I saw a spare MicroSD card lying around when I had a brain wave. I loaded the MicroSD onto a USB Card reader and proceeded to download KDE Live ISO (openSUSE 12.3 RC1) from openSUSE development site using Transmission. After downloading it I burnt the image onto the Micro SD card using SUSE Studio ImageWriter. This article is being written from the Live KDE ISO to test the stability of the system.
Few thoughts about KDE RC1 Live ISO
- Good looking default theme and wallpaper. The desktop seems to be kind of "Tronish". The new wallpaper can be downloaded from this link and is titled "grow". The wallpaper is an winning entry from a contest organised through Flickr. You can view all the submissions for the contest here.
- Great progress has been made in the "looks" department from the last time i too a look at it. openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 KDE 4.9.2
- The desktop effects are smooth and fluid and it is a lot less glassy compared to earlier openSUSE/KDE avatars.
- Even though it is a RC1 release, ISO image is of top grade quality. There were no hiccups when booting using the ISO.
- Browsing does work on the Live ISO which is a big plus. I could play only WebM encoded files like this one "Adobe Flash Versus GNOME Totem Vegas webm" in Firefox as native "h.264" support doesn't seem to be available. Many videos in youtube complain that flash is not installed, but they start playing once I closed the error window which seemed kind of funny.
- In Dolphin (File manger) everything is invoked through "single click" which can be a pain sometimes.
Screenshots
Default desktop has a openSUSE greeter and provides links to key webpages associated with the project .
On clicking the "KInfocenter" icon in the desktop we get to see that openSUSE 12.3 will most probably be shipping kernel 3.7.x and KDE version 4.10. KInfocenter is a nice tool to have and does provide a lot of nice info about Hardware configuration of the underlying system.
Firefox playing a WebM encoded video in youtube.
A lot of plasma widgets come pre-installed. You can see Weather, Calendar, RSS feed ticker, Hardware information and Disk Space widget in the below screenshot.
To open the widget browser we need to Right click on panel ==> Navigate to Panel options ==> Add Widgets ==> Get New Widgets ==> Download New Plasma Widgets. This tool will allow us to add more widgets to the desktop. At long last I am in widget heaven :-)
For those who prefer a more contemporary desktop there is "Desktop Icons Activity". The Activity manager can be accessed by clicking the icon next to the kickoff menu (Alt+F1).
The following screenshot shows two main configuration tools available on openSUSE namely "YaST" and "KDE Settings"
Konqueror passes youtube's html5 test but Firfox doesn't.
When I wanted to read a pdf i found that there is no pdf reader on Live ISO? In these days when even cheap mobiles have all kinds of document readers, I feel that Live ISOs ought to have some kind of readers on them.
Apper notification indicate that I need to update some packages indicating that openSUSE 12.3 is still under heavy development :-) When I click on the notification, it shows the packages that I need to update.
Found KWrite to be a exceptionally easy to use. I liked as to how "Find & Replace" function has been implemented. It highlights all replacements and the number of replacements made. Kwrite has a vi editor mode (Win key+Ctrl+v) which allows "vi" enthusiasts to edit text using commands (dd does delete entire line in this mode).
Final Thoughts
- Lot of widgets, desktop effects, great theme and other eye-candy are available.
- The new KDE does makes all the right noises and sounds.
- But the Live ISO cannot be used on a day to day basis as it doesn't pack any document reader, dictionary and other niche tools.
- SUSE Studio ImageWriter cannot create persistent USBs which is a real bummer.
openSUSE is in the process of transforming it's software search site (software.opensuse.org) into a cool AppStore similar to that of "Google Play". It will be a one stop shop where you can get your favourite games , Office tools, educational software, development tools etc . The AppStore caters to all of the officially supported desktops namely KDE, GNOME, XFCE and LXDE. The site is currently in beta state. The AppStore is powered by openSUSE Build Service. The openSUSE Build Service is a system which allows one to build and distribute binary packages from sources for various distributions like openSUSE, Fedora and Debian.
Users can browse through the AppStore and locate the required software very easily and install it onto their machine using One Click install technology . All the software hosted at the AppStore is broadly classified into the following categories:-
Using the AppStore
Once you click on any one of the images indicating various categories of software it will take you to pages where the respective categories of applications are displayed. When we choose Games category it takes us to a Games AppStore as shown below.
Each application in category page is accompanied by a brief description of the application . Most of the applications also have a accompanying thumbnail. After deciding the game we want , we can click on the relevant image and it will take us to a page with a install button. I clicked on "Chess" game and it took me to a individual application page which has more details about the game and a "Install" button.
We can navigate to various sub category pages using the links in each application category page. Various "related category" pages like Logic Game, Board Game etc. are available under Games Appstore
On clicking the install button a YMP file is downloaded. The ymp file contains instructions about the repositories and packages that are required to install the relevant software.
The YMP invokes the YaST installer and provides a awesome wizard which enables users to easily install the required software. The AppStore fully harnesses the hidden potential of the famed SUSE One_Click_Install.
AppStore Tips & Tricks
Search for application
One can easily search for any application using the search box in the top of the page as shown below.
Search for application for other distributions
Once can search for applications built for distros other than openSUSE by turning on the "All Distributions" option when searching for an application.
The One-Click installation process is currently supported only for openSUSE and not for other distributions. Using the AppStore one can download the binary installation files(*.rpm, *.deb) for other distros . Banshee Media player rpm for Fedora 17 can be downloade as shown below.
If we click on the repository name ( refer above screenshot ), it will take us to the build service page which will display instructions for installation as shown below.
Snapshot of Google Trends obtained today showing no future trends for KDE
A few days ago i checked out Google Trends for the first time. I wanted to checkout this tool first hand because everyone on the internet seems to talking about it these days about how good it is. It looks looks like any other graph. It is rumoured to be a very powerful tool and is supposed to accurately show various search trends over the years for various search terms. As such the tool is very easy to use you. I could add a maximum of five search terms on the left hand side. As soon as i enter the search terms on the left hand side of the tool it seemed to tell me how often people around the world have been searching for various terms since 2004. I can imagine Google Trends to be a very basic form of data warehousing and data mining front end tool.
While i was messing around with the tool i noticed two check boxes at the top right hand side. One is labelled "New Headlines" and other "Forecast". The Headlines check box is turned ON by default and the tool seems to try and correlate news headlines with search trends. I at once thought that this feature has a lot of hidden potential. I noticed that when i turn ON the other check box the graph extrapolates into the future along x axis(years) probably based on past data of searches made in Google search engine. Future trends are plotted in dotted lines whereas past data is in the form of a contiguous line.
Now comes the interesting part. I tried to check out the search / popularity trends for the various desktop environments available for Linux namely GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE. As expected KDE started out with higher search numbers (2004) and somewhere around 2005 GNOME surpassed KDE . Then was was revenge of sorts when KDE surpassed its rival GNOME in the beginning of 2008. But GNOME snatched the lead again around second quarter of 2008 and maintains a thin lead over KDE till date. XFCE started with good stats in 2004 but couldn't keep pace with its siblings KDE and GNOME and is now seems to be fighting for a niche market share with its main competitor LXDE which emerged on scene around first quarter of 2008.
All was well and good until i turned ON the dreaded "forecast" check box to check future trends of the desktop environments. Google seems to be adamant and denies that KDE will exist in near future. I couldn't find an dotted extension for the green line in the above snapshot. It does show a descending curve for GNOME and a stable unwavering lines for XFCE and LXDE. At first when i noticed this a few days ago i thought that it was an anomaly in the tool and decided to checkout the tool later. Bit when i checked it out again today i can confirm that dotted line for KDE is till missing.
Why is the dotted line for KDE missing?
- Is it because "Canonical pulled the plug on Kubuntu" ?
- Is it because Google doesn't have enough search data about KDE that it is not able to show future trends ?
- Is it a prophecy of some sort from Google that KDE would cease to exist ?
- Or is there a bug in Google Trends ?
I guess, only time will provide answers to all these questions. Signing off after attaching a live gadget from google trends.
Update(24 NOV2012 10:25 GMT)
Did somebody knock on Google's doors and inform them about the bug. KDE does have a future now :-) It is weird that this bug was there for over one week and after writing this article it disappears. Thank you Google for the quick fix. I have to admit that future is not too rosy though.
KDE has future now :-)
After taking a peek at openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 GNOME 3.6 earlier i was curious as to how KDE 4.9 is coming along in openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1. Though i would have loved to take a look at LXDE and XFCE Live ISOs, openSUSE currently doesn't provide the same. Hence i had submitted a feature request earlier. The last time i took a look at a KDE desktop was when Milestone 3 was released for openSUSE 12.2. Since i had already covered about how i got the LIVE ISO for GNOME and booted from it i am not repeating the same stuff here.
Live ISO Overview
The default KDE desktop is as shown below. It is pretty, glassy, stylish and sleek. It is definitely the James Bond among the X windows. It has more gadgets oops widgets than James Bond though :-). After using GNOME 3.X desktop for around 2 years now I started looking around for Activities window and those big round icons of GNOME on a KDE desktop.How stupid of me. KDE is definitely the most good looking desktop for those who prefer the classic desktop. The standard desktop consists of
- Panels
- Widgets
- Kickoff Application launcher (Alt+F1)
- krunner command launcher (Alt+F2)
The SUSE greeter on KDE is cool and provides all the tasty info about openSUSE community and links to important pages like software downloads page, forums and build service. I think they should build something similar to it for GNOME too.
On clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop we get all the vital statistics about the system like Network Status, CPU info, Memory Info, OS info(Linux 3.6.3-1-default i686;openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 (i586); KDE: 4.9.2) etc.
Dolphin which happens to be the default file manager for KDE desktop takes its own sweet time to load when it is launched from the KDE menu. But when it opened it was fast even though it was packed to the brim with many features. One cool thing i found was you can even open a terminal in a panel inside Dolphin and when you navigate on the terminal using commands like cd Dolphin also changes folders mimicking the actions done through the terminal. Even the "Folders" panel shows the current folder based on the cwd (current working directory) in terminal.
The search functionality in KDE menu is pretty intuitive and can correctly show the application you need in accordance with the input you provide. Suppose, you want to change the default browser from Firefox to Konqueror then all you need to do is open the menu (press Alt+F1) and start typing default and it throws up the application using which we can change the default browser, Mail client, File manager, IM client and even Window manger.
Next I tried to change the display resolution and typed in "display" and the search functionality outdid itself and threw up four possible results which really confuses the hell out of normal users like me. To top this all, out of the four results two of the results were for the same app which is used to change the display settings.
Changing right handed to left handed mouse was done in by typing in "mouse" in application search and using the first application in the results as sown below.
Kwrite text editor showing syntax highlighting for a simple Java program which prints a line with text "String".
Made some vain efforts to tweak Kwrite to Compile and Run Java programs and make it a cool Java IDE instead of a boring editor. I was able to do it very easily on GNOME with Gedit. Guess, I should use DrJava instead of Kwrite if I decide to move to KDE and ditch my reliable GNOME 3.X desktop.
In KDE to add widgets to the desktop you need right click on the desktop and click on "Add Widgets" option. This will open a widget manager which will allow you to choose the required widget. You need to double click to open a widget and you and drag it to any part of desktop. When you hover your mouse over the widget a spanner symbol will show up which will allow you to configure the widget preferences. The following screenshot shows clock and weather widgets on the desktop. Similarly you can right click on the bottom panel to add widgets to the panel. You can see that I have added dictionary widget to the panel.
I find that Konqueror which happens to be the default browser for KDE is HTML5 ready according to youtube. Konqueror supports the following HTML5 attributes which are useful for playing videos
- Video tag
- h.264 format
- WebM format
Conclusion
Using the KDE Live ISO was hassle free and overall it was a great experience. I did face a couple of issues mainly with krunner freezing and had to force close it. Also I had to retstart KDE once when i was messing around with gadgets and the desktop become non responsive. I noticed that kwin was on hyperdrive in ksysguard when system became non responsive. Other than that there were no major hiccups.
openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.2 is a spin off ISO based on openSUSE mantis. Unlike the original ISO the Education Life ISO is a highly polished bit of distribution. As the name suggests it is tailored to cater to the needs of your everyday life. It also has a bunch of educational software bundled in it. After installing the Linuz you need not bother about installation of OSS and Non-OSS software etc. I have never tried out openSUSE Edu Li-f-e before but now that i have taken it for a spin it is amazing. openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 edition is too cool to miss. It openSUSE on steroids.
- It has KDE, GNOME and Cinnamon too.
- It has all the required multimedia codecs pre installed. It runs almost all the restricted formats(mp3s, mp4s, flvs..). No more multimedia related tweaks :-)
- It has almost all the applications that you will need on a day to day basis.
There are multiple options available to download the ISOs
- You can download them directly from this url
- You can download using torrent clients using this torrent file.
- You can download using metalink(fast download using multiple mirrors) using this link or this link using a Firefox / Seamonkey browser Add-on called DownThemAll!
For more information about openSUSE-Education Li-f-e distribution and creating live USB stick check out the following links:
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 KDE desktop
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Cinnamon desktop
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 GNOME 3.4.2 desktop
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Educational Software
There are wide range of Educational software that come bundled in the ISO like Avogadro (molecule editor), klavaro (Typing tutor), Kanagram(Anagram game), Stellarium (Astronomical simulator)
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Games Software
There are the usual set of Games packaged with any other openSUSE version like gbrainy(favourite), chess, Freecell
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Graphics Software
If you into editing images and stuff then you are in luck as you have a whole gamut of software pre installed namely Inkscape, Blender, Gimp, sk1(vector graphics similar to CorelDRAW). For amateurish work you can use mtpaint and mypaint.
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Internet Software
You have Browsers (Konqueror, Firefox), Soft Phone (Ekiga), Chat clients (Empathy, Kopete, Konversation, Pidgin), Mail clients (Claws, Evolution, Kmail), RSS / News clients (Akregator, Liferea) ,Torrent clients (Ktorrent, Tarnsmission), Twitter Client(Choqok),FTP client(gFTP) etc installed under internet related software category.
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Office Applications
You the LibreOffice package installed as well as alternative Office software such as Abiword and Gnumeric installed. In addition you also get ultra cool Stardict(dictionary), GnuCash(Financial tool) and FBReader (e-book reader)
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Programming Applications
The Bywater BASIC Interpreter (bwBASIC) brought back fond memories of writing simple programs in basic language which is considered to be the best language to start off with. BlueJ which happens to be a Java IDE with with inbuilt "Class Diagram" editor was pretty functional and novel.I liked BlueJ as it could automatically draw Class Diagrams as we develop the project which is pretty cool and it is quite light weight too. You also have other IDEs like KDevelop4, MonoDevelop installed.
BlueJ in action
bwBASIC in action
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 Sound &Video Applications
As i have mentioned earlier the distribution supports all restricted formats. It has VLC, GM MPLAYER, Totem, Kaffeine as the video players. The audio players / music managers consist of Amarok, Banshee and Audacious. Hydrogen Drum machine is simply mind blowing and very easily to use. I randomly whipped up something and viola it turned into cool music.
openSUSE-Education Li-f-e 12.2 System Tools & Others
The distribution comes with Htop pre-installed which is very good thinking on part of the developers. The GSEBLinux application is a cool Linux guide for newbies. Disks or palimpsest is a pretty good disk management utility. The distribution comes preinstalled with wine which saves time installing it.Using Dosbox you can play all your favourite DOS games
Wine and Dosbox
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