Linux

KDE's Configuration Options

For the longest time (since Netscape’s beginnings) I’ve been a Mozilla user. First it was Netscape Navigator. Then the Netscape web server. Then it was Communicator followed by Mozilla. And now I’m a Firefox user. But recently, I’ve been frequently using KDE-integrated apps, more so due to my discovery of “fish://” last month. As such, I’ve been trying to rediscover Konqueror, which for the longest time, sucked. Okay, sucked might be a bit harsh so let’s just say that it wasn’t at all up to par when compared to the equivilent Mozilla-based product.

By default, both Konqueror and Firefox ask you if you want to save your passwords when you access a website with a login of sorts. I’m not big on saving my passwords so I never say yes and in Firefox there is an option to simply turn off asking altogether. On Monday, as I attempted to fall in love with Konqueror all over again, I tried to find a similar option in Konqueror. But alas I could not find one. But I did remember discovering last month that one of the KDE developers, Aaron, lives in Calgary, so I sent him an email. His solution? Disable KDE’s KWallet system. That would be fine except that I do use the KWallet for a couple other apps so turning it off isn’t going to work.

But the good news out of this is that Aaron stopped by my work unexpectedly to check out what Zymeta is doing, since are device runs on Linux and pretty much all the development desktops run KDE. And after talking to Aaron and getting the feeling from him that a fix would be possible, I submitted a bug requesting an option to turn off password asking.

The other thing that came out of all this is that I explored every possible configuration option that KDE has to offer and I’ve decided that KDE’s configuration options need some work. In some cases the options need work because there is no such option (like I mentioned above) and in other cases the options are poorly worded or documented. Konqueror 3.4, according to the changlelog, now allows you to open a link in a new tab by click on the middle-mouse button. This is a good example of a poorly labeled option. Konqueror labels the checkbox for this as “Open links in new tab instead of new window”, which to me doesn’t sounds like it has anything to do with middle mouse clicks. I had planned to rant more about this but Aaron tells me that the KDE people are all over that kind of thing for KDE 4 (among other radical changes).
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Gentoo to get graphical installer

Gentoo is slated to get a graphical installer in the near future. It’s an important piece in increasing adoption of the distribution outside of developers, though, I’m not sure how much effect it will have. To realize the full benefits of Gentoo you still need to build everything, and having a graphical installer won’t speed that up.
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Gentoo still thinks KDE 3.4 is unstable

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Gentoo needs some sort of way to let users provide stability feedback. KDE 3.4.0 was released in March. It’s now almost May and as far as Gentoo is concerned KDE 3.4 is unstable. Yet, I’ve been using it flawlessly since the day after it was released. What gives?

The other thing that drives me nuts is the varience between projects when it comes to “unstable”. KDE 3.4 is marked as unstable yet works flawlessly. Apache 2.0.53 on the other hand, at least when I tried to install it back in early March, was also marked as unstable but was a complete mess and didn’t work at all. On the forums, the response to some user complaints about Apache’s unstability was “DON’T install unstable packages on a production machine”. While I understand that they are saying that to cover themselves, I think that most people are under the impression that unstable packages just mean that it may or may not work perfectly, not that it will mess your current install up.

Which brings me full circle; people wouldn’t be inclined to install unstable packages if it didn’t take the package maintainers so long to actually mark a package as stable.
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Fishing in KDE

I learned how to fish today using KDE. No, not fishing as in sushi, but fishing as in using the fish:// protocol in Konqueror. I was reading a blog entry, which led me to a few other entries which finally landed me on aseigo’s blog entry on a couple of things, including fish://.

Very cool, despite the simplicity of it being a wrapper around SSH. And given that I have all my servers at home and work set up using Keychain (which is basically ssh-agent), no login is required and I can simply drag and drop files back and forth between machines. Nice!
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ndiswrapper and the D-Link DWL-G122

In the past few days I’ve noticed a bunch of people referred to this blog from Google and they’re all searching for info on using the D-Link DWL-G122 with ndiswrapper. In short, I got it to work.

Looking back on my previous two entries on the subject, it may be a bit confusing as to how I got it going so I thought in the interest of contributing to the greater good, I’d go over what I did.

First, the only way I was able to get the DWL-G122 to work perfectly was using ndiswrapper 1.1. Prior versions resulted in it either not working or the machine locking up when the device was removed. Second, in order to use the DWL-G122 on a 2.4 kernel you must run ndiswrapper 1.1. Version 1.0 will not properly compile as it doesn’t “have hashing”. Version 1.1 of ndiswrapper provided wrapper macros. Third, make sure you grab the proper driver from the D-Link site. I struggled for a couple hours needlessly because I had downloaded the driver for the DWL-122 not the DWL-G122. Don’t download the driver from anywhere but the DLink site and don’t use any direct links to drivers from any site other than DLink. I say this as there are multiple revisions of the same DWL-G122 product and they all use different drivers. Fourth, make sure you have the wireless-tools package installed so that you can configure your newly working USB wireless device. Finally, if you plan to connect to an encrypted access point, out of the box you will only be able to use WEP. If you want to use WPA you will need to install WPA Supplicant. I don’t have a WPA access point so I never tried this.

I have the DWL-G122 working on both the 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels (I tried 2.4.27, 2.4.28 and 2.6.10) and the device can connect to open and WEP-enabled access points. The device can be plugged into a USB port and be immmediately activated and can be removed from the usb port without any adverse effects on the host machine.

Summary
Distribution: Gentoo
Kernel: 2.4.x or 2.6.x
ndiswrapper: 1.1
Device: DWL-G122 (revision A2)
Driver: prisma02 version 3.00.21.0

Still can’t get it to work? Email me. You do that by taking my two initials (look in the URL of this blog) and add @zymeta.com.
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KDE 3.4

After compiling for the better part of yesterday, I am now running the latest release of KDE… KDE 3.4.

This release offers a cleaner overall look, including a form of icon zooming (no, not like OSX) in the panel. We’re also introduced to Akregator, a very slick RSS aggregator which is now included within the KDE network package. This is also the first release of KDE to support translucency natively which is rather cool, though I think that if you use multiple desktops to separate your apps the novelty will wear off rather quickly.

On an unrelated note, the KDE logo on the right side of this entry was originally from a larger image, seen on the 3.4 announcement page. However, thanks to Dean who talked me through the process, I was able to use GIMP to properly crop the image. I’m especially proud of the rounded corners, though really, it was all Dean; I just worked the [six button] mouse and keyboard.
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Asking the Right Questions

I ran into some problems with a network card last night. It’s an old network card (3Com 905C) on an old server. The network card was working when I installed Gentoo over the old Red Hat 8 that was on the server, but when I moved the box downstairs the card sudden stopped. It was reporting a problem reading the MAC address off the EEPROM, at least as far as I can tell.

The weird thing is that if I put the card into another machine it seems to work fine. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a problem with the driver, the kernel, the machine or what. But I put a different card (3Com 905) into the server and all is fine again.

Anyway, while Googling for a potential solution to the problem, I ran into a great article from ESR titled ”How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.” The article is geared towards opensource software projects, but a lot of what ESR says is applicable elsewhere.
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ndiswrapper continued

Version 1.1 of ndiswrapper was released on the weekend at some point. Happy times for all; this latest version not only compiles on 2.4.x of the kernel (ya, I have some machines that need 2.4 still) but the system freeze no longer happens.

Next on my list… get a web cam to work on my laptop.

Update: See my entries on March 29, 2005 for a complete list of what I did to get the DWL-G122 working under Linux.
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Still Have ACPI Woes

I messed around with ACPI again today (this time using the 2.6.11 kernel) to try and get suspend/resume working on my Latitude C840. Alas, it still doesn’t seem to work. Though, in the kernel’s defence, it does seem to work out of the box a lot better… I suspect I need to tweak things so that certain modules get removed and such before it will truly work. But, still, Linux is not for Grandma’s laptop… yet.
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