Just a quick note. I discovered that the Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) version of sun-java6 provided in one of their updates is a higher version than the base version provided in Karmic (9.10). This produces installation errors if you try to add any additional Java packages.
The solution is to remove sun-java6 and its associated components and reinstall (You can also downgrade in Synaptic by using "force version" and selecting the Karmic version).
KDE 4.4 Beta 1 has been released, and the talk of the town is the new “tabbed windows” feature. They completely slipped this one past me. I didn’t even know anyone was working on it. Anyway, it is exactly what the name implies: the ability to have multiple windows all tabbed in one window. You can even drag one window onto another window’s row of tabs.
As a writer, I have long wished for tabbed word processing (outside of Google Docs), and now that will be possible with this KWin feature.
Since its creation, over fifteen years ago, free software and open source advocates have longed for the day when masses of people around the world would adopt GNU/Linux or Linux (depending on who you ask). There is little doubt that the past five years have seen tremendous strides in Linux desktop adoption.
Some hardware vendors, such as Dell, now sell Linux desktop computers, although you have to page through their online catalog to find it, and their promotion of it seems spotty at best. The netbook craze has also seen the rise of several Linux offerings, but even the company that arguably started the netbook craze with its Eee PCs, Asus, still proudly displays “Better with Windows” on their website.
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Digikam is a free and open source photo management software package for KDE. Many KDE-based Linux distributions either come with Digikam installed or have it available in their repositories. With Digikam, you can import photos from your digital camera or flash memory, organize and tag them, rate them, edit them, and export them to various services or custom galleries.
Three popular services that Digikam can handle are Flickr, PicasaWeb, and Facebook. The first two are social photo sites, and the last is a social networking site. All three support photo plugins used by Digikam. This makes uploading photos quick, easy, and painless.
I am operating under the assumption that you already have accounts on the services you want to use. If not, you will need to register and activate whichever accounts you want before you proceed.
The Web is buzzing about Nokia’s announcement of the next in the Nokia Nxxx series, the N900. I found it odd that Nokia had chosen to make this version a phone when the previous three versions, the 770, N800, and N810 were all “internet tablets”. The only reason I even believed this one would be a phone is because of all of the buzzing, with numerous tech news sources reporting it as Nokia’s new phone.
After looking at the website for the device for a few minutes this morning, however, I found absolutely no mention of it being a phone. They have pictures of its interface but never show a dialing pad. The specs mention mobile broadband but not mobile voice.
It does run the new Linux-based version of Nokia’s Maemo operating system, which will probably not be compatible with previous versions of the tablet, since this tablet will finally introduce a 3D graphics chip with iphone-ish effects (as if that’s important).
But no, it is not a phone, unless Nokia just really wants to minimize the significance of it being a phone. According to Nokia’s own website, it is the “Nokia N900 mobile computer”.
UPDATE (2009-08-27): The features site now mentions “phone” as one of the features. It actually looks pretty cool. Let’s just hope they don’t tie customers to a 2-year contract with a crappy service provider like a certain other company who shall remain a nameless red fruit.
One of the many ways KDE makes our lives easier is by providing graphical interfaces for many of the tasks that computer users want to perform. Web browsers typically accept certain protocols that connect them to resources, such as http, https, and ftp. In KDE, these are called KIO slaves, and nearly all KDE applications can interact with them.
What makes KDE unique is that there are over 50 KIO slaves available for use. These include everything from basic file management (file:/directoryname) to remote network management (remote:/). I have selected a few notable KIO slaves to demonstrate how they are used and have also included a list of useful ones at the end of this post.
Read the rest at MakeTechEasier
KWin is a free and open source window manager and is the default in KDE. It is a powerful, highly customizable window manager with a plethora of both aesthetic and nuts and bolts features. With the release of KDE 4, the developers added 3D desktop effects, but they also carried over many customization features from KDE 3. Here are some of the window-specific settings that you can use in KWin.
Read the rest at MakeTechEasier
I am a little behind, but here are parts two and three of my article series on formatting a book in OpenOffice. Both articles are available on MakeTechEasier.com.
Part 1 (if you missed it)
In an effort to bring more exposure to KDE and its features, I have created two videos. One is a brief introduction to KDE and some highly acclaimed features. The second is about a specific application: Krunner. It is based on an article I wrote for MakeTechEasier.
Both videos are available for streaming and download.
10 Awesome Features of Krunner in KDE 4
The production plan is also available in PDF format.
It is all in your head: the plot, the characters, the locations, and even the scenes, but for some reason, staring at the blank page and blinking cursor makes you freeze. You like the idea of writing a book but cannot imagine actually completing it. If that feeling sounds familiar, then this might be the right article for you. Even if you have written a book and have it all ready to go, you may intend to self-publish it, start your own publishing company, send it to an editor, or just layout your book so you can see how it looks.
There is a long list of reasons why you might need to prepare an OpenOffice.org document in book form, and once you have learned how to do it, you will have a useful skill that you or people you know may need in the future. You can use this method for both print publications and e-books.
