Linux

With the advent of the Opera 10 Beta, I highly recommend that users check it out or upgrade to it. The biggest news is that one of my primary gripes, i.e., the lack of inline spell-checking, has been solved.

One of my Linux boxen is primarily used as a server and frequently just sits around without monitor, keyboard or mouse attached. While previously, it used to be connected to the network via ethernet, now that I've got the USB wifi adapter for my machines, it's even niftier and only requires power to get up and running.

Today, I purchased and installed the Edimax EW-7316Ug wireless 802.11b/g USB Adapter. While I usually approach the purchase of hardware for Linux - especially for non-mainstream products - with a certain degree of trepidation, I was heartened to note during my pre-purchase exercise that the Edimax page specifically mentioned Linux compatibility and even provided a source code download. How rare is that?!

Upgrading KTorrent from 3.1.2 to 3.2 RC1 on Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid with KDE 4.2:

1. Install cmake and related tools:
   sudo apt-get install cmake automoc build-essential gettext
2. Install other required libraries:
   sudo apt-get install kdelibs5-dev libqca2-dev libgmp3-dev kdebase-workspace-dev kdepimlibs5-dev libkrosspython0 libkrossruby0
3. Remove the existing ktorrent installation as a precaution: sudo apt-get remove ktorrent. This should not affect your configuration files.

For those of you out there who have been hankering for a decent free, open-source file renaming utility, I highly recommend that you give Métamorphose a shot. I've been using the v2 beta in XP and it's been excellent. It's written in Python and is also available for Linux, BSD and Macs.

There are a few minor UI bugs though, but I'm sure that they'll be sorted out in due course.

Hooray for FOSS!

I just found out yesterday that Konqueror natively supports sFTP and another protocol which I wasn't aware of named FiSH. To use either, just enter sftp://foo@example.com or fish://foo@example.com as necessary in the Konqueror URL bar to create a connection. My fledgling experience with FiSH seems to indicate that it's considerably faster than sFTP.

If you've run into the error message KDEInit could not launch '/usr/bin/ktorrent' on KDE 4, you are not alone. It appears that this is a KDE Bug that should be resolved in a bug-fix update in the near future. This also apparently affects other applications besides KTorrent.

In my case, when I clicked on a torrent file, the error message cropped up, but the file itself was open fine ...

In KDE 4.1, whenever you open a window, it invariably is never opened in a maximised state - something that annoys the crap out of me. While it's something of a chore, the following is how you can sort this out:

1. Open the application and right click on its title bar.
2. Select the advanced menu and move down to click special application settings.
3. In the ensuing pop-up, click on the geometry tab and tick both maximised horizontally and maximised vertically.

If you, like moi, just upgraded to Intrepid Ibex, and found that your VLC doesn't work any more, this here is the fix:

• Right click on an audio/video file and select properties.
• Click the edit icon (spanner) to get to the options page.
• Select VLC media player in the application list and click the edit button on the right.
• Select the application tab on the top and look for the command wxvlc on this page.
• Change wxvlc to just vlc. Click OK a few times to save the changes.

... and that's it.

Hope this helps :)

An excellent story on How to make money with free software has been doing the rounds today, and deservedly so. While I won't spoil the surprise for you here, I must say that I like the back better than the front :)