Top 10 lists...

In general I hate these "top 10" lists, but this one I found today caught my eye since it is very practical, nothing fancy, just the "what you need" to get the most out of your everyday relaxation on Linux.

10 Essential Linux Applications for Daily Use

Mine is quite similar with only a few differences:
1. Music player - MP3Blaster
2. Web browser - Firefox
3. CD/DVD burning application - K3B
4. Video player - Kaffeine
5. Image editor - Gimp
6. BitTorrent client - Ktorrent
7. IRC client - Xchat / irssi
8. Terminal application - Yakuake
9. Image viewer - Eye of GNOME
10. text editor - Nano

Basically the same, now go have some fun exploring your own favourites!

Mozilla Firefox QT port!

LinuNow this has to be interresting! A qt port of Firefox!

I really do not like GTK so this is a huge blessing for me. Check out the site:
Not much to look at

And here is the WIKI for the Ubuntu freaks (strange that you would install a qt port on a GTK based distro...)

The people who use Gentoo and similar distros know what to do, just read through the wiki and apply what is needed.
I'll be hacking away at it in a few moments and hopefully there is some mayor improvements over the GTK version.

KDE 4.1 panels "hack"

We have all seen the KDE 4.1 task manager and the panels, and one of the hotest disputed topics, the fact that it lacks so much in being able to be customized. Luckily there is Plasma and plasmoids.

I'm pretty sure whatever you would like done, there will be a plasmoid for it, like multiple lines in the task manager?
Multirows in the task manager!

I'll keep on looking for some more of these goodies, but just a ray of hope, seems like plasma is going to be a great success for KDE 4, even saving the devs some face on the end of the day...

E-sword

Linux and E-sword, what could one have asked for as a Christian than this great Bible program to work on Linux?!

I know I already covered it, but since last year allot has changed for the better, and now you can even install additions and modules directly into E-sword without using a Windows PC to first extract the modules, great!

There are alternatives, but none of them boast even remotely as large a library of collections and Bibles as E-sword. Allow me to copy from an Ubuntu forum post and shed some light on how to get this going in Linux:

Install Wine
Follow instruction below, choose your distro:

Code:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You could download the program and other addons here:

http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html

Create "bottle" for Esword:

Code:

wineprefixcreate --prefix .wine_Esword

Install the program:

Make sure the setup798.exe is in you home folder. Otherwise, you should cd to the location first, for example "cd Desktop" if the setup797.exe is on your Desktop.

Code:

 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine setup798.exe

Download msls31.dll to your ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32 from here:

http://www.dlldump.com

(Search msls31.dll and download it. If you download it somewhere else, you need to copy it to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32)


Copy riched20.dll from ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/Program Files/e-Sword to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32

Code:

 cp ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/Program\ Files/e-Sword/riched20.dll ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32

Make sure all the above dlls in lower case. If they are in upper case, rename them to lower case.

In winecfg set riched20.dll and oleaut32.dll to native. IMPORTANT: Do not run winecfg from menu, as it would run default winecfg. Please use terminal to run winecfg for this bottle:

Code:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword winecfg

Press the Libraries tab > type riched20.dll > press add > press edit > choose Native (windows).
Do the same for oleaut32.dll.

Type:

Code:

 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine "C:\Program Files\e-Sword\e-Sword.exe"

to run it. Or, you could use the launcher created on desktop.

To install addons, run in terminal:

Make sure the bbe.exe is in you home folder. Otherwise, you should cd to the location first, for example "cd Desktop" if the bbe.exe is on your Desktop.

Code:

 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine bbe.exe

If it shows only blue screen, press [alt+tab] to switch to installation windows. You may need to press [alt+tab] again every time after you press next.

The above example is to install bbe.exe. You could install other addons using above overrides, just replace bbe.exe.


Change Icon on Launcher.
The launcher created already use e-Sword icon. But if you want to use other icon, follow below step:
Right click the launcher and choose properties.
After that click on the wine icon, it will open a windows.
Navigates to the icon file you want.
If the icon you want did not appear in the navigation windows, change the extension to png.
You could download and use attached 2 icons as well (original e-sword icons) if you like.


Add more fonts
To add more fonts, copy whatever fonts you have to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/fonts.
If it still not appear in e-sword, it might be due to file permission problem. What you have to do is to open terminal (application>accesories>terminal), and then issue below command:

Code:

chmod 777 -R ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/fonts

The fonts should now available for E-sword to use.

Increase font size for E-sword menu
If you find e-Sword application font itself (ie. the font for "menu, edit, format, etc") is too small, what you can do is:

Open terminal (Application>Accesories>Terminal)
Open wine configuration editor from terminal:

Code:

 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword winecfg

Click graphics tab.

At below, there is a screen resolution slider, the default is 96 dpi. Slide the slider to higher dpi. Be carefull though to use too big value as GlennW reported the winecfg become to big to fit to the screen when he use maximum value (120 dpi). Click apply and then ok.

Open your e-sword, if it is too big, you could repeat the above steps, adjusting the slider to whatever number (between 96 to 120).

Troubleshooting
If you encounter a weird problem, possibly there are some wine processes in the memory. To get rid of these processes, you could
1. reboot your computer,
or
2. kill wine related processes using system monitor:
From menu: system >> Sytem monitor >> click "processes" tab.
Kill all processes related to wine, including all exe processes.
or
3. Open terminal, and run below command (one at a time):

Code:

killall wine
killall wineserver
killall wine-preloader

With many thanks to the Ubuntu forums:
http://sudan.ubuntuforums.com/showthread.php?t=404042

Matrix incompatibilities

How true!
We need a nice big "Firefox" logo in the sky!

Overconfidence

KDE 4.1!

I just came across a very interesting screencast hi-lighting the differences between KDE 4.0 and 4.1.
From what I have seen in the screencast it has really struck a cord with me, making me excited (at last) as to the direction the KDE team is taking with KDE 4.

Some features to note:

• There is now much better support for plasma and plasmoids.
  It seems, from the cast, that there has been some mayor improvements in this department. I especially like the new plasmoid that lets you choose a few files to be placed on the Desktop, sort of a bookmark type view of short cuts to your data. Themeing plasma has also now been made easier with an own theme manager and on the whole it just looks like it might just work!
• Seconds, they have given more attention to the taskbar/panel. Some of the biggest criticism was that you cannot configure it all, or the options is very limited. They have now addressed this and it seems like there are some more new features added to this. It's still not on par with KDE 3 and the massive amount of configuration you can throw at it, but it is moving ahead nicely. I predict that FULL customization is now only a matter of time, and as soon as they have the time I'm sure they will improve this even further.
• It seems that kwin has also been revamped under the bonnet. One big flaw to the whole Compiz fad for me is that it renders your desktop useless for other GFX intensive tasks, like gaming. Try and game on a desktop that has Compiz enabled, it is impossible, so far. I hope they have at least tried and made the whole engine in kwin a bit more streamlined, it is stable, I have no doubt about that, but for gamers it is impractical. I have no idea how Vista handles it's eye candy, so maybe it is just possible to get around this?
  A thing that really bothered me was that transparency is only possible when you have Compiz enabled, and being a gamer I never had this enabled, short for a few test runs here and there. The whole "eye candy" argument and design of KDE 4 is heavily based on this, have they even given a thought to people who cannot use it because of said short comings??

On a whole I'm very excited and I'm sure you will be as well, here's looking to bright KDE future!

Screen shot!

It has been a while since I last posted a screen shot, so here we go!

Nothing much has changed the last couple of months, except updating KDE and all the nice add-ons (yakuake, kbfx, etc.)

Clean:

Bussy:

Oh well, there you have it. It's been hard getting new and decent KDE 3.x themes since KDE 4 launched, but I'm still far more comfortable with KDE 3 and think I'll wait a couple of months till I try KDE 4 again...
:-)