Fedora How-To: End Unresponsive Applications with Xkill

There are times when I miss KDE, like, when an application suddenly freezes up for no apparent reason.

I wait and try to close the window clicking on the close [x] glyph.  Tap fingers....

Still nothing.  "Sweet Lord.  Please make it stop!", I mutter.

Then I remember that pressing ctrl-alt-Esc would work in KDE to kill an unresponsive application.  Yes!  (Slaps forehead)  That's it.

Presses ctrl-alt-Esc.   Waits.  (insert sound of crickets...)  NOTHING.

So, as I have discovered, Fedora doesn't have a keyboard mapping to xkill, despite having the utility installed.  My Fedora Peeps are you reading this?  For the Love of God, Add it!  Please.

There.  I said 'please'.  I was nice.

Hokay, deep breaths.  Serenity now... ;)

Ready for a brief how-to to show you how to add a keyboard mapping in Fedora Desktop Edition or Workstation?  Alright.  Here goes.

First you need to go to Settings and click Keyboard to create the shortcut:

Then, click Shortcuts:

Click on Custom Shortcut and the plus (+) symbol to add a shortcut:

Name the shortcut "Force Quit" and the command "xkill":

Click Add to add the shortcut.  Then click on the word 'Disabled' and enter the keys you wish to use to activate this shortcut (I've used Ctrl-Escape as Ctrl-Alt-Escape is already mapped to something else):

My finished Force Quit shortcut:

Finito.  Good grief, I am exhausted.  Just kidding.  That wasn't difficult was it?  I hope not.

So, okay, if and when you encounter a frozen application you can now force it to quit by pressing, in my case, Ctrl-Esc.  Directly above, I show Nautilus Terminal after I have pressed ctrl-esc.  Note that the cursor changes shape to an 'x' to signify you are armed with xkill and dangerous.

Assuming you do want to kill an application, position your mouse cursor over the offending application window and 'left-click'.  That should result in the window closing.  Should you decide to cancel, simply 'right-click' at any time and the 'x' cursor will be replaced by a normal mouse arrow.

And that should do it!  -- Dietrich

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G+ Conversations on Fedora 20, KDE User Perceptions

By Dietrich Schmitz

We had a lively exchange over at Google Plus on Fedora 20, due out tomorrow, 12/10/2013.  (Image credit: www.infusivefive.com)

+Tycho Softworks, a regular participant, initiated the post and shared his thoughts on Fedora 20 and the 'free association' thread of comments took off leading to KDE Plasma Desktop and some of the issues users are confronted with, legitimate or otherwise.

Per usual, perception is reality and I solicited +Aaron Seigo for his view on all things KDE.  He is as always the 'Thinking Man' and has no shortage of interesting things to say.

Here is the Google Plus Post in its entirety (you will need to click through the G+ post's "time" to see the full thread of comments):

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Fedora Desktop 20 (Gnome): A Class Act

by Dietrich Schmitz

If there is one thing I have learned, it's that life is dynamic.  And so it is in life that many things change  -- not just the material objects -- but our social mores and mindsets evolve to such an extent that completely different views and perspectives are gained.

This is a story about Fedora Desktop 20 and how it has changed my view of several things.

I am using the pre-release version of Fedora Desktop 20, which is scheduled for release on December 10, 2013.  As pre-releases go (beta 5 at the time of this writing), one can expect a 'bumpy' ride.  That has not been my experience.  In fact, it has been quite stable compared to other betas I have tested in the past.

Community

You see, unlike Ubuntu, Red Hat-owned Fedora Desktop 20, is a 'true' community-based Distro that gets most of the feature enhancements added and chosen by 'community' participants.   The 'derivative' Ubuntu Distros?  Well, they are playing 'second fiddle' and rest atop the Canonical-supplied Ubuntu Linux Kernel and repository system coupling their own non-Unity chosen GUIs.

Despite Canonical Ltd.'s best efforts to lend the appearance of having a true community-driven Distribution (Distro), I have reached the conclusion that most of their decision making comes from corporate, not community, participants.  In fact, Canonical Ltd. does not differentiate between their 'commercial' Ubuntu and a Ubuntu community version.  There simply isn't one.

Fedora's Default Desktop GUI - Gnome

This is where I found myself pleasantly surprised.  Historically, I liked neither Unity nor the Gnome 3.x GUIs for many reasons stemming from my 20 years in IT software and user interface design development experience.

As was the case with the initial 4.x release of KDE Plasma Desktop, there was a period of 'instability', during which users responded with feedback for a year or more until the KDE Development Team replicated rearward features from the 3.5.x generation.  Ultimately, KDE prevailed and matured to the point where I would call it the 'best' Desktop GUI for Linux.

Gnome Shell 3.10 shown in 'Window Selection' mode

Today, I find myself chuckling because, despite 'major' past usability issues acknowledged by the Gnome Team, they've managed to surmount them and have reached what I call a stable usability plateau.  Fedora Desktop 20 uses The Gnome Project's Gnome 3.10.1 and I can honestly say that this is a far sight better than the previous versions of Gnome and it is well beyond Ubuntu in overall usability, fit and finish.

Hats off to both The Gnome Project and the Fedora Developer Team in doing a superb job of integration.  The name 'Fedora Desktop' now really takes on special meaning for me. It's drop-dead easy to use like Windows and quite professional in all respects.  

In surveying the Distrowatch.com Top 5 Distributions, I'd place Fedora Desktop as the best Gnome implementation, Canonical's Ubuntu as the Unity GUI, Mint as the best KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon and MATE implementations (which includes their Debian spin), and Lubuntu as the best LXDE Distro.  (That's the top 5 Distros, so, don't take it personally if I didn't mention your favorite Distribution.)

Security

Many of you already know I am an ardent security advocate so I view those Distros which promote advanced security features with great favor.

Fedora has a long-standing reputation for excellent security and implements by default Linux Security Module SELinux which places user activities in a 'Mandatory Access Control' 'sandbox'.  This ensures that if some unsuspecting exploit tries to escalate and gain administrative access to your system, the SELinux policy will simply kill the process.

In addition to the standard Linux security features that all Distros inherit from the Linux Kernel, the Fedora Desktop 20 now incorporates stronger gcc compilation controls to mitigate risk of buffer overflow using a new compiler switch, -fstack-protector-strong.

New Features

From a Red Hat press release, here's a brief summary of Fedora 20's new features taken verbatim:

What’s New in Fedora 20First and foremost, we are pleased to announce that, in keeping with Fedora’s commitment to leading edge open innovation, ARM is now a primary architecture. While Fedora has supported a number of hardware architectures over the years (with x86/x86_64 being the default for the majority of Fedora users), the ARM team has made massive strides over the past year. The technology already dominates the mobile market and shows great promise for the server world as well, hence Fedora’s adoption of the architecture to satisfy end users and developers targeting the ARM platform.
Cloud and Virtualization EnhancementsOS Installer Support for LVM Thin Provisioning – With the introduction of thin provisioning via Logical Volume Manager (LVM) in the Linux kernel, Fedora 20 can now support the configuration of thin clients during OS installation.
VM Snapshot UI with virt-manager – While QEMU and libvirt are fully capable of performing safe virtual machine (VM) snapshots/checkpoints, a simple, discoverable UI did not exist previously. This feature adds a UI to virt-manager, simplifying the VM process.
Developer GoodiesFedora features a host of new features and updated packages to interest developers using a wide variety of languages, including Ruby on Rails 4.0 and Perl 5.18.
Maturity/Advanced FeaturesNetworkManager Improvements – Users can now add, edit, delete, activate and de-activate network connections via the nmcli command line tool, and support for bonding and bridging interfaces is now included, improving usability for enterprise and virtualization users.
No Default Sendmail, Syslog – As systemd continues to mature, the systemd journal now takes its place as the default logging solution in place of syslog, while Sendmail is no longer installed by default.

Conclusion

I've really been trying hard to come up with some justification which would sway me to prefer Ubuntu over Fedora Desktop 20.  I can't.  The security is better.  The package manager, YUM, I have reviewed and it is simply superior to APT.  

Fedora is Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant and the staging area for any new LSB enhancements which merge to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Fedora also takes the technology lead by being the first community Distro to have implemented systemd.  Many other Distros have followed suit, yet, Ubuntu chose some time ago to develop and still employs Upstart.  

Laggard Debian only recently made a feature freeze decision for Debian 8 and chose Upstart, despite the long-term benefits of systemd.  Gnome 3.10.1 as I mentioned has reached a new plateau of stability and usability and is a cut above Canonical Ltd.'s competing Unity overall.  

Yes, Gnome's time has come.  It integrates exceedingly well with Fedora to provide a  professional Linux Desktop experience.   

Fedora Desktop 20 -- It's a 'class act'.  -- Dietrich

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Lubuntu: One Honkin Fast Lean Mean Distro

by Dietrich Schmitz

You know, when you look in the Linux parts bin, you see bolt-on guis like KDE, Unity (only Ubuntu), Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment, Gnome3. And you see a division of packaged Distributions along Gentoo's Emerge, Arch Linux Pacman, Red Hat RPM, and Debian deb package systems (those are the major players).  Everything else at Distrowatch is combinations and permutations of the aforementioned parts with different philosophies regarding File Hierarchical Structure, and release management strategies combined with various community governance models.

That's fine and once you've sorted that out, you'll realize there is a lot of chaff.  To varying degrees, you'll find some Distros are good and some less so and only a few with real good support behind them.

I've told you about which Distros will be around in five years and so the base Distros are most likely to be left standing while the others will have end of life'd officially or simply will lose support by attrition and die off due to lack of maintenance.

The other day I switched from Netrunner Enigma to Lubuntu 13.04.  Let me tell you, my opinion of Lubuntu has risen significantly since my last experience a few years ago.  Lubuntu is an Ubuntu derivative, of course, but based on the LXDE desktop gui.

In it's out of the box form, Lubuntu isn't super sexy but it really is a pleasure to use and has 'the basics' in place.  The memory footprint is small enough that any machine running Windows XP (due to expire in 2014) will be an excellent candidate for Lubuntu.  With less than 4GB disk space needed and a ram footprint of about 170MB ram, Lubuntu will reanimate any machine older than 5 (even 10) years and save you from the needed hardware upgrade you may have thought would be necessary.

I am using Lubuntu on my Acer Aspire One D260 with 2GB ram and the only thing I did post install was to add GIMP, preload, zRAM, glances, Chrome and Guake.  (zRAM will be present in the Lubuntu 13.10 edition by default.)  That's it.  My needs are covered.

Features

• Based on the lightweight LXDE desktop environment.
• Pcmanfm, a fast and lightweight files manager using gio/gvfs.
• Openbox, the fast and extensible, default windows-manager of LXDE.
• Lightdm, using the simple GTK greeter
• Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome.
• ... and, of course, based on Ubuntu 13.04.

See the complete list of applications on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/Setup#Application

Lubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) Desktop

The main advantage to using Lubuntu is that it benefits from having the Ubuntu repository.  If you were wondering which repo between RPM vs DEB is best, DEB wins hands down on total packaged apps.  Personally, I miss YUM but it's a trade-off and DEB simply tips the scale.

[ Edit: 8/5/2013 9:00am GMT-5 I am inserting information about Compton from Lubuntu's blog site (directly below).  It's almost an oversight not to mention it.  Compton is easy to install and puts LXDE on equal footing with Xfce's compositing capability. ]

Compton Shadow Effects (and more)

From the Lubuntu blog howto on Compton:

Compton is a standalone lightweight compositor for X (the graphic server on Linux systems). It provides 2D graphical acceleretaion and this allow us to drop shadows under the windows, make elements fade as they (dis)appear, draw (semi)transparent menús and notifications, etc.

Follow the how-to's instructions and you'll have compositing in a jiffy.

Lubuntu with Compton compositing effects installed

So, if you are like me and looking for a Distro that will be supported in five years and will keep your aging PC going, then please have a look at Lubuntu.  It gets the job done and is deceptively quick.

I would add that it's speed approaches that of CrunchBang.  It's that quick, which I was happy to find.

Also, and just as an aside, the LXDE upstream developer team are now actively working on a port of GTk-based LXDE to Qt, named LXDE-Qt.  Joining them and merging their project is Razor-Qt, so I expect to see good things in the near future from LXDE and naturally downstream Lubuntu will benefit greatly.

Anyhow, check out Lubuntu.  It's a true sleeper and a gem.

-- Dietrich

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Netrunner 13.06 Enigma Tweaks for the Memory Deprived PC

by Dietrich Schmitz

I've been living with Netrunner 13.06 Enigma for about a week now and am still quite happy with it.

Yet, I am not satisfied to just use any Distro with its 'out of the box' setting for long before the urge sets in to make changes.

Mostly, for my purposes, I want the ram footprint of the GUI to be as small as it can possibly be. (Image credit: smithsonianmag.com)

Where KDE is concerned, while it does weigh in in the 400MB+ range at start-up the Acer Aspire One D260 in default configuration is quite acceptable speed-wise.  I half-expected that would not be the case and was happy to know the system was carrying the weight of a full KDE Plasma Workspace implementation nicely.

So, the lust to tweak set in and here's what I did.

Unneeded Services

I disabled the following services

Akonadi (set StartServer=false in ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc)
cups and cups-browserd (sudo update-rc.d -f cups remove && update-rc.d -f cups-browserd remove)
krunner
Added the below contents to file ~/.kde/share/autostart/krunner.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=krunner
Hidden=true
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
Name=Command Runner
Type=Service
X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
OnlyShowIn=KDE;
X-KDE-autostart-phase=1

klipper (sudo apt-get purge klipper)
nepomuk (off by default; set autostart=false in ~/.kde/share/config/nepomukserverrc)

3D Effects

System Settings, Workspace Appearance, Desktop Effect, uncheck 'Enable Desktop Effects at Startup' and on the Advanced tab, switched from OpenGL to xrender.

Other Services

In system settings, Advanced, Service Manager, I unchecked and stopped:

DNS-SD
Drive Ejector (my Netbook has no CD drive)
Free Space Notifier (I've never run out of disk space)
Nepomuk Search Module
Remote URL Change Notifier
Wacom Tablet (don't have one)
Write Daemon

System Settings, Desktop Appearance, Widget Style, Configure, Animations, I unchecked 'Enable Animations'.

Preload

Preload uses caching algorithms to intelligently preload software based on your user habits.  I installed with:

sudo apt-get install preload

zram

I've been using zram for several days.  I will tell you that this change alone will make a big change in the speed of any PC -- it doesn't matter how much ram it has.  In fact, it's going to be present in the Kernel 3.11 as zswap, but currently, it exists if you are using a Linux kernel 3.2 or greater as zram.  Users of Netrunner get a 3.8 kernel with the 'bonus' of an enhanced LZO compression library.

The command to install:

sudo apt-get install zram-config.

There isn't anything else you need to configure for zram -- it is now mapped and loaded as a kernel module (zram.ko) to two block swap devices with the name /dev/zram[n] where n is the core of your PC.  In my case with the Atom N450, it's /dev/zram0 and /dev/zram1.
If you would like to see your zram swap activity, I would suggest installing ncurses-based 'glances' (sudo apt-get install glances).

So, that's it.  Now things are absolutely 'honkin' fast.

P.S. those using Fedora will find zram installables here.

Good Luck.

-- Dietrich

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Charting a Safe Course in Times of Uncertainty with Netrunner 13.06 Enigma

by Dietrich Schmitz

I get surprises every day.  Some are good and some less than good.

The other day I came across a really good surprise: Netrunner 13.06 Enigma, released on July 5, 2013, turned up just when I needed it.

One of the LA private community members asked, what has happened with Fedora 19 Xfce?

Well, to that I say: Life is subject to change.

And changed it has.  Here's my assessment of the current state of affairs:

Technology Check List

Will Fedora be around in 5 years: Yes
Will Debian/*buntu derivatives be around in 5 years: Yes

Which package manager is best (YUM vs. APT):  YUM

Which repository system has the most diverse set of applications: Debian/Ubuntu

What is the best Desktop GUI: KDE

Which Distro has the best out of the box KDE experience: Netrunner 13.06 Enigma
Is there a trend for moving applications and Desktop GUIs to Qt: YES

Is KDE Qt-based: YES

Blue Systems KDE Brain Trust

However, the thing about Netrunner that is most interesting and unique is that it is developed by Blue Systems, who also do development for Kubuntu and Mint.  +Martin Gräßlin is a key 'brain trust' of Blue Systems and lead developer for KDE with a focus on core development, namely KWin.  The work of Blue Systems is clearly evident in Netrunner.  The 'fit and finish' is silky smooth and quite reminiscent of early days of Ubuntu.  KDE is most likely to be embraced by those with Windows experience.  It is feature-complete and intuitive.

Beware of Quick Sand XMir/Mir

Also, now that Canonical shifted their policy away from Wayland to using XMir/Mir in Ubuntu 13.10, KDE is the safer course as +Aaron Seigo and Team plan to support X.org way into the future as well as Wayland.  They will not be supporting Mir as it is a 'one-off' display driver (Ubuntu Unity only).

A Shift to Qt Development

Kubuntu and Lubuntu's lead developers have already opted-out of support for XMir as it is deemed to be a 'shim' emulation layer which will slow down the responsiveness of the Desktop appreciably.  LXDE project has begun a new project, LXDE-Qt, to port LXDE code to Qt.  See a preview of the desktop here.

So, you see, never say 'never'.  Keep a close watch on the Linux eco space.  It changes like the weather.  ;)

Given all of the rapid change, Netrunner today is the safe choice.

That is my assessment.

-- Dietrich

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Netrunner 13.06 Enigma: Best KDE Out of the Box Experience

by Dietrich Schmitz

Netrunner-os released Friday, July 5th, their newest version Linux Distribution, Netrunner 13.06 Enigma.

I am going to tell you straight up, Netrunner Enigma is the best KDE-based (version 4.10.4) Ubuntu derivative I have ever used.

It's really that good.  I am serious as a 'heart attack'.  Maybe because some of the KDE 'brain-trust' also happen to work for Blue Systems who develop Netrunner?

Not maybe.  +Martin Gräßlin, is maintainer of KDE Plasma Compositor and Window Manager and is employed by Blue Systems, coincidentally.

I would also mention Blue Systems is doing coding support for Kubuntu and Mint KDE editions.

Features and Changes

Netrunner Desktop Containment (clean folderview, hidden plus/minus overlays)
- Improved KWin performance, so default enabled fx work on most low end machines
- Kate Minimap scrollbar
- Automatic KWallet Active
- Hot-Corner in lower right
- Simplified System Settings
- Removed Wine (due to less relevance)
- Alsa instead of Pulseaudio for best compatibility and performance (intel hda)
- Firefox with Mozilla App-Store
- Steam Installer-Link
- Mint Software Sources and Hardware Manager
- usual KDE goodies, Homerun 1.0, Tomahawk 0.7, etc.

So, you see, it would stand to reason that the level of 'fit and finish' as well as stability would be of high-quality in this Distro.  And, it is.  I don't know what Martin did (thank you), but KDE is flying on my Netbook with 2GB ram.  That's not what I usually get using KDE.  So, I am giggly using it like I found a diamond in the ruff.

Netrunner-os 13.06 Enigma shown on my Netbook

There are now several Desktop projects based on Qt:

• KDE
• Razor-Qt
• KLyDE (pre-release)
• LXDE-Qt (pre-release)
• Unity (cough Mir)

And, one wonders if others will follow suit, like, for example, a port of Xfce to Xfce-Qt maybe?  Maybe so.

It seems that there has been a seismic shift and programmers are scurrying to move away from anything remotely resembling GTk.  Maybe there is good reason.  Regardless, it is all up for debate as to the merits of one GUI framework verses another.  Some swear by the GTk tool set which currently holds the majority share of Linux applications written with it.

But trends are trends.  And Qt programming is definitely on the up-swing.

If you want to experience true KDE 'nirvana' please go straight to the Netrunner website and get your copy of Enigma today.

-- Dietrich

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