Kubuntuforums is asking for your help

If you are a frequent visitor to kubuntuforums , you probably have noticed the increasing amount of downtime lately. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by the fact that the site’s owner, Zack Brantley, is often away due to his military service, and my own work schedule keeps me away from my online home for long periods of time. We often don’t even notice until the downtime has been around for a while. The forum is also hosted either for free or at low cost, and getting in touch with the server’s admin isn’t always a quick thing.

So we have finally decided to procure our own hosting – either a vps or, if costs are affordable, a dedicated server. We also plan to migrate KFN to vbulletin – an anonymous donation of a license for this makes that cost a non-issue many thanks, whoever you are – it is greatly appreciated! While there is little wrong with our current software – SMF, vb seems like it will fit our needs and wants quite well.

We have placed a paypal donations button on the site, and I hope that a few of us KDE and Kubuntu fans will chip in a little bit here and there so we can move this forward.

And yes, the server we are currently hosted on is a Windows server, and always have been. So it is NOT a rumor. ‘Nuff said.

Also note that KFN is a completely independent outfit with no ties to Canonical, Ubuntu, or even Kubuntu outside of forum memberships.

Any suggestions, comments or ideas are gratefully accepted.

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KDE Activities and Virtual Desktops and The Cube

As I mentioned in my last post , I was having trouble figuring out how to assign Desktop Activities in KDE 4.6 to virtual desktops. I like the concept of activities, especially being able to turn them off and on, having titles, as well as the flexibility that they provide. I never have much gone in for virtual desktops, but activities are something I want to make use of as they seem to fit what I want my laptop to do.

I would really like to be able to have these show on my desktop cube, or whichever switcher I end up liking. Unfortunately these switchers look to be virtual-desktop-only

Normally , you can consider a virtual desktop to be a sub-set of an Activity. So each Activity can have a number of desktops. However There is a way to make your desktops into activities – within that main activity.

It is actually pretty easy to set up:

First you turn off all your Activities but your main one. While it isn’t 100 % necessary, it makes things much easier as you won’t inadvertently switch activities, or in my case getting lost as to which activity/desktop I am really in.

Here, I am using the Activity Manager widget, plasma-widget-activitymanager in your favorite package manager. I find it a great tool when playing with activities.

Next, you go to your pager, right-click on it and add the number of desktops you want, in my case I have 4. Now go to System Settings, Workspace Behavior, and make sure that “Different widgets for each desktop” is checked.

Now, you can go to each of your virtual desktops and customize them. You can change the Activity type and background image by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Desktop Settings.

You can now show off some cool bits of KDE on your desktop cube.

Problem is, they are all still, as far as I can see, handled as virtual desktops. They all have the same name as the parent activity – I know I can label them in the settings, but that doesn’t appear on the individual desktops as Activities do. And you can’t turn them off and on, either. I know this may be a bit much to expect at this stage as Activities are still in my opinion are just recently at what I consider a usable state. What is really missing is a mouse action or better keyboard shortcut to switch activities like there are for desktops

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Re-discovering KDE, sort of ( or What a difference a year or 5 makes)

I was lucky at the end of this year, and was finally able to satisfy my hardware lust with the leftovers of a small-ish fourth-quarter bonus check. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to purchase something new. I was successful, however in getting a fairly recent refurbished off-lease dual-core Dell Latitude D630. According to it’s service tag, the laptop was born on January 2008, but it looks and feels brand new to me. This isn’t too difficult of a feat, as my other laptops are a Pentium 4-M, 1gb ram Compaq Eco N610C (from 2003) built from spares and held together with electrical tape, and a still-running 233mhz Pentium mmx Thinkpad 770 from 1998.

Kubuntu just seems to fly on the new Dell, and it is rather nice to be able to have full access to Kwin’s awesome effects. Especially blur.

Very especially blur

I also now can play with Desktop Activities, which despite all the attempts to describe them, are basically virtual desktops on steroids

Yes, Apachelogger is everywhere and I am a fan, err groupie

Now if I could only figure out how to get Activities to show on a desktop cube I would be in KDE heaven.

Kubuntu Natty also seems to run much better/faster/smoother/efficiently on the old P4 laptops, so much better in fact I began to doubt whether my money wasn’t better spent elsewhere. Until I saw the Blur that is.

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