My experiment with dark themes

There are two things that I have never changed in my Mandriva installation. They are the GTK theme and the Metacity window decoration. Mandriva’s default GTK theme, in my opinion, is one of the best default themes on a Linux desktop. Recently, I wanted to test how some of the dark themes measured against it. I would like to mention that I have a strong dislike for darker themes and this is one of the reasons I want to use it and see if I can come out good after a week or so. So, I embarked upon an experiment to use a top dark GTK theme and see how things work out after a period of a week or two.

I downloaded the Shiki-Colors GTK and Metacity themes and installed them. Shiki colors is one of the top themes on gnome-look.org. I already use the GNOME-Colors icon theme which is one of the best icon themes around. After all the setup, my desktop looked something like this.

My Desktop

As far as the experience was concerned, I breezed through Day 1 – the day I changed everything. However, on Day 2, as my laptop booted, I was a bit surprised first and then realized I had changed everything the previous day. Guess I have not got used to the dark theme yet . Let me see how it turns out at the end of the week

Add Facebook chat to Pidgin on Mandriva 2009.1

I would like to have all my chat accounts logged in from one place. If you are like me and would like to have Facebook chat support to Pidgin on Mandriva 2009.1, here are the steps.

1. Download the facebook chat plugin for Mandriva from here. Select the correct platform.

2. Install the plugin (normally by double clicking on it and choosing Install in the box that pops up). Enter root password if prompted

3. Start Pidgin

4. Go to Accounts > Manage Accounts > Add

5. A new Facebook entry would be available under the Protocol list.

Facebook support for Pidgin

World Environment Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day. What did I do? I planted a tree. It was one among the 500 trees that my colleagues and I had planted. Though this was not the first tree I planted, this was the first mass tree planting exercise I was involved in.

Dropbox on Mandriva Spring 2009.1

Dropbox is an online file storage service with 2 GB of free space. More space can be purchased or obtained for free by referring friends. As a long time user of Box.net, Dropbox, with both web based and an installable client interfaces, was just right for me and provided everything I wished for from the free service of Box.net. Of late, I was trying to install Dropbox on my Mandriva Spring 2009.1 system but ended with a failure each time. Finally, with a little help from here, I managed to install Dropbox and am happily accessing and syncing my files from various locations. So, here is a nice screenshot of Dropbox running on Mandy.

Dropbox

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring – First Impressions

A few days back, Mandriva released the newest version of its operating system, Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring. As I had already taken a

Mandriva Logo

look at the Release Candidate 2, I know pretty much what was in store. I wanted to setup this new release and get it running as quickly as possible even though the previous version Mandriva 2009 was working like a charm on my laptop. It was by far the most stable OS to have run on my laptop.

Live CD

I downloaded the Mandriva One GNOME Live CD. GNOME has been my default desktop for a few years now and that is what would eventually reside on my laptop. I also downloaded the Mandriva One KDE Live CD to see what changes have gone into KDE 4.2. The Live CD booted pretty fast. The speed bump was already visible in the RC and I was glad to see it stayed that way.

Installation

The installation took about 12 minutes on my laptop. This machine is a 2 year old, Dell Inspiron 6400, with an Intel Core 2 Duo clocking 1.73 GHz, 1 GB RAM and an Intel 945 GMA graphics chip and an Intel 3945 Wireless. I chose the new ext4 file system for the root and home partition. The post installation step of updating the media is where I met my first stumbling block. It seemed to take forever to download the media, but once I pulled my ethernet cable out, things proceeded smoothly. I had to update the media later.

Boot Time

I timed the boot with a stop watch. It took me 36 seconds from the grub menu to the desktop. I don’t have any complaints here. I can see that a lot of improvement has gone into the boot process and it really shows. I guess the ext4 file system would also have helped in this regard, though I have no means to measure it.

Desktop

There is no denying the fact that Mandriva has one of the best looking default themes around. I rarely changed the theme or the window

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring - Customized Desktop

decoration on Mandy. The only thing I change is the icon theme, since the default GNOME icon theme has become old and boring. Carrying on the tradition, the desktop was slick. The fonts were crisp and have been improved from what existed in the previous version. An idle desktop after boot, consumed about 285 MB of RAM. I also did not install AWN since the auto hide feature did not work well and ended up being intrusive at best. The Mandriva Control Center remains one of the best control centers on the Linux desktop and serves as a one stop shop for all configuration requirements.

Applications

Mandriva comes with kernel 2.6.29.1 and a regular array of software that comprises of the GNOME desktop. However, here are the specifics for a few of them

• GNOME 2.26.1
• OpenOffice.org – 3.0.1
• Mozilla Firefox – 3.0.8
• Pidgin – 2.5.5
• The GIMP – 2.6

Flash is available in the One edition. However, Java runtime, audio and video codecs have to be installed as is the case with most distributions. Additional software is a always a couple of clicks away in the Install and Remove Software section.

The KDE Edition

I also had a quick look at the KDE edition. Last time around Mandriva’s KDE implementation was very polished compared to the rest. This

Mandriva Spring 2009 KDE Desktop

time too I would say the same. They have also put the desktop which everyone is used to – where one kept files too – back into KDE 4.2 in quite a clever way by using Folder View. The KDE desktop also uses the default Mandriva theme instead of the KDE default Oxygen theme. This edition comes with the regular KDE applications, Kontact, Konqueror, Kopete, Kwrite to name a few.

Conclusion

One of the biggest improvements in my opinion is, I never had to consult the Errata. Also, never once was I required to visit the terminal (command line) for any accomplishing any task whatsoever. Almost all the things work the way they should. The One CD image was only 633 MB for the Africa and Asia edition. The available CD space could have been packed with something useful. On the whole, Mandriva Spring 2009 is a solid release with a great blend of stability and polish.

Screenshots

Here are a few screenshots of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring – GNOME

A quick look at Mandriva 2009.1 RC2

A few days ago, Mandriva released the RC2 version of Mandriva 2009.1. Release Candidates more or less contain the

Mandriva Logo

final set of packages and I thought it was a good time to check what is contained in the new version which would eventually find its way to my laptop.

Mandriva 2009.1 RC2 can be downloaded from various mirrors listed in the wiki. I am a GNOME user and hence I downloaded the GNOME variant. I was also keen to see what the newer version of GNOME 2.26 offered.

First Impressions

The Live CD booted much faster than the previous versions. I did not time it but it was definitely faster. The boot

Mandriva Boot Screen

screen also revealed new artwork which I like better than the one in Mandriva 2009. Apart from the looks, the system was as stable as any other Mandriva release.

Software

• Kernel: 2.6.29-desktop586-1mnb
• GNOME 2.26.0
• OpenOffice.org 3.0.1

In addition to the regular stuff like Firefox and Pidgin, Inkscape, Cheese and Kino are included by default.

Mandriva 2009.1 Desktop

Fixes

• Printer config has been included in the Mandriva Control Center. It was a major oversight in the previous release and good to see that this has been fixed.

Misses

• The Live CD, as if a tradition, does not shut down properly. This time the disc is ejected but the computer does not shut down.
• Compiz Fusion did not work completely while using the Live CD. The window title bars were not visible but otherwise it looked ok.
• Another major problem I noticed was Ctrl + Alt + Backspace did not restart X.

Evolution – Email Client

I was very keen to see how Evolution imported Microsoft Outlook PST files and it did a fairly good job. However, there was something odd about the way the imported emails were displayed. The mails were shown in plain text first and then as I scrolled down, the complete HTML version was available. I am not sure whether this is a bug or feature so I reserve comment.

The calendar items imported from the PST file were nicely placed in their respective time slots on the Evolution Calendar. They were still available as emails in one of the folder, the purpose of which I did not understand.

Neither of the above noted items are Mandriva’s fault, though.

Conclusion

Though there are a few glitches in the RC2, I hope Mandriva would fix those in time for the release and deliver a yet another solid release.

The weekend

The past couple of months have been really busy and I could not post as often as I wish I could. I know I have abused this excuse

This weekend I am planning for two things

1. Play around with Mandriva 2009.1 Spring RC2 release and record my findings

2. Read a bit of Rainbow Six. Though I have played the game a long time back, reading a book is much different.

I am all set. Have a great weekend

Backup Disaster

I thought it was quite sometime since I backed up the memory card on my Nokia N81 phone and decided that I should not delay the backup. So, I pulled the 2 GB Micro SD card out of the phone, inserted it into the adapter and the adapter into a card reader and the card reader itself into a USB port. Mandriva had no problems detecting the card. The card was mounted and a nautilus window opened up.

Problem 1: Copying files from the card to the computer kept failing. I had a look at the folder which was causing the problem. There were a lot of folders with names that could not be read. Either they had ASCII characters beyond the human readable range or just a box. I decided to leave things as they are and copied just the photos and the videos on the card.

Problem 2: The next problem arose when I put the card back into my phone. The card was not even recognised. I tried to restart the phone but in vain. Neither the photos nor the tracks showed up on the phone. To make matters worse, the phone became dead slow and stopped responding in a while.

I was left with no option but to reformat the card. This also helped in clearing out a lot of garbage that came with it when I purchased the phone. I noticed that the filesystem was FAT16. I formatted the card to FAT32 knowing that it would work since my previous Nokia models like 6233 and 6600 supported FAT32. I don’t know why in this day and age, a storage device is formatted as FAT16 by default.

I put the card back into the phone and visited the gallery. The gallery was empty but atleast there were no signs of trouble. I removed the card and put it back into the reader. Now I had the default folders created. I copied the photos, videos and music tracks back and put the card into the phone. It works like a charm now. I ended up formatting the card just because I tried to back it up. Phew, what a day!

Dreamlinux 3.5 – Screenshot

I was trying Dreamlinux 3.5 Desktop Edition based on the XFCE desktop environment. Here is a screenshot of DL 3.5 running on VirtualBox OSE

Dreamlinux 3.5

I just Slax’d my USB drive

After trying out Slax yesterday, I did the obvious. I wanted to carry it around with me and so I Slax’d (did I coin a new term? ) my almost three year old Kingston Data Traveler 2GB drive. I emptied the drive contents on another drive and installed Slax on it.

I extracted the TAR ball to the drive and executed bootinst.sh but there was a problem with the installation. I moved the /boot and /slax directories to the root of the drive and then ran bootinst.sh and this time everything went well. I booted the Slax from its new home and voila I had an OS with the most necessary tools at my finger tips.

However, there were a few hiccups. I downloaded two modules, Firefox and Amarok. The modules came with warnings that they may not work properly but I still went ahead and installed both of them. Amarok refused to start but Firefox behaved well. I set the network IP as mine is a static IP and played around a while. I was really curious about the settings getting saved. So I rebooted with my USB drive again.

Firefox was nowhere to be found. Amarok would still not start. Well, these modules are add-ons and may not work well and I was indeed warned ahead. But what surprised me was the static IP, Subnet mask and Gateway addresses had disappeared leaving only the Primary DNS IP intact. I am not sure what is wrong but I am definitely going to investigate. I could live with Konqueror, if, I was only going to use Slax as a recovery/emergency OS but since I am planning to use it as a regular OS on my older computer, Firefox becomes a necessity. I also need a good music player and JuK by no stretch of imagination is comparable to Amarok.

I still have to try the other included programs. Will keep posting about my discoveries on Slax