Kubuntu 16.04 Pre-Release Review

I was getting a bit tired of Mint KDE 17.3 on my main HP Z400 workstation (Quad core 2.5Ghz Xeon, 6GB RAM) like the way it holds back updates, plus for some reason it has been feeling rather sluggish and the final straw was Mint's user forum and main site getting hacked. If I cannot get help through their forum without them exposing my personal details then I will look elsewhere. The question was which distro should I try?

Well I wanted to stick with KDE and switch pretty quickly. I did consider Kaos Linux which is an interesting ground-up built distro that uses the package system and rolling release method from Arch. However having tried it in a VM, I would have had to spend a lot of time researching how to get all my favourite apps to install, and I needed to switch quicker than that. I'd also probably have to backup and format my Home partition. Plus 'bleeding-edge' distros are not really my cup of tea, I prefer stability over the latest apps. I know my way round apt-get and dpkg commands so well, I decided to go for Kubuntu 16.04. However since the final release is not due until the mid-April, I took a risk and installed a Daily build. This also made things easier because I could keep my old Home partition, so all my settings (bar the KDE ones) would stay, and I won't have to reinstall when 16.04 is finally released.

Installing took no time at all, as per previous releases, and the install went without a hitch. Upon rebooting I logged into the new KDE Plasma 5 desktop. By default on Nvidia cards 'buntu releases run using the open source Nouveau drivers, which are surprisingly good, apart from slightly fuzzy font rendering, but I could use it on my dual monitors fine while I sorted out getting the proprietary drivers installed. I tried installing the latest drivers manually using the PPA, but ended up with blank screens, until I remembered that my card is an old passive-cooled Geforce 210! Since Kubuntu's Driver Management Module doesn't see the old Legacy cards, I checked on NVidia's site which ones I needed, installed Synaptic, and looked for the nvidia-340 drivers. Once I installed them and rebooted all was well again. I then installed all my usual apps such as Gimp, Gmusicbrowser, Clementine, VLC etc. I also installed a couple of meta-packages, kubuntu-restricted-extras (for extra non-free codecs etc) and build-essential (for compiling apps).

The only remnants of my old settings I had to fix was some of the Places in Dolphin file manager were orphaned (since I changed the mount point of one of my drives) so it was just a case of editing those in the sidebar. Incidentally, I like the cleaned up look of Dolphin now, just remember that a lot of settings are now under the "Control" button.

My only slight problems are with virtual machines. Virtualbox won't install as it has dependency issues and (my admittedly old version of) VMWare Workstation needs patching again due to a newer kernel than it expects.I am sure these will be sorted at some point but it's not too much of a problem since I can always try VMs on my server (which has much more RAM anyway) and remote into them. Also I had to re-enable bash auto-completion which is not on by default for some reason.

I have changed the hideous Kubuntu default wallpaper for a couple of my favourites. It would be nice if KDE could span one wallpaper between two desktops, but KDE treats each workspace as separate. I have also tweaked the desktop/panel layout, switched the Desktop Theme from the default Breeze Light to Breeze Dark and installed Conky, so this is how my desktop looks now:

One thing I really love in Plasma 5 is the new Media Player widget, which now even recognises Gmusicbrowser, which it never did before, oh and the keyboard media buttons now actually work with Gmusicbrowser! Hovering over the widget on the panel shows artist/song info and album cover, clicking on the widget opens up the media controls. It might not seem like much but it's little things like this make things easier. Incidentally, Clementine player still uses a lot of resources - it is the top item in CPU and Memory usage in System Monitor, above Chrome!

 
The main thing I love about Kubuntu 16.04 is it's speed, it feels lightning fast compared to my old Mint KDE installation, even on a mechanical hard drive. Chrome feels really snappy, even with quite a few tabs open. Being a Daily build, there's a whole bunch of updates to install every day, when I login and even though it's still in beta, it is really stable, I've not had any application crashes yet, so hopefully it should be rock solid when it is finally released.

Update 6th March 2016
There's been a few little crashes, including once with Plasma desktop crashing and another with mouse settings, but nothing that a quick logout/login or reboot hasn't cured. Being a pre-release there are bound to be a few little bugs so I wouldn't recommend putting on mission critical situations until the final release, but at least there's not too long to wait.

Peppermint Linux on a Samsung N145 Netbook

I have not really used Samsung N145 netbook in ages since I got my HP Chromebook 14 but I was playing around with Cloudready and couldn't get it to install. Since I had already wiped Xubuntu I decided to try something else. A friend of mine reminded me that Peppermint Linux is still around, and I had not tried that in ages either, so I thought I would give it a go. Peppermint is a heavily customised version of Ubuntu/Mint Linux and LXDE desktop with a smart dark default theme and nemo file manager. Install is in the same sort of way as most Ubuntu-based installers and I had it installed without a hitch. On using it installed for the first time it does feel quicker than Xubuntu and now the screen brightness keyboard shortcuts actually work!

Peppermint default desktop showing the screen brightness shortcuts working!

Peppermint comes with a minimal set of locally installed apps - just the basics - Chromium browser (with DuckDuckGo search as per Mint), VLC media player and nemo for file management. It has the same update system as Mint. Peppermint also have added some web app tech to "... put web applications on an equal footing with locally installed apps by allowing them easy integration into system menus, and delivery to the desktop via SSB's so they mimic locally installed applications." I have installed Chrome, Firefox, Gmusicbrowser, Guake and Filezilla so far and moved the main panel to the top where I prefer it. It feels lighter than Xubuntu and much more polished than LXLE, I'd definitely recommend this distro as a possible Windows replacement for old netbooks like this one and for other low end PCs.

A Fresh Start With Mint 17 KDE for my Workstation

I've recently had a bit of a Linux desktop crisis as my favourite desktop, Cinnamon, has been playing up somewhat on my main workstation, after I had been satisfied with it for so long. It started getting flickering with one of the dual monitors going black briefly when fullscreening VLC or anything that runs fullscreen. Cairo Dock was also becoming increasingly buggy too, so it was time for a change. I tried LXDE and XFCE installed on Mint but they all felt lacking on my dual monitor setup. I then tried to install KDE but it messed up the install, and so it was time for a reinstall.

I briefly tried fresh installing Xubuntu and then stock Ubuntu but for some reason the mouse and keyboard stopped working on them on the first boot. Quite odd. I then reinstalled Mint Cinnamon 17, then installed MATE again and had that running for a few weeks until today, when I decided to start fresh again. I used MATE for a few weeks, but although it worked OK, Gtk2 feels old and just does not feel as smooth as Cinnamon used to do.

So I decided to try KDE again, but this time with a fresh install of Mint 17 KDE, but keeping my /home partition and that's what I am running now. I already have KDE installed on one laptop, so I knew what to expect. It got off to a slightly shaky start on the LiveCD as Desktop Effects are enabled by default and they do not play well with the open source Nouveau driver! So I disabled them for the install and disabled them on the first boot, then re-enabled them after installing the Nvidia drivers.

Then after installing my favourite apps, such as Chrome, Filezilla and others, I got down to customizing my desktop to how I wanted it. KDE is great for those who need to customize everything, but the only thing lacking is the way it treats desktops separately, so you cannot span a single wallpaper across multiple screens. A workaround is to split your wallpaper down the middle with GIMP, and set the left and right bits appropriately.

I set the main KDE panel to the top of the screen and then made an auto-hidden panel at the base of the screen for most used apps and resource monitors etc. I did briefly try Docky, but it does not work how I want. I did try a completely dark theme all over the desktop, but they are very tricky to get right, especially with gtk apps and WINE etc so I decided to stick to stock theme other than a dark desktop theme for the panel. I also installed Conky with Gotham theme. Here's how my KDE desktop looks with the lower panel visible, with Dolphin and Amarok open:

I did actually install Gmusicbrowser too, but the keyboard media buttons don't seem to work with it. Thankfully Amarok works very well in it's native KDE, unlike whenever I have tried it in other desktops. I do also like the KDE main menu's Favourites list, a good contender feature-wise for Cinnamon's menu.

KDE has some nifty features and the desktop effects can actually be quite useful, like the 3D app switcher and taskbar window previews, which I have not had for years.

Another cool feature is KDE Connect which makes Android Notifications appear as notifications in KDE, as well as enabling you to control audio/video playback in KDE from your phone, amongst other things.

So I am quite happy now with Mint 17 KDE on my HP xw6600, it's very nice and usable once it's been setup right, and now that I have got used to it. I would say though it does need plenty of resources to run smoothly, so it's not ideal for low end laptops with integrated graphics. My desktop is a HP xw6600 with 8GB RAM and 4 core 2.5ghz Xeon CPU and Nvidia 7600GT. It has been stable so far though, more so than Cinnamon, I have only had one settings dialogue crash once, that's about it, so hopefully I shall keep Mint KDE on my main workstation for a long while.

How to add Gmusicbrowser to the Media Menu in Cinnamon/Gnome desktops

My favourite music player for a long time has been Gmusicbrowser as it's lightweight and can handle extremely large music collections with ease, taking only a short time to scan my 50,000+ track collection. However for awhile now, it's tray icon never shows in Cinnamon or Gnome desktops, which has it's own Media Menu with playback buttons and volume controls. Without a fix it usually just shows only 'Gmusicbrowser' clickable that just opens the player, and no controls. I found a work around sometime back that I just rediscovered after a reinstall of Mint 17 Cinnamon on my main desktop.

Essentially you need to use your favourite text editor to add 'cinnamon' to the list of players in  /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/sound@cinnamon.org/applet.js in the "compatible_players variable" section, save the file, then restart Cinnamon (Ctrl+F2 then enter a single letter 'r' and press enter) or just logout and log in. Now start Gmusicbrowser and it should now have a proper entry in the Media Menu with playback controls and we're done. I've also rediscovered Gmusicbrowser's built in desktop widgets.

Living With KDE on Kubuntu 14.04

First a little background. Most of the first Linux distros I ever used had a KDE 3 desktop or had it as an option, and I preferred it to Gnome 2 at the time,  regularly used Mepis, Vector, Fedora, Slax amongst others. I was a regular distro hopper back then, but I stuck with KDE 3 until just before KDE 4.x then I switched to Gnome 2 on Ubuntu 7.10 (on my desktop) and XFCE on Xubuntu (on my laptop). Late KDE 3 got a bit buggy for me and once i started using Gnome 2 regularly, I started to prefer it, and I used it right up until Ubuntu switched to using Unity by default. I did briefly try Gnome Classic but it was never the same, so I switched to Xubuntu on desktops and laptops, and then recently Mint Cinnamon (desktop and 2 laptops) and Xubuntu (lower end laptops).
 
So I have not really thoroughly tried Kubuntu or any KDE desktop for a while and every time I did I found it a little annoying to use, and the default themes distros generally use do not help either, especially Kubuntu. Even the default KDE theme on Fedora isn't very nice and besides I always end up going back to *buntu or Debian based distros as that is what I am used to and know how to use and tweak. Just recently though, since 14.04 came out, I decided to try using Kubuntu on one of my laptops and really try to use it every day, to see if I could get it the way I want it. Here's how Kubuntu looks by default:

First thing I had to do, was change that hideous default look somehow and remove that shiny folder thing! KDE has lots of settings to customize the entire desktop environment. At first KDE was also quite sluggish on this Dell Latitude D520 which has a 1.6ghz Core Duo CPU integrated Intel graphics and 4GB of RAM. It ran much better once I had disabled all the snazzy desktop effects. This actually makes KDE more bearable for me as I cannot stand the horrible shiny bling and great big drop shadows under windows, always reminds me of Ja Ja Binks in the Robot Chicken Star Wars special, by default KDE is all "Me-sa all sparkly glowy!" - and equally annoying!

Me-sa  all sparkly glowy!

I tried various themes and icons and finally settled on Moka icon theme, Chrome Dark window decorations, and Opaquity Desktop theme. I also set the Splash Screen to Minimalistic and also set the desktop wallpaper and Login screen to the same image.  I've also tweaked the colours too.

Layout-wise, I have moved the main panel to the top, made it smaller to give me more desktop space, and I think it also looks much nicer. Instead of a lower panel I always like to have a dock. My favourite is Cairo Dock but it merely crashed out in KDE on this laptop, so I installed Plank (aka Docky) instead and gave it permanent shortcuts for all my most used apps. I found this little list of stuff to do after installing Kubuntu quite handy. I stuck with Firefox as my default browser, though I might install Chrome too at some point. I also installed Yakuake drop-down Quake-style terminal, similar to Guake that I usually use.

One thing that I found a little annoying is KDE uses an "Activities" thing that I don't really like, and I found it took a bit of digging to work out how to add another workspace and set the default shortcuts for switching between them using Ctrl + Alt + left/right cursor, which is default in pretty much every major DE I have used.

KDE is pretty much a tinkerers paradise and although I used to enjoy that part, these days I prefer to actually use my desktop after no more than 30 minutes or so of configuration. I have spent a lot more time than that just trying to get KDE to look and work how I like it. With my main desktop I use Mint Cinnamon and all I usually do, appearance-wise, on that is move the panel, install Cairo Dock and change the icons, that's all I need to do. KDE needs a lot more tinkering to get it how I want it. Here's how my KDE desktop now looks after I login, as you can see I like a nice clean desktop with no icons or clutter, just a panel and dock. I shall keep using Kubuntu on this laptop for awhile and see how things go.

CyanogenMod on Samsung Galaxy S3 - 4.4.3

Just a little update on my Galaxy S3, as of the CM11-20140606 Nightly, my phone has been running 4.4.3 version of Android, even as my 2012 Nexus 7 has yet to receive it's 4.4.3 update! And I have just installed today's Nightly with no problems so far. It's stable enough to be a "daily driver" and I like the new Contacts screen, looks and works better than before. Apparently the default camera can now save to the SD card but I'm still using a flashed Google Camera so I can't test that. I look forward to the next Nightlies to see what they bring.

The Continuing Story of CyanogenMod 11 on my Samsung Galaxy S3.

I've been upgrading to every Nightly release of CyanogenMod 11 on my Galaxy S3, since I am hoping it will fix a slight issue in the release. Sometimes when you pull down from the top to see your Notifications it crashes the launcher and goes back to the lockscreen. It doesn't seem to make any difference which launcher is in use, it happens with all of them seemingly quite randomly. I have been trying out different launchers in the process.


Nova Launcher

My go-to launcher of choice has often been Nova, which has a nice stock Kit Kat look but with a decent amount of customisation and I have used it for quite a long time, and used it back when my LG Optimus 2X was my main phone. It's Tesla Unread plugin that shows a count of new messages missed calls etc. My favourite icon set is RoundOS which I use on any launcher that can use custom icons. The widget in the middle is for launching different modes in A Better Camera. The clock widget is part of the Chronus Home and Lock widget set.

Google Now Launcher

For a pure stock Android Kit Kat experience, Google's own Google Now Launcher is the best choice. It's simple and elegant and has the Google Now screen a swipe away on the left-most screen. The only downside of course is it is not for those who like to customise their Home screens, and of course that means no custom icon sets.

Inspire Launcher

My current default launcher is Inspire Launcher, I like it because it's based on the stock KitKat Android Launcher, but it is very customisable, which means I can use my favourite icon set, RoundOS. By default Inspire uses a different search panel instead of Google Now, though you can enable the Google Now screen in settings. Sadly it does not works as smoothly as it should since once you swipe to left to Google Now it won't let you swipe back to the Home screen, so you have to tap Home to get back. Inspire also has a Counter plugin for showing a count of new messages or missed calls when they come in, a bit like Nova's Tesla Unread plugin. It's quite possible I might get bored and switch to one of the other launchers again but here's how my Home screen looks now: 

Camera Issues

Also on the last Nightly the stock camera app stopped working and I downgraded to the previous Nightly with no luck. It's possibly that it might work again if I completely wipe data but that's a bit of a pain when I have every just right. I even tried to flash the Google Camera but it still does not work and hasn't worked since I installed CM (and obviously wouldn't work on JB when it was stock either) I can take one photo then it will lock up and stop the camera working at all with any app until I reboot. It definitely seems to be a bug in this release for the S3, it would probably be fine if I downgraded to the Jelly Bean version of CM. I'm sure the Google Camera probably works fine on other ROMs for other devices. Looks like I will be using A Better Camera and Focal more often. A Better Camera still works very well and will be my default choice for now. I'll continue upgrading to each Nightly and see how it goes. Also on the plus side, since this last Nightly I have not had the Notification drop-down bug, so far at least.

Update 20th May: I have switched back to Nova since the icons are slightly smaller and it definitely feels more spacious on the Home screens. Also today A Better Camera Widgets have been updated and they now have more options, you can now have them more translucent or transparent, and they look more polished, as you can see from my screenshot.

  

Testing Camera Apps in CyanogenMod 11 on My Galaxy S3

I've been on the look-out for a good third party camera app for my recently rooted and ROM'd Galaxy S3. I would use Google's own Google Camera but at the moment, in this ROM at least, it freezes up after taking a photo and then I get an error in other camera apps, and have to reboot to get a working camera again.

So the search is on for the best camera app for CyanogenMod for my S3. Since I've Kit Katted it out, I generally like using the default camera, which is the stock Android camera, minus Photosphere, because apparently that is proprietary so can't be included.

To fill that void I've installed Focal (Beta) by Team BBQ. I'm not overly keen on the rest of the app but it's PicSphere setting is a reasonable Photosphere alternative.

  

However, HDR seems to be missing for my hardware in Focal, so I went looking for a better camera app, and found the handily titled A Better Camera.  

The best thing about A Better Camera, far better than it's name, is their ABC widget, which gives you a configurable set of buttons on a widget (there are two types), and, while not a particularly pretty widget, I find it very useful to go straight into HDR mode right from the widget. Hopefully the developers will make the widgets prettier and much more configurable. I'd like to have just a single row of buttons in a colour of my choosing.

And, in my opinion, it also takes very good HDR shots, possibly better than those from Samsung's own camera app that I used before I flashed CM. It takes 3 photos rather than 2 to create the HDR. There's a limit to how many HDR photos you can take before having to pay for the premium app. Of course if the Google Camera starts working in a future update of CyanogenMod I may end up using that for HDR instead or if I find an even better camera app.