NSA: Please Turn off the Lights When You Leave. Nothing to See Here.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz shows how the general public can take action to truly protect their privacy using GnuPG with Evolution email. Read the details.

Mailvelope for Chrome: PGP Encrypted Email Made Easy

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz officially endorses what he deems is a truly secure, easy to use PGP email encryption program. Read the details.

Step off Microsoft's License Treadmill to FOSS Linux

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz reminds CIOs that XP Desktops destined for MS end of life support can be reprovisioned with FOSS Linux to run like brand new. Read how.

Bitcoin is NOT Money -- it's a Commodity

Linux Advocate shares news that the U.S. Treasury will treat Bitcoin as a Commodity 'Investment'. Read the details.

Google Drive Gets a Failing Grade on Privacy Protection

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz puts out a public service privacy warning. Google Drive gets a failing grade on protecting your privacy.

Email: A Fundamentally Broken System

Email needs an overhaul. Privacy must be integrated.

Opinion

Cookie Cutter Distros Don't Cut It

Opinion

The 'Linux Inside' Stigma - It's real and it's a problem.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Turn a Deaf Ear

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz reminds readers of a long ago failed petition by Mathematician Prof. Donald Knuth for stopping issuance of Software Patents.

Showing posts with label KDE Plasma Workspace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KDE Plasma Workspace. Show all posts

Sunday, July 7, 2013

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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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

A Desktop Seismic Shift to Qt

by Dietrich Schmitz

No one questions that KDE Plasma Workspaces is the top ranking desktop gui in pure robust features and asthetics.

It's one beautiful working environment.  What is KDE written in?: Qt

Qt is the same framework used to create the Apps which run in the KDE desktop environment, the same framework used to develop the original KHTML, which was acquired and ported to WebKit by Apple.

Qt has a long history behind it and has evolved through the years and endured change of ownership several times over, now in the hands of Digia and under their governance via the Qt Project.

This advanced framework has a fine reputation using the Lesser GNU Lesser General Public License, which makes everyone in the open source community quite happy.  The technology advancements put it on equal or, arguably, better footing than its competing GTk framework.

There was a period of uncertainty when TrollTech was purchased by Nokia, and the disposition of licensing was put into question.  Fortunately, Nokia saw fit to find the LGPL acceptable.

So, today we see a trend with new Desktop iterations using Qt making recent appearances.  First, Razor-Qt, then KLyDE, now we see a port of LXDE which uses the deprecated GTk2 framework is being made using Qt and will be named LXDE-Qt, appropriately.

It seems that gradually a stronger interest in Qt is being taken and, given LXDE's latest move, at least one Desktop which currently runs on GTk2 is hedging their bets and moving to Qt.  They might have simply chosen to migrate to GTk3, but that wasn't done.  Is the effort to migrate too steep of a climb?  Apparently so.  The LXDE community have done a great job setting up a wiki which addresses the technical challenges in migrating GTK projects to Qt--surely a big help to the community at large.  Hats off to LXDE for doing that.

So, this is a very interesting trend indeed.  Please take a look on the LXDE website to see how well the LXDE port has progressed.  I will certainly try LXDE-Qt at the earliest opportunity.

-- Dietrich


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