I doubt whether a clone could be used long-term to pirate Windows 7, because the operating system binds itself to the motherboard and cpu. Also, Windows phones home on a regular basis to confer with Microsoft headquarters and tell if the user is doing something naughty. My interest is not in piracy, because quite frankly I don't want Windows on any of my other computers--yuck, what a thought. I just need it on one computer to run two specific applications that are not available in Linux, ACDSee and Call Clerk. All the other computers are going to be running a flavor of Linux Mint Nadia, either KDE or Xfce.

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a free Linux-based operating system contained entirely on a single live CD. It is self-configuring and does not require installation to a hard drive. Its purpose in life is to clone or image hard drives or partitions.

Clonezilla offers a Debian version and a Ubuntu version. I recommend the Ubuntu version of Clonezilla because of its more recent kernel, which implies better support for modern hardware. Both versions suffered display corruption on my system, but the corruption in the Ubuntu version was less severe, affecting only the initial, temporary startup screens rather than the important screen where the cloning process takes place.

Using the versatile Clonezilla isn't a no-brainer by any means, but the developers have made an effort to simplify what can be a fiendishly complicated task, cloning (or imaging) a hard drive or partition, and they have inserted multiple safeguards that protect data. Therefore I use and recommend Clonezilla for users of both Windows and Linux.

Although Clonezilla is a Linux distro, that doesn't signify; it can read a Windows NTFS drive with ease, as can all modern Linux distros. Windows can only read Windows drives, which is similar to the limitation where Windows can only network with other Windows systems and its many other severe and far-reaching limitations, bugs and security holes. At least Windows knows how to access more than 3.5 gigs of RAM now. That's nice. Maybe by Windows 50, Microsoft will figure out home networking with non-Windows computers.

Clonezilla is easiest to use when cloning a drive to a larger or same-sized hard drive, but today I cloned a 2.0tb drive to a 1.5tb drive, which is not quite as easy. For one thing, Clonezilla will not perform a direct drive-to-drive clone if the source drive is larger than the target, even if the data on the source would easily fit on the target drive. After many failed experiments, what finally worked for me was using Gparted (another Linux distro on CD) to shrink the largest partition on my 2.0tb drive by over .5tb to let it fit on the 1.5tb drive. Then I used Clonezilla to clone each of the two partitions on the 2.0tb drive, the tiny root partition and the large /home partition. I selected "device to device clone," "Beginner," accepted all the defaults, and everything worked out well. In the end, I had a bootable, perfect clone of my Linux Mint Nadia KDE drive and all its data.

Thank you, Gparted and Clonezilla!

Cloning a Windows 7 drive is more complicated, because Microsoft spends all its development dollars on making things more complicated for the end user. I discovered through trial and error that Clonezilla must be booted in UEFI mode in order to clone my Windows 7 drive. Otherwise, Clonezilla will not be able to properly read the drives.