KDE 4, reprise

23/05/2009 at 22:45 · Filed under Uncategorized

Perhaps because I was somewhat bored, I decided to reinstall KDE 4. Now that Fedora version has been updated to 4.2.3 I expected that it would be more stable than the last time I tried it (that is, 2 months ago). I am not disappointed. It is much more stable right now.

Konqueror is fast, although it fails with a few websites (including this very blog’s WordPress dashboard, so I am forced to use Firefox to write this post). Kontact seems nice, although I wish there is a way to synchronise the calendar and contacts to some free online service that is available (Google Calendar sync, for example, will be welcome).

I am also somewhat annoyed that I have to use GNOME-based system tools to administer my laptop. Oh well.

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Searching for a new smartphone

29/04/2009 at 06:14 · Filed under Uncategorized

My Sony Ericsson M600i is great for the Rp 1,5 million that I paid for. But it was built in 2006 and it already shows its age. It is very slow when opening emails, and can barely multitask. I am beginning to use mails more intensively and this is a bother.

So I am searching for a new smartphone now. The phone should have good e-mail capability. Friends and foes alike will scream “BlackBerry” to me. However, I have tried out and tested several BlackBerry handsets and concluded that the hardware was not that great. The BlackBerry Connect service is the key to the success of BlackBerry handsets, and I am rather reluctant to subscribe to the BlackBerry plan.

Other features that I’d like to have:

  • SyncML synchronisation
  • Good PIM capabilities
  • Able to sync to Mac OS X 10.4. Linux synchronisation will be nice, but not essential (it is already covered by SyncML.
  • Wi-Fi (should be standard by now)
  • QWERTY keyboard
  • Office software already bundled. Documents to Go is the best, however the version bundled with BlackBerries only functions as a viewer. QuickOffice found in Nokias and Sony Ericssons sucks.

I am eyeing several models, but haven’t decided any yet.

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Trying out Spicebird

27/03/2009 at 06:08 · Filed under Uncategorized

So, Spicebird has blogging capability. W00t!

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So, KDE 4.2

03/03/2009 at 01:43 · Filed under Uncategorized

I have been using KDE 4 with Fedora 10 for three days now. It has nice concepts (I like activities), but surely too buggy.
A few things I missed from GNOME:

  1. A tool for PIM synchronisation to SyncML servers. No syncevolution for you! Of course I can still use Evolution, but I’d prefer Kontact.

  2. Native working system configuration tools. Fedora tools seems geared for GNOME. For example, I have a problem with mounting removable drives, which seems can be solved by changing a policy in PolicyKit. But no usable PolicyKit for KDE, and I can’t call PolicyKit-gnome. In the end, I have to use command line.

  3. The simple interface

    4. The GNOME interface is often accused as dumbed-down. But it is surely easy to use, and I can get to work in no time.

  4. A good browser. Konqueror cannot handle some sites, such as Gmail.

I wonder whether I’ll just switch back to GNOME. But KDE seems promising, if they just only can stomp some more bugs.

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OpenSolaris revisited

21/01/2009 at 06:50 · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

I have tried out OpenSolaris before, and my impression it was just not interesting enough for a mere desktop user like me. Sure, it has some seemly cool features, like DTrace and ZFS. However, DTrace is aimed for developers. And there weren’t any good applications that showcases the power of ZFS.

It also has power management problems for a sole laptop user like me. It wasn’t able to hibernate, or suspend. Which kind of sucks. The package repository is sparse compared to Linux distros like Fedora, Ubuntu or Debian.

All that said, I am always open to trying new things. So when I read that new version of OpenSolaris has been released last November, I ordered the free LiveCD. It took some time to arrive, and it took even longer time for me to try out, because I am quite busy. But now I think I can write some initial impression.

First, it is pretty looking. Okay, that was rather shallow. But it is nice to have. It also doesn’t have problems with my hardware, except perhaps webcam (which is troublesome even on Linux). It doesn’t support suspend out of the box. Sun said they only activated suspend support on certain hardware, and my laptop is not one of them. Still, after some googling I can enable the suspend support, which seems to work without problems.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 uses standard GNOME desktop, which may or may not be an advantage. It is certainly familiar for me. Sun includes some standard applications found in typical Linux distros, such as Rhythmbox, Totem Video Player, Mozilla Firefox and Pidgin Internet Messenger. However, Sun cannot decide between Evolution and Thunderbird, so they choose too bundle both. Sun also don’t include any word processor or spreadsheet applications, which is a kind of warning to desktop users.

However you can easily install OpenOffice.org suite using the Package Manager, whose interface reminds me of Synaptic from Debian/Ubuntu.

Package management in OpenSolaris is still a thing I am yet to master. That is, I can’t do it from the command line yet. Meanwhile I am managing it from the GUI.

Sun integrate a nice a “Time Machine” snapshot feature to Nautilus, which I suspect is uses ZFS. It is nice that there is a good, albeit simple, application that utilises the powerful features of the filesystem.

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At the WordCamp

18/01/2009 at 06:52 · Filed under Uncategorized

I was actually reluctant to come. But here I am, sitting in the dark in a room at Erasmus Huis, the Dutch cultural center in Jakarta, watching a young man singing a song from Chrisye at the Indonesia WordCamp event, waiting to interview the WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg.

There are also several prominent Indonesian blogger present. Actually, not-so-prominent to me, because I don’t exactly recall their name, except Enda Nasution who I already know from college. I also met Ikram, who are also doing reporting jobs as I am.

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My personal email setup

16/01/2009 at 06:31 · Filed under debian, evolution, linux ·Tagged

Unix has various powerful email tools. Unfortunately for me, most of it forces you to use command line or edit configuration files, which sounds unnecessary for a mere desktop user like me.

However, I find that I am using those tools because the weaknesses of my GUI email client, Evolution. It is a nice app, but it is very slow and often get unresponsive when handling IMAP. Combined to the fact that I often have slow ‘net connection, using it to read email sometimes is quite painful. Console email clients like mutt or even (Al)pine are perhaps faster, but I like the integration of evolution to PIM functions and the rest of GNOME desktop.

My first solution is using fetchmail, which is quite fast and capable to handle slow connections. The mail then delivered to local mailbox, which then read by Evolution. Because access to local mailboxes is fast, Evolution is behaving nicely. Fetchmail cannot handle IMAP folders though. I think fetchmail is more suited to POP accounts, although the original author of the software seems to hate POP.

Next solution is offlineimap, which copies and synchronises IMAP folders to Maildir mailboxes, which then can be handled by Evolution. Unlike fetchmail, offlineimap doesn’t support IMAP IDLE, but it can be worked around by put it into crontab.

I also learned to configure exim4 to treat Gmail SMTP server as smarthost relay. Now, on my iBook laptop I set Evolution up to send emails to SendmailExim. Fire and forget. Evolution doesn’t need to know whether Gmail SMTP server is up or not, because it is Exim’s job now. The result: I can close Evolution right after sending emails.

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Notes on Debian PPC installation

12/01/2009 at 19:00 · Filed under debian

I have been using Debian Lenny on my iBook for a few weeks already. It is great so far. It took some time to configure, but after that it is largely smooth sailing. Here is some notes about my experience with it.

I used Debian PPC netinstall for installation. That means command line interface only at first stage, no GNOME, or KDE. The rest was downloaded later through internet connection.

The iBook G4 only has 30 GB hard disk capacity. That is too small for dual boot for me. So I moved all important data on previous Mac OS X installation, readied it for Linux-only installation. Then I wiped out all the space on the hard disk.

The installation process ran with little problems. I decide to defer system updates (which can be done at installation time), to save time. After the installation finished I was greeted with bare, black screen of command line console.

Next step was to chose a desktop environment. I had experimented with KDE before, and didn’t really like it. So I installed GNOME. I only selected the core components (gnome-core), and picked the rest as needed. It took quite long time to stop fiddling with the applications and components. In the end, I am left with a nearly standard GNOME desktop, with some small modification. For instance, I choose Firefox, er, Iceweasel as default browser (not epiphany). I also don’t install gnome-games. The only game that exists on my iBook is Battle of Wesnoth.

Lenny uses GNOME 2.22, not the newest version (which is 2.24). This might be a minus for some people which wanted the latest and greatest. But I have been using it for a time (with Fedora 9), and I am quite content with it.

Problems

Debian Lenny itself is still yet to be formally released. But it is quite usable, and stable. There are some problems, but not too critical.

The first problem is NetworkManager, that, you guess it, manage networks automatically. I use it with my Fedora installation on my other laptop. I quite like it. The killer feature for me is the ability to handle 3G modem connections. Unfortunately this feature is only found at later versions of NetworkManager, that is, in 0.7. Debian Lenny includes version 0.6.6, which might be stable but already outdated. The solution is to enable experimental repository, and install the 0.7 NetworkManager from there. This forced me to learn about running mixed systems, and the art of apt-pinning.

Another problem is power management. GNOME power manager apparently work without problems in x86 architecture. But it has problems with PPC, at least on Debian. Lenny with gnome-power-manager failed to suspend on this iBook. After some googling I decided to uninstall gnome-power-manager and use powernowd and powerprefs for power management.

There is also lack of decent Flash plugin. Adobe don’t have their proprietary plugin for PPC Linux, and both swfdec and gnash don’t really cover much flash sites that well. Fortunately, Flash isn’t that critical for me.

Overall Debian Lenny on the iBook is quite a pleasure. It is very stable, and I am yet to crash it (unlike Fedora 9 on my other laptop). It feels faster and responsive than Mac OS X Tiger. It handles my ZTE 3G modem adequately (but better than OS X).

Unlike before, I think I will keep on using this Debian installation on my iBook.

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A New 2009

04/01/2009 at 12:59 · Filed under Uncategorized

Ah. A new year. A good time to make (largely unmet and unexecuted) resolutions.

My wishes this year mainly to change for the better. To learn more, to acquire new good habits.

Some quick notes on some of my achievements on 2008.

  • This post is written using Debian Lenny on iBook G4. I finally make it work. Yay!
  • I finally registered myself in Open University Indonesia, to force myself to learn maths. Sadly, I didn’t really have time to study and had to cram for the test :(
  • Not much else, I fear.

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One Week of IM2 Broom Use: A Quick Impressions

28/10/2008 at 06:16 · Filed under internet ·Tagged , , ,

For a week I have been connected to Internet from home, full time, thanks to IM2 Broom service from IndosatM2. Some quick comments:

  1. Operating system support: IndosatM2 site said the service support Windows (2000/XP/Vista), MacOS X and Linux. However, the ease of use for each operating systems varies. For example, I found that in Fedora 9 it is easy to add new 3G connection via the NetworkManager. Right-click the NetworkManager icon in the notification area, click Edit connections, and add a new mobile broadband connection. However, the settings are forgotten after hibernation. It seems this can be worked around by logging out then logging in again. Another workaround is to delete the connection setting and recreate it. It seems to be a bug in NetworkManager.

    For Mac OS X I use the ZTE MF622 modem supplied by Indosat. There is a CD bundled which contains Mobile broadband manager and software driver. The software installed without problems. To configure the connection you have to add new settings (username, password, telephone number). It runs and connects successfully. So far so good. Then it turned out that you cannot save the settings and have to add it again and again for new connections. Gah.

    I don’t have a Windows machine so I cannot find out how it goes.

  2. Speed: It is fine in the morning and in the day. It sucks at the evening. It seems most users connect to the Internet at night (and online at work at other times). It is certainly not quick enough for audio streaming, not to mention video. For browsing and e-mailing it is just fine though.
  3. Usage: I can monitor the how much data I am gobbling up by logging to the IndosatM2 site. So far I have used up 928 MB, nearly half of the quota for one week. It seems 2GB will not be enough for my usage pattern. It must be noted that I am synchronised my mail data via IMAP (total 265 MB) for this week. But it is still too much.

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