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Using Bash Script to Mass Create Users And Change Passwords

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in guides, how to .

These two scripts are very important for the system admin who regularly works with mail servers and somehow forgets to backup his system username and password! Let’s say somehow we lost the usernames and passwords of the mail server. In this case the admin has to manually create all the users and then change the passwords for all the users. Tedious job. Let’s make our life easier.

First create a file which contains all the user name. Something like this:

nurealam
nayeem
mrahman
farid
rubi
sankar

Save the file as userlist.txt. Now create the following bash file:

#!/bin/sh
for i in `more userlist.txt `
do
echo $i
adduser $i
done

Save the file and exit.

chmod 755 userlist.txt

Now run the file:

./userlist.txt

This will add all the users to the system. Now we have to change the passwords. Let’s say we want username123 as password. So for user nayeem the password will be nayeem123, rubi123 for user rubi and so on.

Create another bash file as follows:

#!/bin/sh
for i in `more userlist.txt `
do
echo $i
echo $i"123" | passwd –-stdin "$i"
echo; echo "User $username’s password changed!"
done

Run the file. All the passwords are changed.

If you want to force all your users to change password, use the following code:

Force all your users to change their passwords because the temporary password is a security risk

#!/bin/sh
for i in `more userlist.txt `
do
echo $i
echo $i | change -d 0 "$i"
echo; echo "User $i will be forced to change password on next login!"
done

I then log as that user and see this

WARNING: Your password has expired.
You must change your password now and login again!
Changing password for user amcorona.
Changing password for amcorona
(current) UNIX password:

1 Comment .
Tags: bash script, change password, create user, force password change, linux create user, linux user .

Why Linux Will Succeed On The Desktop

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in quotes & thoughts .

I believe Linux will become the de-facto standard desktop operating system. Though it’ll take a while for many users to break free from ties to Windows, there is good reason to believe that this day will come.

Consider that the global community is already beginning to rally behind standard document formats. In addition, as browsers like Firefox gain more market share, users are less tolerant of Internet Explorer-only web sites. However, the transition is slow and will continue to be a slow one. Most people will switch away from Windows only when dollars are on the line.

The Perfect Generic Client

A desktop supports multiple methods of work habits. For example, you can edit a document with a local word processor like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Word for Windows, or you can use Google Docs. You need Windows to run Word, but any operating system with a good browser will handle Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Docs well. Once you eliminate the problem of migrating to a new document format, the question becomes, “Why am I paying through the nose for a buggy, bloated, insecure and buggy Windows?” Put more simply, take away the force of legacy inertia, and the cheapest, least-problematic desktop becomes the most desirable.

In the long run, Linux makes the perfect generic client. It is the hub of free software development, which makes it the focal point for generic, open computing. As people continue to use Linux as the basis for cell phones, DVRs (such as TiVo and Dish Network), routers, and other dedicated systems, it is becoming ubiquitous on just about every platform but the PC. This only makes it more likely to dominate the PC in the future.

The more Linux becomes the de-facto standard platform for software development of any kind, the more appealing it becomes as the platform for personal computing. Any overlap between appliances and PCs saves duplication of effort. The vast repository of free software available for the asking makes Linux even more appealing as the basis for development.

Many of the duties Linux must perform on a PC it already performs on appliances like cell phones. We may never see the era of $100 network computers, but network computing is advancing, nevertheless, as is evidenced by the increasing reliance on web-based email and the appearance of network applications like Google Docs. We owe thanks to AJAX and Java for the rich client features now available through your PC and/or cell phone browser.

The more we depend on this type of computing, the more invisible operating systems will become. Most people don’t know or care what OS runs their cell phone. We may always care more about what we run on our PC, but the distinction between the two will gradually blur. As it does, Linux should be the best choice, because it is already prevalent on so many devices.

Continue reading →

1 Comment .
Tags: desktop, linux, linux desktop, linux for desktop, linux power, windows alternative .

Installing ffmpeg on dreamhost

Posted on November 6, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in guides, how to .

On Friday I went through the process of installing ffmpeg on dreamhost. Ffmpeg is a free, open source multimedia system and command line tool that can be used to encode and decode from and to several different sources. My interest in using FFmpeg, as aformentioned, is to be able to convert incoming 3gp video from mobile phones to flash video and extract thumbnails of each video uploaded. In order to use ffmpeg to convert to Flash video, however, you also have to download and install LAME, an open source MP3 encoder (which may be illegal…but does it really matter?). Ffmpeg does not support MP3 audio, which is what flash uses. Before installing ffmpeg, you should download and install lame.

As a rule, dreamhost does not allow individuals to install anything with the path /usr/local/lib/ so you have to use the –exec-prefix and –prefix command in the configuration: ./configure –exec-prefix=/home/username/lame –prefix=/home/username/lame to install it to a local folder. This is the same with the ffmpeg instalation, however there are a few differences. You have to enable lame as well as amr_nb, amr_nb_fixed, amr_wb and amr_if2. Amr is apparently the audio codec for certain kinds of mobile phone video. We were testing using video from a Nokia 6682 but further testing needs to be done to see what codecs are used by other phones/carriers. In order to enable Amr you have to download the amr software. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down the download urls for amr, but once you issus the following command: ./configure –prefix=/home/username/ffmpeg –enable-mp3lame –extra-cflags=-I/home/username/lame/include –extra-ldflags=-L/home/username/lame/lib –enable-amr_nb –enable-amr_nb-fixed –enable-amr_wb –enable-amr_if2 a message comes up that instructs you on where to go and what location to install the necessary files to.

Unfortunately we ran into a problem early on. The C compiler was failing to compile because it was trying to install ffmpeg to a tmp folder instead of to the ffmpeg folder we had created. In order to prevent this, we had to comment out this section of the configure file:

# set temporary file name
#if test ! -z “$TMPDIR” ; then
# TMPDIR1=”${TMPDIR}”
#elif test ! -z “$TEMPDIR” ; then
# TMPDIR1=”${TEMPDIR}”
#else
#TMPDIR1=”/home/username/tmp”
#fi

You also have to make the following changes to the makefile:
CFLAGS = -Wall -I. $(CFLAGS_$(MODE)) -D$(VAD) -DMMS_IO and
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/catmindeye/lame/lib (which tells ffmpeg where to find the lame files).

With ffmpeg successfully installed, our next step is to include code in our perl popper that converts the incoming video to flash and stores it in the database. Calling ffmpeg from perl can be done using the exec function which allows you to issue a system command. You then can incorporate the following commands: (from Shawn’s Producing Participatpry Media class handout)

ffmpeg -i inputfile -t 0.001 -ss 10 -s 100×100 outputfile%d.jpg (creataes thumnbnails- replace inputfile with the name of your movie file, the number after -t is the duration (in seconds), the number after -ss is the starting point in seconds, the value after -s is the width x height and outputfile is the name of the outputfile. This command will create as many frames of JPEGs as it needs to meet the assigned duration)

ffmpeg -i inputfile -acodec mp3 -ab 32 -ac 1 outputfile.flv (replace inputfile with the name of your movie file, the 32 is the bitrate of the audio, the 1 is the number of audio channels and outputfile.flv is the output file name- make sure you keep .flv)

Once we have tested the converting of video on the fly we will post code.

One thing I forgot to mention…in order for the audio to play correctly when uploaded and converted from 3gp (mobile phones) you have to include -ar 44100 in the following command:

ffmpeg -i inputfile -acodec mp3 -ab 32 -ac 1 outputfile.flv

This was discovered as a result of testing from a Nokia 6682.

Click here to sign up with DreamHost

 

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Tags: dream host, Dreamhost, dreamhost ffmpeg, ffmpeg, install ffmpeg, php-ffmpeg .

ATI Open-Source vs. Closed-Source Performance & AIGLX Performance

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in desktop & laptop pc, hardware, open source .

For those that may have missed it, the ATI/AMD fglrx 8.42 display driver that was released last month had introduced AIGLX support. The open-source “Radeon” driver for ATI graphics cards going up to the R400 generation has supported AIGLX for quite some time, but the ATI binary display driver hadn’t until last month. However, one of the complaints about the fglrx implementation of AIGLX is that in the 8.42.3 driver, some are encountering slow performance in Compiz / Compiz Fusion. We have taken an ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB PCI-E graphics card, which is supported by both the Radeon and fglrx drivers, and have compared their Compiz performance in a few different scenarios.

ATI Open vs. Closed-Source AIGLX Performance

The system once again was running Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel and X server 1.3, but with these benchmarks, the Compiz effects were disabled during testing. The hardware included a PCI Express ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB graphics card, Intel Pentium D 820 (2.80GHz dual-core), 2GB of DDR3-1333 memory, and an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38) motherboard. We had used Enemy Territory and GtkPerf as our vehicle for benchmarking the two drivers, since both benchmarks are compatible with the current Radeon driver. The ATI driver used was fglrx 8.42.3.

ATI Open vs. Closed-Source Performance 

1 Comment .
Tags: ATI, ati driver, ati performance, graphics card, graphics driver, linux, linux ati, linux driver, linux graphics .

Will GNOME’s betrayal lead to Microsoft Victory?

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in desktop environments, gnome, news, open source, quotes & thoughts .

Microsoft’s efforts to overturn a vote earlier this year denying its Open XML “fast track” standards certification seem to be getting a boost from the GNOME Foundation.GNOME Foundation founder Miguel deIcaza is a Novell employee, and his actions have been closely scrutinized since Microsoft signed its controversial “patent licensing” deal with the company a year ago.

OpenXML, also called OOXML, was denied “fast track” International Standards Organization (ISO) approval in September, but a final vote on making it a standard will take place in February, and Microsoft is anxious to get the earlier decision reversed.

To that end Microsoft is working with the ECMA TC 45 group to answer detailed questions which accompanied the negative ballots in September, in hopes of changing hearts and minds by February. GNOME’s participation in that group is upsetting Open Document Format (ODF) advocates.

ODF is the format used by Open Office.

Opponents of making the Microsoft Word format an ISO document standard, like OpenDocument Fellowship member Russell Ossendryver, compare GNOME’s actions to Democrats offering counters to President Bush’s 2005 plan on privatizing Social Security — any counter-proposal makes it more likely something bad will happen.

Dave Neary, a member of the GNOME Foundation and community manager for OpenWengo, says it’s all safe as milk. Quoting Jody Goldberg, who calls supporting ODF “significantly more difficult” than supporting OOXML, he suggests ODF will never be the “one true format” without destroying its utility.

In arguing for Open XML on his blog yesterday, Jason Matusow of Microsoft insists no one’s hands are clean, that any decision gives proprietary advantage to someone, and the place to fight all this out is the marketplace, not a standards-setting process.

The issue is vital for this reason. Microsoft Office has a dominant market share. Microsoft Office is proprietary. Microsoft’s XML formatting was changed just before Office 2007’s final release, destroying interoperabiity with ODF until fixes could be found.

Once a proprietary standard is approved by the ISO, and made a standard, its eventual replacement by a truly open standard like ODF becomes impossible. At best the two stand side-by-side, and Microsoft’s market dominance is baked into the market.

That’s why, despite the fact OOXML or OpenXML may be a better format today, groups like NOOOXML are fighting so hard against ISO approval. (The cartoon is from the NOOOXML site.)

Once a proprietary format becomes a standard, the era of truly open standards is over, and the way becomes clear to making anything proprietary.

– by ZDNET

1 Comment .
Tags: Document Format, gnome, Gnome betrayal, ISO, Microsoft, MS Office, NOOOXML, oasis, odf, OOXML, Standard Battle .

WordPress is all grown up, wins best CMS Award

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in quotes & thoughts, wordpress/blogging .

WordPress, which I had previously considered “just” a blogging engine, has been named the best open source Content Management System for social networking, beating Drupal and Elgg. (Picture from PhotoMatt.)The Judges commented on “WordPress’s ease of configuration, professional approach, usability and enthusiastic community,” awarding the project $2,000.

WordPress was started by Matt Mullenweg in 2003. He worked for a while at C|Net before founding Automattic, which hosts blogs, runs an anti-spam service called Akismet, and does other cool stuff.

ZDNet runs on WordPress, and I must admit that each new version of the software seems better than what came before. I also use Drupal at Voic.Us and my personal blog runs through Typepad, a hosted version of Movable Type.

The success of WordPress offers some great lessons about the Internet space, which many analysts still refuse to accept. Remember that by 2003  Google had already acquired Blogger. CMS systems like Drupal, Slash and Scoop were already well-established. Why would anyone need another blogging engine, let alone an open source CMS?

Yet just as Google was able to blow by Yahoo, which everyone in the late 1990s thought owned the search space (that’s why they expanded and became a portal), WordPress was able to blow by a unit of Google, and in relatively short order. Not to mention all those other competitors, who are not chopped liver. (I do like Typepad and Drupal.)

Any analyst who tells you anyone in the Internet owns anything, and that ownership is permanent, just isn’t living in the real world. Change remains possible. Leaders can be caught. If you’ve got a better mousetrap build it, and if it is better, if you run things right, you can win in the open source marketplace.

One more piece of wisdom. Stay humble.  Mullenweg calls his own blog PhotoMatt, and his announcement of this award was quite brief, a simple, one word celebration. “Yay!” He was unavailable for comment because he’s at an event in Argentina, having just acquired Gravatar.

Young man in a hurry in a very small world.

– by Dana Blankenhorn

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Tags: Blogging, Content Management, Content Management System, Dana Blankenhorn, Drupal, Enterprise Software, Internet, open source, Software, wordpress .

Apple’s Leopard Features ODF

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in linux/unix/os distros, mac/osx, news .

 

Apple’s latest incarnation of OS X “Leopard” will be able to read OASIS’s ODF.

Good news for open source community and for the compatibility as whole, but then how does ECMA’s Office XML correspond to UNIX specs!!! How about saving files in ODF … is it there in Save As option. Here is what else Leopard is going to feature.

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Tags: apple, apple leopard, leopard, linux, oasis, oasis odf, odf, open source, os x, osx, osx leopard .

25+ Sources For Royalty Free Creative Commons Content and Resource

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in design & development, multimedia .

We’ve talked about about all the ways to design and build your site, but where are you ever going to get content to fill it with? We’ve gathered 25+ sources of content licensed under Creative Commons. Enjoy!

Audio

    ccmixter

ArtistServer.com – Thousands of MP3s for you to download and try out smaller bands.

ccMixter.org – A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

Jamendo.com – A music site providing free, full-length albums for you to download. You pay the artists what you want, or just spread the word about them.

PodShow.com – A site filling your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music, that allows you to discover old and new music alike.

SoundClick.com – A site for bands, both signed and unsigned, to be promoted. Offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

TheFreeSoundProject – A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

General Searches

    Yahoo cc search

Archive.org – Known mainly for their “Wayback Machine” as a means for seeing old pages on the net, they have also collected together a huge collection of free-to-use recordings and texts.

Freebase.com – A community powered search engine to search the web for CC licensed work for you to use.

Google Advanced Search – Google gives you the option to include forms of licensing in your search.

Wikimedia Commons – The central clearing area for the Wikimedia projects CC files.

Yahoo Creative Commons Search – Yahoo allows you to search the entire web for what you need based on the licenses attached to the content.

Images

    everystockphoto.com

DeviantArt.com – A site for artists to display their works. Some are nice enough to license under CC for your use.

EveryStockPhoto.com – Indexes over 1.4 million Creative Commons photos for your use.

Flickr Creative Commons search – Search Flickr for all the derivatives of the Creative Commons licensing.

Geograph.org.uk – An attempt to photograph the entirety of the British Isles, and at the same time, license all the photos under the CC.

OpenClipArt.org – An archive of free-to-use clipart numbering around 11,000 pieces.

PhotoEverywhere.co.uk – A travel & tourism photo site offering stock photography for everyone’s use.

TakeIdeas.com – Share your photos, or find ones that inspire you.

TravellersPoint.com – A wiki for travellers with a large collection of CC licensed travel photography.

Yotophoto.com – Indexes photos in the public domain and free-to-use licenses.

Texts

    unearthtravel

IntraText.com – A site featuring thousands of texts from 900 B.C. to this decade. Most works are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

UnearthTravel.com – Read travel guides about your favorite destinations.

Videos

    lulu.tv

Blip.tv – Allows video makers to assign multiple types of licenses to their content, users can search on each type.

Lulu.TV – A CC license site with embeddable videos

OurMedia.org – A video specific service run by archive.org, allowing users to host their videos under the Creative Commons license.

Revver.com – A video upload site very like YouTube, but all content defaults to the Creative Commons license.

SpinXpress.com – Share your video, audio, and images through various versions of the CC license.

3 Comments .
Tags: creative commons, free content, free creative, free resource, wayback machine, wikimedia commons .

Puppy Linux. The small but powerful distro.

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in linux/unix/os distros, other distros, review/preview/tests .

Yesterday, Barry Kauler, the founder of Puppy Linux announced its latest version Puppy Linux 3.00. He said that this version is the massive upgrade to its predecessor Puppy Linux v2.17.1.

What exactly is Puppy Linux?

If you dont know what am I talking about…read this:”Puppy Linux is the Slackware 12 based Linux distribution designed especially for low-end computers and because of its small size (80-100 MB) it can run from live CD or from USB stick”. It is based on Slackware than it doesn’t mean that it is a clone of Slackware but it is totally a different distribution from base. And if you run this from USB stick then it will transfer caching and flush data to RAM in every 30 minutes and hence will not affect your USB.

Whats new in 3.00?

Here is the list:

  1. All base packages upgraded, including glibc v2.5, gcc v4.1.2, GTK v2.10.13.
  2. Application upgrades (incomplete list): pptp v1.7.1, Isomaster v1.1, KP2 v0.2 (gray), Pbdict (zigbert), pure-ftpd (getnikar), trashcan (disciple), Pbackup v3.0.0 (zigbert), Network Wizard (Dougal, tempestuous, BarryK), JWM v2.0.1, Xvesa Wizard (gray, BarryK), Burniso2cd (BarryK), Busybox v1.6.1, TkDVD v4.0.6, various small utilities (gray), Pidgin v2.0.2, SeaMonkey v1.1.2, Xorg v7.2, Unionfs v2.1.2, Pfind v2.4 (zigbert), PDF-printer v0.8 (jcoder24), WakePup2 (john doe, dgi), v1.6.9pre7, NoteCaseHomeBank v3.5, Universal Installer (BarryK), Pmirror v0.2 (zigbert), PRename v0.6 (plinej), partview (PaulBx1).
  3. Massive improvements achieved with new boot and shutdown scripts, including pup_save file custom naming, frugal install into a subdirectory, correct recognition of multiple pup_save files at bootup, pup_save file resizing.
  4. New kernel: 2.6.21.7, configured with ‘tickless’ option. Initrd.gz is now a cpio archive.
  5. NetSurf web browser v1.1 as our internal HTML viewer.
  6. True flushing for Flash drives (andrei, BarryK). Finally.
  7. Also a great number of bug fixes.

Resources:

For more information on Puppy Linux go here
For announcements and release notes click here
Download the ISO image from here (size=97.63 MB)

Some screen shots:

Here I put some Puppy Linux screen shots for you to see[Obviously :D].



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Tags: distros, linux, puppy linux .

New Linux Desktop Environments Face-Off: Gnome 2.20 vs KDE 3.5

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in desktop environments, gnome, kde .

Introduction

With the new features that Gnome and KDE (K Desktop Environment) are adding, each desktop environment is challenging the other for a larger share of the market. If Linux-like operating systems come with one desktop environment, the user has the option to add to the other. Because of the ever-increasing sophistication of the new features, some latest versions of the operating system are including packages for both desktop environments, allowing users to have the option of switching from one desktop environment to another. In this article I will briefly talk about the new features of both Gnome and KDE, and then look at some similarities and important differences between the two desktop environments.

Gnome’s New Features

In September 2007, the Gnome Foundation released the latest version of the GTK+ widget toolkit. More significantly, the foundation has launched the Gnome Mobile initiative, along with a software development platform to create user experiences across a wide range of device profiles. This initiative will allow you to use, develop, and commercialize Gnome components on a mobile and embedded user experience platform.

Let’s take a look at the major changes for the users, administrators, and developers of Gnome 2.20.

What’s New for Users

Want to be notified of a new email while you do other tasks? Evolution, Gnome’s email and groupware client, can do this for you by sporting an icon in your panel’s notification area when you get email. Evolution’s Microsoft Exchange support includes access to Exchange’s delegation feature, so that a colleague can handle your work while you are away.

Need to get help faster? The Gnome help browser (yelp) pages now appear more quickly, as individual pages are now loaded on demand instead of the entire manual being parsed unnecessarily. In Epiphany, the integrated web browser, you will find inline completion in the address bar is now more intuitive. When you select an item from the drop-down list, you will see your selection in the entry box.

Need quicker access to basic information and metadata for your images? You can do this with the new properties dialog of Gnome’s image viewer. It includes XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) data that your camera or software may store in your image files, along with the existing EXIF data. You can easily open an image in another application, such as the GIMP, by using the new “Open with…” menu item. When you’ve made your changes and saved the file, then your picture will be updated in the image viewer automatically.

Ever wanted a viewer to allow you to enter information into an interactive PDF form? Try the Evince viewer, which also can save and print the resulting form. To make it easier for you to find keywords in your code, Gnome’s simple text editor, gedit, has a new syntax-highlighting system for scripting languages such as PHP and Ruby, even when embedded in HTML. It highlights text such as “TODO” or “FIXME” inside code comments, and gtk-doc source code documentation

You can synchronize notes between your machine and remote servers to relieve you of repeating the task of copying notes. The note-taking application Tomboy can now do this for you. Tomboy allows you to use WebDAV or SSH to connect to a remote server.

Your wish not to enter passwords over and over is fulfilled with the Gnome Keyring system. It remembers your passwords for networked servers and web sites. The keyring is unlocked automatically when you log in and when you unlock your screen. You can now also change your keyring’s master password via the Encryption Preferences control panel.

The Power Manager now saves profile information about your batteries, so you can look at it later. It even knows about many battery models that have been recalled by their manufacturers. Your screen is locked and you want to let other people leave you a note? The screen saver can now do this for you, by allowing others to click the “Leave Message” button. You’ll see these messages when you log in.

What’s New for Administrators

Suppose a live, interactive, nested Gnome session is running. You, as the administrator, want to set up user profiles inside a session. The Sabayon User Profile Editor is here to do the job. When you create or edit a profile, a nested Gnome session is started up. The editor allows you to change configuration defaults and mandatory keys in their own Gnome session. Gnome Display Manager now uses RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to control access to the Shutdown, Reboot, and Suspend features.

What’s New for Developers

Want to create third party applications? The Gnome 2.20 Developers’ Platform allows independent software developers to develop applications for use with Gnome. It uses version 2.12 of the GTK+ UI toolkit API, which adds new features and important bug fixes. The largest changes are a new volume button widget, for use by media players, a new recent action class to provide recent-files menu items and the new Builder API to build user interfaces from XML descriptions. You can right-click on widgets to make changes more conveniently. The new Accessibility Explorer allows you to check whether your application provides the information needed by accessibility tools such as Gnome’s Orca screen reader.

Gnome has a new documentation web site, library.gnome.org. It lists all the latest tutorials, manuals, and API references. For offline documentation, you should use the built-in DevHelp utility, particularly when searching for function or class names.

KDE’s New Features

KDE is similar in nature to desktop environments found on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Since KDE is a X11-based environment, a GTK+ application can run on top of the desktop if the libraries the program requires are installed. Kdevelop uses an external compiler such as GCC to produce executable code and supports many programming languages.

Let’s take a look at some of the major changes for the users, developers and administrators of KDE 3.5. Then we will talk about KDE 4.0, which will include KOffice 2.0 with innovative features.

What’s New

Ever wanted interactive weather forecasts? This can be done by clicking the weather widget in SuperKaramba, a built-in feature of KDE. This program provides other widgets that you can use on your desktop to perform other tasks. Some examples are a system monitor showing CPU, RAM, hard drive usage and kernel version, new mail notification and news tickers. If you can’t find the widgets you want, you can get them from the site http://www.kde-look.org/ in the Karamba section.

Have you found Kopete, a software instant messaging client, limited? No more. Kopete is now multi-protocol, supporting audio and video devices, and thus MSN video conferencing. It adds support for Yahoo! messages in Rich Text format, AIM chat rooms, .Net Messenger Service, AOL Instant Messenger, and Novell Groupwise. It has a new toolbar (widget) in the main window to edit your global identity.

Want to block ads on your web browser? Konqueror, the core part of the KDE, now has adblock features. Along with being a web browser, Konquerer is a file manager and file viewer designed as a core part of the KDE. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

Kmail has a new feature: Lotus Notes structured text import filter for your email. A FAX-Viewer plugin is available for the KviewShell (document viewer).

Looking for new applications for education? KGeography, a geography learning program has been added. Kalzium is also available, it can be used to calculate weight of molecules and solve chemistry equations.

What Do We Expect in KDE 4.0?

As you can see, new features in KDE 3.5 are few. That’s because effort has mostly been expended in developing many new features for KDE 4.0, scheduled to be released for deployment in December 2007. KDE 4.0 is delivered in two portions: the KDE Development Platform 4.0 and the KDE Desktop 4.0. Highlights of KDE 4.0 are a new visual appearance through Oxygen and new frameworks to build multimedia applications, and improved user experience, and tools for developers and administrators to make their jobs easier. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

KOffice 2.0 is a free office suite of productivity, creativity, management, and supporting applications. Productivity applications include KWord, KSpread, KPresenter, and Kexi (an integrated environment for databases). Supporting applications includes KChart, KFormula, and Kugar (to generate business quality reports). At the time of this writing, KOffice 2.0 is in the alpha stage, and will be part of KDE 4.0 when it is ready for release

The KDE games developer community has considered which games should stay in the kdegames modules for KDE 4.0. Those that can be resized and scalable on high resolution have been kept. Those that cannot resized have been discarded.

Similarities

Both Gnome and KDE are aimed at achieving the goal of making the desktop environment more user-friendly and the development tools more accessible and more modular. They also try to help administrators perform their tasks without overrunning their budget and time. Gnome and KDE offer the same functionality: theming, file management, device management, email management, web browsers, and so forth. It’s up to you to pick the desktop environment that works for you. It’s also possible for you to choose both, so you can switch from one desktop environment to another.

KDE’s SuperKaramba’s widgets are similar to gDesklets for Gnome (as well as Yahoo! Widget Engine for Windows and Max OS X, DesktopX for Windows, Dashboard for Mac OS X, and also the gadgets subset of Google Desktop for Microsoft Windows).

A GTK+ application for Gnome can run on top of KDE. Just make sure the libraries the programs required are installed on the KDE.

Differences

Generally, KDE focuses on offering as many features as possible with as many graphical ways as possible for configuring those features. KDE with its KOffice, is more “Windows-like” than Gnome. Gnome is becoming more scalable on high-resolution screens.

KDE highlights the functionality it has. However, the KDE menus lack the simplicity that Gnome has. Gnome often hides certain configuration options in order to achieve the simplicity that allows the user to get stuff done. However, it lacks certain functionality that KDE has. In Gnome, user preferences and configuration are done through the System menu, user preferences are in the Preferences menu, and system-wide administration is done through the Administration menu and usually requires your super-user password. Unlike Gnome, KDE has one place where all your settings live, it’s called System Settings.

Gnome has tabs for each category of removable drives and media, with checkboxes for the behavior you want and fill-in-the-blank slots for commands you wish to execute for that media device.

KDE has a storage media drop-down menu for each type where you can add and remove various action types; each action (Open a New Window, for example) has an accompanying command and a set of options for which it will be available as an action type.

In Gnome’s file manager, called Nautilus, you can rename files by doing two spaced-out single-clicks on the name. Gnome’s renaming will focus on the name of the file, but not the file extension. In KDE’s file manager (Konqueror), since it defaults to single-click behavior, you have to hold down the Shift key and then do time spaced-out clicks to rename files with your mouse. You can, of course, change KDE to double-click behavior if you want. KDE will highlight the entire file name, including the file extension.

Conclusion

You’ll have to decide which tradeoffs between the KDE’s functionality and Gnome’s simplicity will make your work easier, in isolation or by collaborating with others. The type of collaboration you choose; email, instant messaging, or chat rooms; will influence the desktop environment you are running. If you need the features of both desktop environments, you can always switch between KDE and Gnome.

There will always be competition for market awareness between the two desktop environments, as new technologies, such as higher resolution screens and USB portable physical disk of much higher capacity, become more prevalent. Each desktop community is attempting to increase market awareness of its free programs. For instance, KDE focuses on creating market awareness for KOffice 2.0 for KDE 4.0. Meanwhile, Gnome is pursuing a Mobile initiative, as an attempt to catch up with KDE’s instant messaging client, Kopete.

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Tags: colleague, commercialize, desktop environment, desktop environments, device profiles, evolution, gnome components, gnome foundation, gnome help, groupware client, gtk widget, initiative, kde, microsoft exchange, new email, new features, notification area, software development platform, widget toolkit, yelp .
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