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<channel>
	<title>Uber Geeky!</title>
	<atom:link href="http://ubergeeky.com/blog/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog</link>
	<description>Let the hackfest begin...</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:33:58 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>OS X Launcher Applet For X11 Apps</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/310-os-x-launcher-applet-for-x11-apps</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/310-os-x-launcher-applet-for-x11-apps#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:33:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mac]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SciTE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[X11]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=310</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Trying to get my favorite text editor SciTE fully integrated into OS X required me to figure out some AppleScripting. I found a non-functioning SciTE launcher somewhere on the interwebs, but it only contained binaries, no script to tweak (how rude). Basically, I pulled apart the broken SciTE.app and found I could stick an AppleScript [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Trying to get my favorite text editor SciTE fully integrated into OS X required me to figure out some AppleScripting. I found a non-functioning SciTE launcher somewhere on the interwebs, but it only contained binaries, no script to tweak (how rude). Basically, I pulled apart the broken SciTE.app and found I could stick an AppleScript in there (called &#8220;main&#8221; in the directory structure below). This is what SciTE.app currently looks like when you &#8220;Show Package Contents&#8221;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" title="SciTE.app" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-znXnbPUAYdk/Tm3qGPM1oGI/AAAAAAAAAxw/mWQOxJkCrFg/s800/SciTE_app.png" alt="SciTE.app" width="192" height="211" /></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the script I ended up with, it evolved as I overcame various hurdles. It writes to a file on the desktop to log errors, or if you set debugmode to true:</p>
<pre>global debugmode

# Arguments passed on command line...
on run argv
 set debugmode to false
 runFilelist(argv)
end run

# Arguments passed with Finder...
on open filelist
 set debugmode to false
 if filelist is {} then runScite("")
 runFilelist(filelist)
end open

on quoted(f)
 return quoted form of POSIX path of f
end quoted

on runScite(argstring)
 try
 # All the guff at the end is required to prevent the script waiting for execution to terminate
 # otherwise this apple script will only work once
 do shell script "/opt/local/bin/scite " &amp; argstring &amp; " &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp; "
 on error the error_message number the error_number
 set the error_text to "Fatal Error: " &amp; the error_number &amp; ". " &amp; the error_message
 my write_error_log(the error_text)
 end try
end runScite

on runFilelist(filelist)
 set filename to missing value
 set filenames to ""
 try
 if (count of filelist) is greater than 0 then
 repeat with filename in filelist
 set filenames to filenames &amp; " " &amp; quoted(filename)
 end repeat
 end if
 if debugmode is true then
 set the error_text to "Debug: filenames = " &amp; filenames
 my write_error_log(the error_text)
 end if
 runScite(filenames)
 on error the error_message number the error_number
 if debugmode is true then
 set the error_text to "Error: " &amp; the error_number &amp; ". " &amp; the error_message
 my write_error_log(the error_text)
 else
 runScite("")
 end if
 end try
end runFilelist

on write_error_log(this_error)
 set the error_log to ((path to desktop) as text) &amp; "SciTE.app_Error.txt"
 try
 open for access file the error_log with write permission
 write (this_error &amp; return) to file the error_log starting at eof
 close access file the error_log
 on error
 try
 close access file the error_log
 end try
 end try
end write_error_log</pre>
<p>You can drag this into your apps folder, stick it on your dock and just generally let the good times roll. Getting file associations working required some more awesome copy/paste action however. Basically I just found a text editor that supported lots of code languages and edited the Info.plist such that some of the labels and values looked more appropriate for my SciTE launcher and put it in the SciTE.app package. This allowed me to &#8220;Open With&#8221; files using SciTE, however I couldn&#8217;t set default file associations for file types until I added CFBundleIdentifier to Info.plist. Possibly something was corrupted because even after that it didn&#8217;t work, though maybe I just needed to reboot it or something. I tried installing RCDefaultApp, but that was fail, even after I got it working RCDefaultApp refused to set file associations to my launcher. The symptom I was experiencing was selecting Open With SciTE from both the &#8220;Get Info&#8221; and &#8220;Open With&#8230;&#8221; would work for a single file, but if I tried to make it default, it would flick straight back to xcode or whatever the default file handler was. Here&#8217;s what I tried before I noticed it finally working:</p>
<ol>
<li>Created a CFBundleIdentifier element in Info.plist</li>
<li>Ran &#8220;/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -f /Applications/SciTE.app&#8221; both with and without sudo. This gave me some weird message about Throttline IO that I didn&#8217;t understand.</li>
<li>Ran &#8220;/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister  -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user&#8221; both with and without sudo (I think).</li>
<li>Rebooted</li>
</ol>
<p>This is when I noticed RCDefaultApp wasn&#8217;t helping me at all, it still wouldn&#8217;t work, so I removed it. Using &#8220;Get Info&#8221; to set my launcher as the default did finally work by this stage.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the launcher, enjoy! <a href="http://ubergeeky.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SciTE.zip">SciTE.app</a></p>
<p>(I&#8217;m still on Snow Leopard by the way I have no idea if this works on Lion yet)</p>
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		<title>VirtualBox vs. &#8220;VMware Server&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/286-virtualbox-vs-vmware-server-or-starting-virtualbox-on-boot</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/286-virtualbox-vs-vmware-server-or-starting-virtualbox-on-boot#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 16:13:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[VirtualBox]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[, or, Starting VirtualBox On Boot This post is applicable to Linux users with a VMware Server background considering moving to VirtualBox or VirtualBox users who want to start a VM on boot. If you skip my obligatory rantings and follow the steps below you can easily replace the functionality of VMware Server with VirtualBox [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2><span style="font-family: MS Sans Serif; color: #010100; font-size: x-small;">, or,</span></h2>
<h2>Starting VirtualBox On Boot</h2>
<p>This post is applicable to Linux users with a VMware Server background considering moving to VirtualBox or VirtualBox users who want to start a VM on boot. If you skip my obligatory rantings and follow the steps below you can easily replace the functionality of VMware Server with VirtualBox in a way which is currently better supported on the Ubuntu platform (if not all Linux based platforms in general).</p>
<p>Normally I&#8217;m a VMware man, but after half a day wrestling with installation of VMware Server on Ubuntu then trying to load a VMware Fusion image and ultimately failing, I decided to try out VirtualBox. I used to use the free VMware Server on Ubuntu for months until I eventually had to move on to VMware Workstation to gain access to some of the more advanced VM building features. I never had any problem with Server, but one thing that bugged me about Workstation though was the need to login before the VMs would start running, and the fact that logging out would cause a hard shutdown of the VMs (and of course the inability to install Server alongside Workstation to get the best of both worlds). I was in a situation where I needed something on a machine that was not licensed for VMware Workstation, and VMware Server just wasn&#8217;t working for me.</p>
<ol>
<li>Visit <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads" target="_blank">VirtualBox website</a> and get the repository added to your Linux distro for the latest and greatest version of VirtualBox and to ensure prompt updates.</li>
<li>Create a VirtualBox specific user (i.e. vbox). This is a good idea for a number of reasons, but if your regular user account uses the encrypted file system then it&#8217;s critical. This user will own all the VMs you want to start on boot (make sure it doesn&#8217;t use an encrypted file system as root can&#8217;t access that and hence can&#8217;t start any VMs located there).</li>
<li>Build, move, export/import, convert or what ever you need to do to get your VMs to run under VirtualBox as the vbox user.</li>
<li>Install the <a href="http://vboxtool.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">VBoxTool script from Sourceforge</a>. All the installation steps are in the packages readme file, so I wont repeat them here. Basically you set the scripts to run as a service and set up some configuration files. You could do all this yourself manually, but VBoxTool worked for me. Even if you don&#8217;t end up using it or it doesn&#8217;t work on your distro, the scripts are a good starting point to building your own init.d scripts to start the VMs on boot.</li>
<li>VBoxTool will save the state of the VM if it&#8217;s running on system shutdown and resume (or start it) on boot. Test that it&#8217;s working by rebooting the host while doing something in the VM. You connect to the VM using an RDP client (or VNC if you insist on using OSE). The RDP client that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu is called &#8220;Terminal Server Client&#8221; and you connect to localhost.</li>
<li>One last highly recommend point. If you don&#8217;t want anyone else on the network to connect to the VM directly then I suggest you firewall the port that RDP is using (3389 by default). You can do this easily from Ubuntu by installing the package &#8220;gufw&#8221; and enabling firewall with appropriate settings.</li>
</ol>
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		<title>MPD on the Popcorn Hour A110</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/287-mpd-on-the-popcorn-hour-a110</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/287-mpd-on-the-popcorn-hour-a110#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:23:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Input Flip</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So I got myself a Popcorn Hour 110. The PCH is a Network Media Player, and the name says it all it play all sort of digital media. It is equipped with a 500Gb HD and it can also stream content across the network, and it does a hell of a good job too. The [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So I got myself a <a href="http://www.modspace.com.au/media.html" target="_blank">Popcorn Hour 110</a>. The PCH is a Network Media Player, and the name says it all it play all sort of digital media. It is equipped with a 500Gb HD and it can also stream content across the network, and it does a hell of a good job too.</p>
<p>The only if is the User Interface, it is shockingly unusable&#8230;If you just want the PCH to browse and watch your video collection is not so bad, but when you want to use it to listen to your music collection you enter a world of pain. So far I couldn&#8217;t see an easy way to use playlists or even simple features like shuffle, there are some Jukebox mods that you can install, but browsing through the solutions they are not that user friendly either.</p>
<p>Another feature that I need from my PCH is the ability to be remote controlled due to the setup of my house. No easy way to do this too&#8230;So I dropped the PCH for music altogether and even started preparing a box that I had lying around (matter for another post) with something called <a href="http://mpd.wikia.com/" target="_blank">Music Player Deamon</a> , MPD is a remote controlled media player, basically is a daemon service that accepts requests to control media files on the host computer. It is opensource and has a large community of developers that  have developed a number of clients for it for platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOsx, Android, Iphone, you name it. Perfect for my requirements.</p>
<p>So I had my box all setup and running with MPD when I came across this <a href="http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=17306">post about installing MPD on the PCH</a>&#8230;I couldn&#8217;t believe it, yes the Popcorn hour runs Linux and these two guys managed a way to fit MPD into it&#8230;awesome.</p>
<p>Since the documentation on the mentioned post is a bit convoluted due to updates along the time I will document here step by step the process that I followed to install the MDP on my PCH:</p>
<p>You need to setup your PCH to talk with your network, easiest way is to allow automatic IP address and let your DHCP server do the rest. The PCH will automatically acquire an IP address that you will need later to connect to it.</p>
<p>On another PC in your network you need to install the <a href="http://download.nmtinstaller.com/NMTCommunityInstallerPortable.zip">NMT Community Installer</a>, this utility is nothing less than a bundle of applications that you can install in your PCH provided by the community, it features Themes, mods to the original graphics, and also several tools and applications like bit torrent clients, a replacement for the default http server, etc. The one we are interested for the MPD install is telnet, this will provide a way to access a command line for our PCH. So go ahead and install it.</p>
<p>Once telnet is installed you can connect to it by using a telnet client. I used <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html" target="_blank">putty</a>, any other telnet client will do.</p>
<p>After you connect to your PCH you will be sitting in the share folder, this is the root folder for all your content. In the command line issue the following commands:</p>
<pre>
<code>
cd /mnt/syb8634/etc
wget http://nmt.explore.nl/mpd-nmt-20090504.tar.gz -qO - | tar xvz
cd mpd
pwd
./installmpd.sh
./startmpd.sh
</code>
</pre>
<p>And that&#8217;s it, now every time the PCH reboots it will scan your music folder and rebuild its internal database. Pick an MPD client from the <a href="http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients">Client List</a> and off you go.</p>
<p>My favourite client is <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6324/" target="_blank">Music Player Mininon</a> which is a Firefox plugin.</p>
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		<title>Google Maps &#8220;Caching&#8221; for Android</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/263-google-maps-caching-for-android</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/263-google-maps-caching-for-android#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:39:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google Maps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=263</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This may not be a problem for people who live in huge cities, but Australia is a big place, I&#8217;m sure most of it has no mobile phone tower coverage. So what do you do when travelling 100&#8242;s of kilometres from one town to another and you don&#8217;t know exactly where to turn? You could [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This may not be a problem for people who live in huge cities, but Australia is a big place, I&#8217;m sure most of it has no mobile phone tower coverage. So what do you do when travelling 100&#8242;s of kilometres from one town to another and you don&#8217;t know exactly where to turn?</p>
<p>You could try scrolling across the route using Google Maps and hope that the maps stay cached until you need them. This works some of the time. If you just want to know roughly when to turn, getting the blue directions line is usually good enough to keep you on track. I think I found sometimes even that gets lost if you use the phone for anything other than google maps or perhaps just leaving it idle for a long time.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but in such situations I want to leave little up to fate. On my old Nokia I used to have <a href="http://wap.mgmaps.com/" target="_blank">MGMaps</a> installed. At the time Google had pressured them into stopping support for Google Maps images, but it was still possible with a little hackery pokery to get their scripts to slurp them down. Despite the occasional bum steer I&#8217;ve had asking Google Maps for direction (driving for an hour down an increasingly poor quality dirt road in New Zealand which Google had marked as a highway, only to end up nearly bogged in the middle of a forest on a track that had foot long grass growing on it comes to mind), I still find Google has the best maps. So I wasn&#8217;t prepared to settle for <a href="http://androidandme.com/2010/04/applications/mapdroyd-true-offline-maps-for-your-android/" target="_blank">MapDroyd</a> too quickly. But that is the easy option.</p>
<p>Skip that and go for <a href="http://www.cyrket.com/p/android/com.robert.maps/" target="_blank">RMaps</a>. If you see the comments, lots of people have trouble figuring out the offline maps features. <a href="http://www.taranfx.com/android-offline-google-maps" target="_blank">Taranfx blog post</a> to the rescue!! Follow those simple steps to get your Google Maps goodness when you are out of range of the Google hive mind.</p>
<p>But wait! SQLite library for Ubuntu is not included with <a href="http://mobac.dnsalias.org/" target="_blank">Mobile Atlas Creator</a> <img src='http://ubergeeky.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif' alt=':(' class='wp-smiley' /> . In the included README.HTM it says that you can download the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/trekbuddyatlasc/files/SQLite%20library" target="_blank">required Java SQLite libraries from sourceforge</a>. But it seems to me all those links are currently broken.</p>
<p>To compile it, I installed a whole bunch of packages:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>openjdk-6-jdk</code></li>
<li><code>sqlite</code></li>
<li><code>libsqlite0-dev</code></li>
<li><code>libsqliteodbc</code></li>
<li><code>sqlite3</code></li>
<li><code>libsqlite3-dev</code></li>
</ul>
<p>I&#8217;m not certain that all of these are required. Of course you&#8217;ll also need the regular <code>build-essential</code> packages required to compile stuff. Now you can follow the steps in the README.HTM, although you should download the latest version of javasqlite package (changes highlighted).</p>
<pre><code>wget http://www.ch-werner.de/javasqlite/<span style="background-color: yellow;">javasqlite-20100727.tar.gz</span></code>
<code>tar xzvf <span style="background-color: yellow;">javasqlite-20100727.tar.gz</span></code>
<code>cd <span style="background-color: yellow;">javasqlite-20100727/</span></code>
<code>./configure <span style="background-color: orange;">--with-jdk=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk</span></code>
<code>make</code>
<code>cp .lib<span style="background-color: yellow;">s</span>/lib* /[MOBAC installation path]</code></pre>
<p>If you can&#8217;t find your java home, you may need to add <code><span style="background-color: orange;">--with-jdk=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk</span></code> to the end of the configure command (this is the path for Ubuntu 10.04 anyway).</p>
<p>Now return to <a href="http://www.taranfx.com/android-offline-google-maps" target="_blank">Taranfx blog post</a> and then enjoy RMaps with offline Google Maps.<br />
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TGvha7iXgCI/AAAAAAAAAsM/CnDycZP9nmw/s800/OfflineMaps.png" alt="Offline Maps" /></p>
<p>Update August 30, 2010:<br />
You can migrate your tracks and markers from Google Maps too! The current version only displays 1 track at a time, but it does route lines along roads. For some reason it wont show any markers until you are at least zoom level 14. I wish this was configurable as my markers are sometimes 50kms apart, so it would be good to see them when zoomed right out. I may have to go and flag all the turn offs for my upcoming holiday, as I&#8217;m worried I could miss a few from the looks of things now.</p>
<p>To import them firstly export KML file from google maps either by following this <a target="_blank" href="http://sites.google.com/site/gmapstips/export-my-map-as-kml">post from Gmaps Tips group</a> or using the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/">GMapToGPX javascript</a>. Once you have the KML file downloaded, copy it to /sdcard/rmaps/import/ on the phone. Then go into the Track and POI menus and import it (import once in POI and once in track). You might notice that it has horrible div tags around all the text, you&#8217;ll have to clean that up from the KML file manually if it bothers you too much (how&#8217;s your regular expression skills?).</p>
<p>All in all this has been sufficiently geeky for my liking, and the end result is exactly what I wanted! Now I have an offline GPS totally compatible with my Google Maps &#8220;My Maps&#8221; (if that makes sense).</p>
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		<title>NetworkManager Can Ignore VPN DHCP</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/259-networkmanager-can-ignore-vpn-dhcp</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/259-networkmanager-can-ignore-vpn-dhcp#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:03:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cisco VPN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NetworkManager]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=259</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Connecting to a VPN that has DHCP settings configured can be rather frustrating if it breaks your regular network settings. The biggest problem I&#8217;ve had with this in Ubuntu is with resolv.conf losing my DNS settings in favour of the VPN DNS settings. For a long time I&#8217;ve tolerated the workaround of setting the immutable [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Connecting to a VPN that has DHCP settings configured can be rather frustrating if it breaks your regular network settings. The biggest problem I&#8217;ve had with this in Ubuntu is with resolv.conf losing my DNS settings in favour of the VPN DNS settings.</p>
<p>For a long time I&#8217;ve tolerated the workaround of setting the immutable attribute on resolv.conf (ie. chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf). This will prevent anything from updating the file and thus you will not lose your DNS settings when the VPN connection takes place. This is fine for a desktop machine on a local network where resolv.conf is likely to stay static, but no good for a laptop or other mobile device.</p>
<p>This week I searched around for a better solution. Something new I found was vpnc connect and post-connect scripts. This looked like a possible solution, something similar to what I did when using the vpnc client for KDE. The KDE client had a post-connect script option, and from that I would restore my old resolv.conf. I tried creating the vpnc scripts to back up resov.conf and restore it afterwards, but it seems that those scripts don&#8217;t even get run by NetworkManager because nothing happened for me.</p>
<p>Then by luck I noticed something in my search results about a setting called ignore-auto-dns. Seems that the interface doesn&#8217;t support the setting, but you can specify it for the connection using gconf-editor. The specs for the setting are here&#8230; <a href="http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/developers/settings-spec-08.html" target="_blank" title="NetworkManager Setting Specs">http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/developers/settings-spec-08.html</a></p>
<p>So to apply this setting, open gconf-editor and find your VPN connection under system/networking/connections (all connections are just numbered under there). There should be an ipv4 key in there. Now just create the boolean value ignore-auto-dns and set it to true. Shortly after discovering this solution, I found another technique which lists this same setting but in a network configuration file&#8230; <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkManager0.7" target="_blank" title="NetworkManager Ubuntu Community Documentation">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkManager0.7</a>. I&#8217;ve not tried the method listed there because I&#8217;m not actually convinced that it&#8217;s a better option than modifying this gconf setting.</p>
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		<title>Eee PC Clicking Sound</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/239-eee-pc-clicking-sound</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/239-eee-pc-clicking-sound#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:17:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eee PC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laptop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netbook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ubuntu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=239</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve noticed that on battery power the hard disk makes a clicking sound every 20 seconds or so. This symptom has been reported particularly by laptop and netbook users, including those that use Windows (though I gather it&#8217;s much less of a problem with Windows users). A quick summary of the situation. If your Eee [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve noticed that on battery power the hard disk makes a clicking sound every 20 seconds or so. This symptom has been reported particularly by laptop and netbook users, including those that use Windows (though I gather it&#8217;s much less of a problem with Windows users).</p>
<p>A quick summary of the situation. If your Eee PC has a SATA hard disk, chances are you&#8217;ve noticed this problem. The simple solution is just to disable Advanced Power Management on the hard disk all together and then get on with your life. There are plenty of other power saving features that work, but it seems that the APM is not well suited to Lucid Lynx (or vice versa).</p>
<p>Ubuntu is telling the hard disk to take it easy and not to chew too much power. But this is really just to lull it into a false sense of security as it doesn&#8217;t actually cut the drive any slack. In fact, Lucid has some services which appear to be very demanding on the hard disk. The hard disk keeps trying to take a break but Lucid keeps accessing it. The result is a drive that constantly sleeps and wakes up again (causing the click to be heard, as the disk heads park and then move back into working position again). Luckily this action was actually audible, otherwise I&#8217;d have been none the wiser, oblivious to the performance hits until my hard disk finally died from excess wear.</p>
<p>A quick search revealed the following command to instantly stop the clicking:</p>
<p><code>$ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda</code></p>
<p>Where &#8220;sda&#8221; is your SATA hard disk device of course. That command will buy you some time to figure out what&#8217;s really happening. Unless you are feeling adventurous, you&#8217;ll probably reach the same conclusion that I have. But lets work through this anyway for the sake of actually understanding a little more about what&#8217;s actually going on here.</p>
<p>The following command will tell you lots of stuff about your hard drive that you probably don&#8217;t want to have to care about:</p>
<p><code>$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda</code></p>
<p>You can find just the line we are interested in with this one:</p>
<p><code>$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "Advanced power management"</code></p>
<p>Which should yield this, since we ran hdparm with the -B 254 option&#8230;</p>
<p><code>	Advanced power management level: 254</code></p>
<p>This is what we want. But if you reboot and run that command you will see it reverts back to level 128. In fact, if you plug the power back in and then remove it, theoretically it should revert to APM level 128.</p>
<p>To find out what the hard drive has been up to, install the smartmontools package using synaptic or <code>sudo apt-get install smartmontools</code>. Then you can run this command (make sure your terminal window is nice and wide or maximised):</p>
<p><code>$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda</code></p>
<p>Cool huh? More stuff you don&#8217;t want to have to care about. But just have a look at the section titled &#8220;Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds&#8221;. On my Eee PC I had very high &#8220;RAW_VALUE&#8221; for &#8220;Load_Cycle_Count&#8221; row.</p>
<p>&#8220;Load_Cycle_Count&#8221; was 3150 and &#8220;Power_On_Hours&#8221; was only 56. So I&#8217;m assuming this means the drive has averaged one &#8220;load cycle&#8221; per minute of it&#8217;s life. Which is about right, since the clicking only happens on battery power and then it happens about every 20 seconds during this time. So if the clicks coincide with these &#8220;load cycle&#8221; thingamajigs, this would suggest it&#8217;s lived on batteries less than 1/3rd of it&#8217;s life, which is about right.</p>
<p>If you don&#8217;t like my science, or you have a different interpretation of your own threshold table then you might want to have a look at the <a target="_blank" href="https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Known_issues">SATA known issues wiki page</a>. Meanwhile, on with the show&#8230;</p>
<p>With a default Lucid Lynx installation, the APM level 128 setting is triggered by a htparm power management script that lives here&#8230; /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm. If you have another power management package installed such as laptop-mode-tools then your on your own.</p>
<p>The configuration for this and possibly other power management tools lives in /etc/hdparm.conf. To basically disable APM when running on battery power, add the following to the end of the config file&#8230;</p>
<pre><code>/dev/sda {
	apm = 254
	apm_battery = 254
}</code></pre>
<p>This tells hdparm to keep the drive at APM level 254 even when it&#8217;s running on battery power. Unfortunately, this seems to be the simplest option when running Lucid Lynx on an Eee PC. Apparently Lucid Lynx just doesn&#8217;t want to stop molesting the hard disk. Just disable APM for now. Hopefully future UNE releases will address this rather major issue.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m planning to test the battery life of the OEM Windows 7 and then compare it with Lucid Lynx without APM. I expect it to be a bit of a hit, but I get the impression it&#8217;s not worth the effort to make Lucid Lynx APM friendly. If you are feeling masochistic though, perhaps you can pick up from where this guy left off.. <a target="_blank" href="http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=85230">http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=85230</a></p>
<p>I see this as an unfortunate trade off between power consumption and performance. The performance improvement of Ubuntu still far out weighs this issue. To be fair, I first found out how to fix this problem from Windows users. Someone has ported a lot of the functionality of hdparm to a <a target="_blank" href="http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/Home">tool called quietHDD</a> to solve this for the Windows platform. At least our solution is supported and bundled with the operating system. I found it interesting anyway to know a bit more about how power management works in Ubuntu.</p>
<p>References:<br />
<a target="_blank" href="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man5/hdparm.conf.5.html">man hdparm.conf</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>ASUS Eee PC Support Forums Disabled</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/235-asus-eee-pc-support-forums-disabled</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/235-asus-eee-pc-support-forums-disabled#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:09:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eee PC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=235</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Looks like ASUS finally realised the Eee PC forums were dead, so they have quietly removed them. Well sort of. You can still visit the forums if you know the URL. From there it seems you can reply to posts, but you can&#8217;t start new threads. Not such a big deal since you will get [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Looks like ASUS finally realised the Eee PC forums were dead, so they have quietly removed them. Well sort of. You can still visit the forums if you know <a target="_blank" href="http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=20">the URL</a>. From there it seems you can reply to posts, but you can&#8217;t start new threads.</p>
<p>Not such a big deal since you will get much better support from the <a target="_blank" href="http://forum.eeeuser.com/">EeeUser forums</a> anyway. As long as this isn&#8217;t a reflection of their long term support plans for the Eee Family in general.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Dual Boot Eee PC</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/217-dual-boot-eee-pc</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/217-dual-boot-eee-pc#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:51:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eee PC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netbook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ubuntu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=217</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve done a few of these dual boot installations with impressive results from the latest Ubuntu Netbook Edition. The OEM hard drive layout seems to be quite common across models. Here I&#8217;ll document a general approach to take to get your Eee PC set up with dual boot Windows and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Make sure [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve done a few of these dual boot installations with impressive results from the latest <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook">Ubuntu Netbook Edition</a>. The OEM hard drive layout seems to be quite common across models. Here I&#8217;ll document a general approach to take to get your Eee PC set up with dual boot Windows and Ubuntu Netbook Edition.</p>
<p>Make sure you have updated the firmware using the little ASUS updater tool that comes with the OEM Windows. You can find it in the start menu. Here&#8217;s the screen shot from the 1005P model&#8230;</p>
<p><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TBnl7ETJNnI/AAAAAAAAArQ/qe6qsRmeuJA/s800/StartMenuASUSUpdate.png" alt="ASUSUpdate in start menu" /></p>
<p>Incidentally, this was the first time I&#8217;ve touched Windows 7. Nice to know it&#8217;s possible to get the classic theme happening, but that didn&#8217;t seem to speed it up much. I must admit it seemed to perform a little better than Windows XP. The browser didn&#8217;t just hang like it did on my Windows XP Eee Top when I visited some flash intensive sites. Still, it was far less responsive than Ubuntu.</p>
<p>The BIOS update tool is very straight forward. Just be patient while it finds your latest BIOS, downloads and installs it. Having the latest BIOS image generally results in better device support from Ubuntu out of the box.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA4qUQoOZNI/AAAAAAAAAq8/LlTWCt2LPSY/s800/updater.png" alt="ASUSUpdate tool" /></p>
<p>The next thing to do, follow steps 1 &#038; 2 from here&#8230; <a target="_blank" href="http://www.Ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download">http://www.Ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download</a></p>
<p>Once you have a USB device with an Ubuntu image on it, insert the USB drive and reboot. During the boot process, usually while Eee PC logo is displayed, press and hold the ESC button. A blue boot menu will eventually be displayed. Select the USB device and press &#8220;Enter&#8221; to boot the Ubuntu installer image. Once it starts up, click &#8220;Try Ubuntu-Netbook 10.04&#8243; and wait for the desktop to load.</p>
<p>Now you need to run Gnome Partition Editor. You can either find it under the System menu, or press Alt+F2 and type &#8220;gparted&#8221; and hit &#8220;Enter&#8221;. The screenshot below may be of some assistance in confirming your actions are correct.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA4qUIrSBwI/AAAAAAAAAq0/DEA_Gh54sCc/s800/gparted.png" alt="Lucid Lynx gparted" /></p>
<p>Now if you wait a moment you will see a graphical representation of the partitions on your hard disk. It will vaguely resemble something like this.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA4qUFiXfFI/AAAAAAAAAqs/bmbaxEa0Mpw/s800/Asus.png" alt="Eee PC OEM partitions" /></p>
<p>There are two partitions you&#8217;ll want to hang on to. The first one contains OEM Windows (the &#8220;C:&#8221; drive), the second one is a handy recovery image. If you use Windows to browse the net, you&#8217;ll be needing that recovery image to clean out all the root kits and trojans from time to time. Otherwise you might want to keep it in case you ever want to sell the Eee PC to a Windows user who wants a clean image.</p>
<p>Ubuntu needs you to add two new partitions minimum, a swap partition and one for the root directory. Unfortunately, you can only have 4 partitions on the drive, so the last two just have to go.</p>
<p>Optionally, the Windows partition can be reduced in size, this is especially useful if you don&#8217;t plan to use it very often. I tend to shrink it to about twice the size of the currently used space. After resizing the Windows partition you&#8217;ll need to move the recovery partition so it&#8217;s flush against the Windows partition. You can use Gnome Partition Editor to do all these things, so have a play. If you do the wrong thing click the undo button in the tool bar. Once you have something that looks similar to below, press the Apply button (the big tick). It will take some time to perform the operations. Be patient and make sure the netbook it not running on battery power at the time as these operations could be destructive if they fail.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA4qUA6tfXI/AAAAAAAAAqw/RerPjiF-r4o/s800/Ubuntu.png" alt="Eee PC dual-boot partitions" /></p>
<p>If you have resized the Windows partition, Windows will perform a disk check the next time you boot it. This is to be expected, just be patient and let it do it&#8217;s thing. It will eventually complete the check and reboot. Windows will start fine.</p>
<p>The next step is to install Ubuntu. From the menu, click &#8220;Install Ubuntu-Netbook 10.04&#8243; from the favourites menu. The Wizard will firstly prompt you for your language, timezone and keyboard layout. When you get to step 4, Partitions, select the last option as seen here.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA45f5NbR5I/AAAAAAAAArE/I6wEJ7XQyNc/s800/partitions.png" alt="Eee PC dual-boot Lucid Lynx installer partitions" /></p>
<p>On the next screen all you need to do is set the EXT4 partition as the root as seen below.</p>
<p><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_fPD0YWoytOI/TA45gNcsxAI/AAAAAAAAArI/TgkzvKzLt40/s800/setRoot.png" alt="Lucid Lynx installer setting root partition" /></p>
<p>Then just follow the bouncing ball to begin the installation process. Sit back and enjoy the progress bar and obligatory forced advertising as it completes.</p>
<p>Once it&#8217;s installed, reboot. You will notice a 10 second menu to select between Ubuntu and Windows. Firstly, some notes about the GRUB menu. The last Windows entry is usually the Windows recovery tool. Don&#8217;t use this tool unless you really need to recover your Windows installation. Recovering Windows will lock you out of this boot menu, and you will have to use the USB boot image to recover it in order to regain access to Ubuntu (see <a target="_blank" href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows">Recovering Ubuntu After Installing Windows</a>). I&#8217;ve also noticed on the Eee Top that the Windows partition becomes hidden and Windows will not boot after recovery. You can easily use gparted to remove the hidden flag from the partition if this is the case. But enough about Windows.</p>
<p>Boot into Ubuntu (just wait 10 seconds, or press &#8220;Enter&#8221;). Now visit the <a target="_blank" href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks">HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks</a> page and find the model of your Eee PC. Here you will find useful information about getting better device support for your particular model. Or if your model is not listed, add an entry with notes about how perfectly it works.</p>
<p>Enjoy the superior performance of an Ubuntu Eee PC.</p>
<p>Update June 17, 2010: Please ensure you do have a look at the hardware support page linked above. There are some important changes to make to the grub config you&#8217;ll need to perform to get hotkeys working correctly. On top of this, check out my recent post on <a href="239-eee-pc-clicking-sound">clicking noises and disabling APM</a>. You may need this too if you have a clicking SATA hard drive.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Ubuntu on Touchscreen Eee Top</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/188-ubuntu-on-touchscreen-eeetop</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/188-ubuntu-on-touchscreen-eeetop#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:08:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Consumer Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eee PC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eee Top]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Touchscreen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ubuntu]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well it&#8217;s been a while, but I once again have a useful nugget of information for the world. I bought a cheap Eee Top last year, and installed Ubuntu on it. It did have a few minor dramas. I wasted days trying to get the touchscreen working, with limited and unreliable results. I actually suspect [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Well it&#8217;s been a while, but I once again have a useful nugget of information for the world. I bought a cheap Eee Top last year, and installed Ubuntu on it. It did have a few minor dramas. I wasted days trying to get the touchscreen working, with limited and unreliable results. I actually suspect Ubuntu was having issues with the USB bus since I was getting spammed with dmsg log entries in the terminal window. Sometimes my USB keyboard or mouse would stop working.</p>
<p>Anyway it was depressing and I don&#8217;t want to go into it too much now I&#8217;ve got my mojo back on the latest version of Ubuntu, which is working awesomely. This time it took me only 30 minutes to find some working instructions to get the touchscreen up and running. No package compiling required this time, though there was xorg config file hacking involved.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the procedure on an out of the box Lucid Lynx install. Install the evtouch driver.</p>
<pre>$ sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-evtouch
</pre>
<p>Tell udev to create us the symlink for the touchscreen device.</p>
<pre>$ echo 'echo KERNEL==\"event*\", SUBSYSTEM==\"input\", ATTRS{idVendor}==\"1bfd\", ATTRS{idProduct}==\"1688\", SYMLINK+=\"input/evtouch\" &gt; /etc/udev/rules.d/69-touchscreen.rules' | sudo sh</pre>
<p>Now I was surprised to discover I didn&#8217;t have an xorg.conf file. I found you can generate one with &#8220;﻿﻿<code>X -configure</code>&#8221; command. The catch is you need to kill GDM before you do so. So here&#8217;s the drill:</p>
<p><strong>Ctrl+Alt+F1</strong> and login to the terminal</p>
<pre>$ sudo killall gdm-binary</pre>
<pre>$ sudo X -configure</pre>
<p>Now copy the generated <code>xorg.conf.new</code> to <code>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</code>.</p>
<p>Edit xorg.conf so it looks similar to mine (changes highlighted):</p>
<pre><code>Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
	<span style="background-color:yellow">InputDevice    "Touch0"</span>
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
	FontPath     "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
	FontPath     "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "dri2"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "record"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

<span style="background-color:yellow">Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Touch0"
	Driver		"evtouch"
	Option		"device"	"/dev/input/evtouch"
	Option		"MinX"	"1"
	Option		"MinY"	"1"
	Option		"MaxX"	"4096"
	Option		"MaxY"	"4096"
	Option		"ReportingMode" "Raw"
	Option	"Emulate3Buttons" "false"
	Option	"Emulate3Timeout" "50"
	Option	"SendCoreEvents" "on"
	Option	"MoveLimit" "0"
EndSection</span>

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
	ModelName    "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, &lt;f&gt;: float, &lt;bool&gt;: "True"/"False",
        ### &lt;string&gt;: "String", &lt;freq&gt;: "&lt;f&gt; Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"            	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "SWcursor"           	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "ColorKey"           	# <i>
        #Option     "CacheLines"         	# <i>
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"            	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "DRI"                	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "NoDDC"              	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "ShowCache"          	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"       	# <i>
        #Option     "PageFlip"           	# [&lt;bool&gt;]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "intel"
	VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
	BoardName   "Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
	BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     1
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     4
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection</code></pre>
<p>And that&#8217;s that. Reboot.</p>
<p>References:</p>
<p><a href="http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ASUS_EeeTop_ET1602" target="_blank">http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ASUS_EeeTop_ET1602</a></p>
<p><a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1428788" target="_blank">http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1428788</a></p>
<p>I&#8217;m going to have to post soon about my experiences with Lucid Lynx so far, now that the dust has well and truly settled. There is not much to criticise that I have come across, but I have a new found approach to distribution upgrades to share. I&#8217;ve also completely given up on KDE in favour of Gnome with Cairo Dock.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>KDE or not KDE? That is the question&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/181-kde-or-not-kde-that-is-the-question</link>
		<comments>http://ubergeeky.com/blog/181-kde-or-not-kde-that-is-the-question#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:27:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Psylem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KDE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ubergeeky.com/blog/?p=181</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been gradually catching up with a lot of the rants on the net with respect to KDE3.5 vs. KDE4. Some less sane than others. I came to the debate quite late it seems, and it&#8217;s something I&#8217;m not pleased with even having to care about to tell the truth. Suddenly now I find my [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve been gradually catching up with a lot of the rants on the net with respect to KDE3.5 vs. KDE4. Some less sane than others. I came to the debate quite late it seems, and it&#8217;s something I&#8217;m not pleased with even having to care about to tell the truth. Suddenly now I find my self having to understand the developers philosophies and getting to know some of the more vocal egos on both sides of the fence. After grasping a better idea of what&#8217;s happened, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll ever be completely sold on KDE4. But after reading some more <a href="http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2009/08/next-for-sainthood-kde-developers.html" target="_blank">compassionate words on the topic</a> today, I think I&#8217;ve finally come to terms with the situation.</p>
<p>In the KDE developers defence, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s possible for complete overhauls of software to ever be embraced whole heartedly by the userbase. Particularly not right away. I will continue to resent the fact that Kubuntu took up KDE4 so soon. I liked KDE3.5 because it was a work of art, but also because it was fully functional and intuitive for anyone who is used to MS Windows. At that time I couldn&#8217;t understand why Ubuntu picked Gnome for the flagship considering KDE3.5 was so much more suited winning over the users afflicted by <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1" target="_blank">Bug #1</a>. My first impression when KDE4.1 was thrust upon me was of some retarded mutant desktop environment from a future that I don&#8217;t care to participate in. KDE4 turned my entire desktop experience inside out!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not going to pretend that I&#8217;m not a stubborn person. I like to work in a particular way which I&#8217;ve refined over years, dating back to MS DOS and Windows 3.1. I switched to Linux because some of the more restrictive and intrusive features in Windows Vista had well and truly crossed the line as far as I was concerned. I wanted to get back to a basic desktop without all the useless eye-candy. KDE3.5 was the best fit for me at the time.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m quite busy as well. I soon learnt with Linux distro&#8217;s, every time there is a distribution upgrade to postpone it for at least a month and ensure I dedicate a couple days after it to get myself settled back in. With KDE4 it was more like a couple of weeks of pointless frustration. Wrestling with KDE4 just proved to be too much hassle for me at work and I&#8217;ve now fully switched over to Gnome. I found it easier to customise to my liking than KDE4. At home I&#8217;m still on KDE4.2 because it doesn&#8217;t matter so much if I&#8217;m spending 6 hours trying to figure out how to customise the desktop theme in vein, and I still hold out for a glimmer of hope that the developers may resolve some of my issues with it.</p>
<p>KDE4 is not easy or intuitive to use. I don&#8217;t like this widget based desktop paradigm and I don&#8217;t understand how it&#8217;s useful in anyway. Most of the time my desktop is hidden by windows anyway. I have to wonder if KDE4 was ever designed for using or if it&#8217;s just for looking at. KDE4 is a contradiction in my eyes. To be a desktop environment which gets in the way of letting users do what they want, yet to do so in the name of flexibility is bizarre. It makes me anxious and I don&#8217;t like it.</p>
<p>I still see KDE4 as the lavalamp of the desktop environment world. It chews a lot of power and looks pretty, but it&#8217;s not all that useful. You also have to be careful about touching it because you might get burnt. I have a feeling it&#8217;s the new development philosophy that&#8217;s flawed, but I can&#8217;t quite put my finger on what that flaw is as yet. I think I&#8217;ve reached a turning point in my thinking about KDE4 now though, and I find my self walking peacefully in the opposite direction.</p>
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