For the longest time I saw KDE as a distant third, or fourth, on the Linux desktop usability scale. For me, first came GNOME, then came Enlightenment E17, then came XFCE4, and then came KDE. This was a change from when KDE 3.5 — one of the most user-friendly desktops around. The KDE development team rolled out 4.0 and everything was turned on its head. KDE was no longer much use on the desktop, due to bugs, poor performance, and instability.

That was KDE 4.0. What we have now is a completely different beast. Not only is KDE 4.5 a far superior desktop to its predecessor, I would go as far to say that it has finally surpassed 3.5 in both usability and performance. That's a bold statement considering how the desktop has evolved.

Read the full thing at http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/355802-kde-45-your-new-desktop-awaits

When I tell people that I use Linux, they look at me with pity. In their minds, I have just confessed to being a fanatic who is willing to undergo daily hardship and inconvenience in defense of my beliefs.

When I go on to tell them that the KDE desktop is in many ways more innovative than Windows 7, the looks of pity changes to caution. I am not only a fanatic, they conclude, but delusional and potentially dangerous.

Read the full thing at http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3901796/7-Things-You-Can-Do-in-KDE-But-Not-in-Windows.htm

Mark Twain has been quoted as saying that he respected a person who could spell a word more than one way. Unfortunately, Twain's enthusiasm for creative spelling isn't widely shared today, at least in the professional world. If you need a little help in the spelling department, but prefer the old school way of editing text, you can turn to Vim's spelling support.

Read the full thing at http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/357267-using-spell-checking-in-vim

Following up on my earlier post, we've now released a new version of Google voice and video for Linux that includes both Debian and RPM packages. As usual, it can be downloaded from http://www.google.com/chat/video; upon visiting this page, you'll be given the option of which package you want to download.

Read the full thing at http://juberti.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-voice-and-video-rpm-packages-now.html

The other day, I caught a message that KSplice was available for Fedora. I thought I’d be a wiseguy and I replied “Yeah, great. Call me in 20 years when it’s available for for RHEL”. Well, as several people pointed out, it turns out the joke is on me.

Read the full thing at http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2010/09/linux-machines-with-no-rebooting-is-this-what-we-want/

Now that KDE SC 4.5 is out, I went ahead and upgraded my Mandriva Linux Spring 2010 from KDE SC 4.4 to KDE SC 4.5. Though the process is pretty simple, here is a simple step by step guide to upgrade to KDE SC 4.5.

Read the full thing at http://pbs01.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/install-kde-sc-4-5-on-mandriva-linux-spring-2010/

This article explains how to install GNU social on a "wall wart" plug server in order to free yourself from the control of proprietary social networking software running on other people's servers.

Read the full thing at http://foocorp.net/projects/fooplug/

digiKam team is proud to announce digiKam 1.4.0 release!

NEW FEATURES:

AdvancedRename : New modifier "Remove Doubles".
BUGFIXES FROM KDE BUGZILLA:

001 ==> 238285 : Nikkor 18-200mm not detected by lens autocorrection.
002 ==> 232233 : Databaseext-branch does not compile on Windows with mingw4.
003 ==> 241782 : Tags, comments, author, etc. not written to metadata.
004 ==> 232792 : digiKam crash when opening configuration.
005 ..............

Read the full thing at http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/535

After the one week delay, the first alpha of Fedora 14 codenamed “Laughlin” has been released today.

Not much has changed in Fedora 14 Alpha in terms of the looks since Fedora 13. However there are a lot of changes under the hood. Some important changes includes the inclusion systemd and ROOT.

Read the full thing at http://techie-buzz.com/foss/fedora-14-alpha-released-includes-root.html

It has been a while since my original announcement of systemd. Here's a little status update, on what happened since then. For simplicity's sake I'll just list here what we worked on in a bulleted list, with no particular order and without trying to cover this comprehensively:

Read the full thing at http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd-update.html