mcgrew's Journal: KDE! What Have You Done?!

Note: Typed this out last year but never got around to posting it.
        Iâ(TM)ve been meaning to install Linux on this notebook for quite some time, and finally got around to it Friday.
        I started using Linux back in 2002 with Mandrake, and I loved it. They later renamed it Mandriva, and I kept using it. Then I found out that they were disbanding and patches would stop coming, so I switched to kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a KDE desktop instead of that God-awful Gnome desktop. It ran happily on an old HP tower for years until the old tower had a severe hardware failure. I still need to take its hard drive and video card out and install them in the old Dell, which isnâ(TM)t on my network because itâ(TM)s running XP.
        My first notebook I had like this one was stolen in a burglary five or six years ago. It was the same model as this, and it ran kubuntu very well, far better than its native Windows. With Windows I had to run a program from the ISP to get wi-fi working on it, but it just worked fine on kubuntu without my having to do anything.
        So Friday I put it on this notebook dual-boot, since I need Microsoft Word even though I hate Microsoft Word. Knowing it would take a while I plugged in its power, and plugged it into the network for more speed. It took ten minutes to get my part of the installation done, and watched the news as Linux installed.
        I booted it up when I was done, and egad, KDE! What have you done?! Yes, itâ(TM)s a beautiful desktop, but it isnâ(TM)t the same KDE Iâ(TM)ve been using for almost fifteen years.
        What the hell, you stupid wet behind the ears software designers, are you NUTS? Look, you dumbasses, changing an interface all around for no good reason is just brain-dead stupid. I donâ(TM)t want to learn a brand new God damned interface unless itâ(TM)s instantly recognizable as an improvement, and this is about the same stupid move Microsoft made with Windows Eight. Look, you morons, if I wanted to learn a new interface Iâ(TM)d install Gnome or something.
        Next I wanted to hear music, so I needed on the internet. I tried to connect to my server but simply couldnâ(TM)t get on with the wi-fi. Strangely, I was able to connect with someone elseâ(TM)s unsecured wi-fi. It had gotten on the internet easily with the network card plugged in.
        Someone had said that Libre Office could read and write .doc files well, so I tried it. First I opened an Open Office document, and the font face was some cartoonish sans serif font instead of Gentium Book Basic.
        Then I opened a .doc file, and it opened, although instead of Courier it had a different sans serif face.
        I wanted to get at some files on my external hard drive, so I plugged the network cable in. It indicated a connection, and I could get on the internet through the router, but the external drive didnâ(TM)t show up.
        I doubt thatâ(TM)s the OSâ(TM)s fault, though, since it wouldnâ(TM)t let me connect with my own wi-fi but was fine with someone elseâ(TM)s. Iâ(TM)m pretty sure itâ(TM)s that damned modem-router that the cable company makes me rent. Iâ(TM)d change ISPs if I werenâ(TM)t planning to move next Spring.
        At any rate, KDE now sucks. Someone said XCFE was good, Iâ(TM)ll have to try it.

(Note: I've been way too busy)

Two things...

[KGIII]

I'm fond of LXDE but my preferred distro is going to LXQt. I use Lubuntu, it's a nice and light distro. I've got very fast hardware, I refresh twice a year normally, and it's blazingly fast on new hardware. It's also really fast on older hardware. And I do mean fast. LXDE is simply light but has all the features I can possibly ask for. I'm very fond of it but not absurdly so nor am I a zealot of any type. I've poked at LXQt in a Live USB instance and I'm thinking it's not very accurate to make judgments bas

Re:

[Gazzonyx]

You should take all of those wifi APs, put them all on a DMZ'ed 192.168/16 and spread them around your house (bumped voltage if possible since you don't care if you toast them early), and see how many of your neighbors networks you can connect together (assuming open wifi APs around you) with nothing more than a Samba server proxying WINs announcements other broadcast domains and subnets. You could have some real fun and pass the traffic through an analyzer and see how many viruses you can catch on the wir

Re:

[KGIII]

It's a half mile from my home (through the woods) to the edge of a neighbor's property. It's just a bit over 24 miles to the village. I might get a moose trying to connect. ;-)

Home is on the side of a mountain in NW Maine. I have three disparate connections and Fairpoint sends me at least one new router/modem combination (for each) every year. Some years result in my getting six total routers. I've hooked one of them up once. In order to manage it, I had to go through their site on the 'net or by telnet. I

Re:

[Gazzonyx]

You should build a PFSense or Linux router and use something like LARTC (http://lartc.org/lartc.html) or the BSD equivalent (traffic shaper, I think) to balance two or three connections if they'll sell you multiples. You could probably even get an introductory rate from one company and switch when that expires round-robin style on a single leg of your WAN connection. Problem is, you probably won't have any meaningful redundancy since a single backhoe coming down on what I imagine is probably the only cond

Re:

[KGIII]

Nothing really special. It's mostly "business" class stuff from Netgear and similar. At least that's what they usually send. I've got a few branded things over the years. It's been going on for about six or seven years now, not long after I had the house built.

I will have (I'm told) access to fiber?!? That's supposed to be by the end of summer. Fiber doesn't hold up well to trees on the line. I'll be keeping my DSL. I'll probably get fiber but configure the copper for redundancy. I've literally seen the cop

Re:

[Burz]

Isn't LXDE what killed Knoppix? Which used to have KDE3?

It always looked stripped-down to me, to the point of being non-functional. And for a long time I thought the logo was meant to represent cracked glass (LOL, no kidding). Its actually just an incompetently drawn bird.

Re:

[KGIII]

I've no idea what killed Knoppix but I know Knoppix just had a release not long ago.

Here's a shot that I made a while back, it's fine for my needs.
http://i.imgur.com/w8vxN3o.png [imgur.com]

The top-most bar is actually a little dock thing that I made. It pops up when you mouse-over the top of the screen and goes away when you move off of it.

Re:

[Burz]

Still, its pretty dead. Almost no one uses it anymore.

Re:

[KGIII]

Did anyone ever really use it as their main OS? I'd only ever used it for its live-CD function. It burned me once and I never went back to it again. It was *not* supposed to touch the file system - I never really told it to touch the file system but it wanted to do some sort of update (I no longer recall what) and I let it. SOB ate my MBR. I've never tried it since.

Which version

[Gazzonyx]

Which version of KDE were you running? If it's the 5.X release, that's just a developer release right now for porting software from KDE/QT 4.X; packagers still package it for various reasons. For instance, on LTS releases, they either have to be stuck with the old version for the entire support cycle, or get on the new releases and hope it gets better over the next couple of years - it's a rough place to be in unless you dedicate someone full time to backporting or forward porting patches for a second-clas

Do yourself a favor

[fustakrakich]

Download this live distro [slackbook.org]. Make sure to copy your home directory to a hard drive before rebooting. Then copy it back to restore most of your config settings. The 'persistent' thing isn't very trustworthy and can slow down the system. I don't use it. For better convenience, don't shut down the machine at night, just put it in suspension. I've been doing this for about a month and couldn't be happier. Everything works *out of the box*, networking (wifi and ethernet), audio, video, external media, all of it, a

Re:

[mcgrew]

Well, it was typed out in unicode for inclusion in the book that's coming out in a few months. The same article works fine over at Soylent News. Stuff I don't intend to publish in print I just use notepad.

Thanks for the link, I'll try it out.