Tag: kde

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Desktop Environments Distributions Your Choice

No shame in the Linux game

I admit it. In the past I have done a fair share of distro hopping.

If you’ve seen my recent posts, you see that I still do some OS installations to USB just to try them out. My most recent distros burned to USB are Manjaro and Ubuntu 20.04 main desktop version.

However, I’m down to one computer now. It’s a System76 Gazelle bought in 2017. I bought it pretty loaded up with lots of good features, such as the i7 and 32 GB of RAM.
The hard drive dual-boots Windows 10 and Linux without me worrying about running out of disk space any time soon.

But, one computer (UEFI disabled) still reaches a point where things are functioning well, and as expected with no headaches to occupy your time… You know you can get work done, and you do –no question about it. But, as we all know there is a difference between work time and play time. And right now I gotta get work done. Play time will come later. Or maybe when I replace this computer. Right now too much is working well, and I don’t want to mess with it.

I am curious about how Manjaro works. It’s one of the few popular distros I have not yet used. I used to run KaOs (I think it’s name has changed since) and it is a very cool spin of Arch. I quite easily broke it as I was learning all about pacman and other ways to resolve bleeding-edge breakage. It was fun, but the unexpected twists and turns of “It worked yesterday, but today it’s busted” was less-than fun.

I’m not hating on Arch. No. Arch gets my respect for sure.
But, I told myself that I’d try it out, and see if it could be “daily-driver” material. For me, it wasn’t. Arch style is not what I can depend on for stability for the work of my choice. Yes, laziness is included in my view of it as well. I simply don’t have the same amount of free time to learn by breaking it, or learn by having an update break it. Since Majaro is rolling, I know that when i’m ready to do so I can install it from the USB and that I can bring it up to date.

So here I am today, still running KDE Neon (I mentioned in other posts that it’s so fast). Faster than Pop_OS on this machine in my honest opinion, but that was before 20.04 version came out, so I’d bet Pop_OS is even faster today that previous versions. But for desktop environment. I have learned and retained muscle-memory keyboard shortcuts and what-have-you over the years and I like the way Cinnamon does not force to unlearn so many things such as switching virtual desktops, and having tap-to-click just work.

Plasma is nice, I do use it from time to time. Dolphin is a great file manager, and the available themes are very very nice. Plasma is also a lot faster than I remember it back in the Plasma 4 days too. Maybe it was slower due to the available hardware and RAM I had at the time. Maybe. Plasma is not known to be lightweight, and with 32 GB of RAM on the system, it’s not an issue at all.

So, even with the responsiveness of the computer, why not just use Plasma as a daily driver? Because I like Cinnamon a bit better. It too has some very nice theme choices and customization. The File Manager (Nemo) needs to let users increase the font size of the left hand panel. Other than that it’s fine.

Using Cinnamon made me ask myself why…. and should I feel shame for installing a Plasma system only to “not use Plasma” in favor of an environment that can be found (or installed/added to) many other Linux distributions.

Today I declared “No. There is no shame in setting up the bits and pieces of your computing environment that you use daily to be and work just the way that you want it.”
There is no shame in the game where choice is everything. I chose a rolling distro, and I added a well-known desktop environment and set it up to not get in my way. I update it regularly and I can run virtualbox if I want to check out another distro. Maybe down the road I’ll buy an older machine at a bargain and do some install and tests and funtime experiments. Cheers.

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Desktop Environments Distributions Installing Linux Linux Discussion Uncategorized Your Choice

Arch challenge and KaOS

Hi all, as a linux user since 2003, I decided it was time to leave my comfort zone and take an opportunity to learn and do things “the arch way”.

My son has been using our old Macbook 2009 for playing Minecraft and while this isn’t a big deal in and of itself, it has been giving the computer a really sizeable beating in terms of CPU, GPU, and overall computer temperature. I wanted to let him play his game, however on a not-so-critical computer and spare the Mac.

We came into an older (about the same production year) HP G-60 laptop. I bought an SSD for it, and designated the machine as his to use for Minecraft. I now needed an Operating System. Of course, it was not going to be Windows anything. Sorry.

With an faster, empty, open hard drive, I wanted a solid linux distro that I would not have to reinstall every 6 months. The idea of a rolling release came to mind, as opposed to an Ubuntu LTS release, which I use now (Kubuntu 14.04) on my Dell.

That’s when I discovered the super-nathan arch challenge courtesy of the Linux Action show featured here.

I could have chose from among several rolling distros, but I came across KaOS, which is rolling, and arch-based.
KaOS is a lean KDE distribution.
I loved it, and got so taken in with learning how things are done in the Arch Linux world. The only downside I found was, after a while, my son actually wanted to “use” the computer and I found myself trying to get in my learning in the off hours.

That’s fine, but I then also reached a point where I was going against the main purpose and philosophy of Arch itself…I found myself wanting a system that stayed stable and would not require much fuss. I do know this is a conflict or contradiction in terms as Arch does not make this promise. If the computer were purely for my use, it would be no big deal.

Another awesome thing you’ll see with KaOS is that it uses Plasma 5 or KDE5 desktop environment. It really is a big improvement over KDE4, which isn’t bad to begin with.

If you like KDE, and are willing to use an Arch-based system, I recommend KaOS. However, be sure to visit as many pages of the website as you can, including the FAQ and the KCP section of the site to learn how KaOS does its packaging and the new things you can see at github.

Thanks for reading this far, and in good spirits, I’ll say that since I wanted a distro for the HP G-60 that would be easier to maintain and less fuss, I went with Ubuntu Mate, which is based on the 14.04 LTS. This way my kid can play, and when necessary, I can quickly and easily update and maintain the system.

Cheers,
Adam

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Desktop Environments Distributions Installing Linux Linux Discussion Obtaining Linux Using Linux

Solyd is great but I had to switch back

What does this mean? Well, it means that for a good run I was able to use Solydk, the KDE version of the SolydXK Linux Distribution. I recently had to replace Solydk with another distro because I ran into issues with my Dell Inspiron 15z, which is UEFI, Secure Boot with Windows 8 Pre-installed.

I do regret purchasing a Windows-based machine thinking it would be easy to dual-boot with Windows and Linux. More specifically, a non-BIOS machine anyway. It’s been blogged about countless times, that it’s just downright painful to get Linux and Windows 8 (with UEFI) to play nicely and dual-boot without issue. In retrospect, a System76 laptop with a Windows 8 VM would have probably been a better choice.

Here’s what I learned before I first switched to Solydk. That (on this machine so far) Ubuntu and its derivatives (for that matter) will install (in general) without major issues. But I discovered soon after that the Ubuntu Boot Repair CD becomes your best friend soon after. And of course, tutorial sites such as How To Geek come in handy as well. Here is a tutorial which may help with boot repairs. Even though Ubuntu has gone to the trouble of getting their kernels signed and approved by MS, there are still some minor post-install issues where you have to jump through a few hoops to have a reliable dual-boot system.

Then I switched to Solydk, as I recently became a big fan of not only the KDE, but the concept of installing a rolling release – install once, update as necessary. Sadly, because Solydk installed GRUB to the MBR, (my bad choice) I was unable to boot into Windows 8. Thus my machine became a single-boot laptop. It wasn’t bad for a while – but then you reach a point where you need to get at that Windows 8 OS to do something. And it won’t boot.

I reached for the Boot Repair CD, which has a feature to restore the MBR. That part of it worked great, as I was finally able to get to Windows. The bad news was I could no longer get to Solydk. Tried many different things and of course got some really supportive help over at the SolydXK Forums. But did not have any luck in getting the machine back to dual-boot capability.

At that point, it was time to choose a distro that would dual-boot properly and play nice with Windows 8 and all the UEFI/Secure Boot nonsense installed on this computer. I considered Fedora 20, but I could not get my head around the errors I was encountering on the manual partitioning page. I’ve been using Debian derivatives for so long, that I kind of got used to the way they do things. The Fedora partitioner was the deal-breaker for me. Maybe someday I’ll get it working via experimentation in a virtual machine.

The other viable candidate was Kubuntu, so I installed the current latest version (13.10) and had a lot of issues with the well-known “black screen on boot from grub” issue. This occurred whether the Live DVD booted in EFI mode or Legacy mode. It simply didn’t matter. I followed many blog posts that advised adding grub parameters `nomodeset` and `acpi_osi=Linux`, and `acpi_backlight=vendor`. None of these parameter add-ons fixed the issue. So it was time to make a judgment call. Fix the 13.10, or do something else. With April only days away, I decided to move forward toward the long-term support release of version 14.04 “Trusty Tahr” but since it’s not yet officially released, I downloaded and installed the Alpha2 version.

Kubuntu 14.04 Alpha2 installed nicely (the Live DVD booted just fine with the computer in UEFI mode), and the install process did not wipe out the MBR. However it did do some kind of monkey business as I was unable to boot into Windows. Once again, the boot repair DVD to the rescue. I was able to properly purge and reinstall GRUB and of course repair the MBR. After that, I am able to dual-boot Windows 8 and Kubuntu 14.04 with no black screen issue.

I’m seeing two somewhat interesting and strange items, but I can live with them both. One of them is that the grub menu theme is missing a character to the point where my grub boot screen is using “? in a box” as its border character. Also I have the Yakuake terminal set to autostart, where under normal conditions it stays hidden until you press F12 key. Currently, the terminal drops down once the desktop has fully loaded into a usable state. Again these are minor things that are possibly the result of rocking an Alpha2 (Pre-release) version of the OS.

In summary, it’s back to Kubuntu for now, but I can see myself reinstalling Solydk at a later time. Preferably when they implement support or handling of EFI and allow the boot loader to not be put onto the MBR. The SolydXK team is working on it, so hopefully they’ll release this feature soon.

Thanks for reading.

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Applications Desktop Environments Distributions Using Linux Your Choice

More new software

With the upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10, I was looking forward to the better performance (which it “does have”) however what I failed to consider – was what things might “stop working” post-upgrade.

I should have paid more attention to the multiple questions during the upgrade process. Questions such as “do you want to keep existing file “fileName” or use new file. I didn’t consider the impact of the decisions. Nor do I remember them to be honest.

End result – system that previously dual-booted windows and linux now would not boot directly into linux. At all. I then proceeded to turn off Secure Boot in the BIOS and after quite a few tests, trial, and error I wound up being able to get into Linux by holding down F12 at every boot and then selecting UEFI OS. Not ideal to say the least.

Got so irritated, that I was “moments away” from dumping Ubuntu 13.10 in favor of Fedora 19. But before doing that, I first made a backup of files, and followed some easy steps to convert Ubuntu into Kubuntu. Wow, I had not used KDE in such a long time, and I must say that I’m impressed with it. For many years I didn’t use it, as it simply works better on newer machines with decent Ram and hardware. Since I now have a machine with decent specs, I figured “why not” try out KDE again.

I’m writhing this post in KDE as we speak, and it’s wonderful to have the choice of booting into Unity Ubuntu, Ubuntu Flashback, or KDE. I totally enjoy the customizing and how it “gets out of the way”. I put my favorite/most used applications icons in a vertical dock at the right-hand side of my screen and set the bottom panel to auto-hide. Konsole is an awesome terminal and starts immediately.

Still, I find it a nuisance to need to press and hold F12 each time and make a BIOS selection in order to boot the system. I may yet still scrap Ubuntu entirely and go with Fedora and make use of KDE from there. While I got used to Unity via Ubuntu, I can’t say I’m a big fan of it. But then again, that’s the awesomeness that is Linux. We usually always have a choice of what we want to use right out of the box, or customize/add/remove things to our heart’s content.

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Desktop Environments

KDE: a brief introduction

KDE is a desktop environment whose software is based on the Qt toolkit (wikipedia). It can be found in many Linux distros such as OpenSuse, Fedora, and Kubuntu (a derivative of Ubuntu).  It’s look and feel is different from that of the GNOME desktop environment. I’ve used the KDE environment a few years back, when I was running Fedora Core 4 on an IBM Netvista desktop machine.

While your mileage may vary, I can say that neither Fedora 4, nor KDE, operated very fast or smooth.

Then again, it could possibly be the result of an old, underpowered machine.