I upgraded to this new version of Linux and I’m posting from it right now but this was not a smooth process. I used the GUI updater (from 9.04) and it failed at 99% downloads. Restarted it after a reboot and it worked this time. I have no idea what happened.

To add insult to injury the default Australian update server is wonky and I don’t really like the new repository manager.

On the positive side it seems stable and is even cleaner looking than 9.04 was. Haven’t played with it that much we’ll see what I think of it in the long run.

Though I enjoy Linux and generally think well of it there are times when one shakes the head and wonders what the hell people are doing. So this is going to be a Linux bashing review, or more specifically Ark bashing.

Ark is the default archive managing program for the KDE desktop. Meaning it makes and extracts things like rar, zip, tar, and ace files. I can say without reservation that my experience with the GNOME desktops’s archive manager was quite good.

Ark has the honour of being the worst application I’ve used on Linux. Let’s begin with it’s website.

Yes that’s right, despite being an important part of the KDE desktop, it’s got about as much exciting exposure as a nun in church. Here’s some of the fun things Ark has to offer;

1) Crashes. Most of the time I don’t even know what triggered it.

2) You can’t archive a folder. No, that would be too much like normal behaviour.

3) No integrated right click archive or extract.

4) Sometimes you have to make the folder to extract to manually. Really.

5) Quite often an extract will fail. If you are lucky you will know because nothing at all has been extracted. However, for special occasions, it decides to fail partway through an extract, thereby fooling you into thinking it’s all done so you can make the discovery the hard way.

6) Ark doesn’t tell you it failed or why. It’s utterly silent. No, that would be keeping people informed. Given Linux’ usual habit of telling you the ins and outs of a duck’s arse, this behaviour is quite odd.

There are alternatives. Not real good ones really. I no longer have the gnome archive manager but might be able to install that. karchiver works a bit better though it seems to be designed for KDE 3 and so parts of it aren’t working very well.

There’s been a lot of talk about improvements in KDE 4.2 which is coming very soon. Currently I’m using KDE 4.1. It’s possible Ark will be significantly improved in it, though it’s hard for me to imagine it’s been improved enough.

To post the lego harvester I used Digikam which is part of the KDE default desktop on kubuntu (KDE often use ‘k’ in their software names) and so far it’s one of the best pieces of linux software I’ve used. I used a somewhat old Canon Powershot A70 to take the pictures which is an excellent camera though somewhat old and definitely a power pig on the batteries.

Linux has a repuation for being a real pain with hardware recognition and drivers but those issues are far less an issue than they used to be. Digikam was simple and intuitive to use imported all my pictures from the camera (via USB) without problems. It was attractive and offers a good album manager with all the basic image editing and a lot of image information.

I came across one issue which was that it’s not possible to delete images inside the photo manager. A quick google suggests this is a bug related to Digikam being designed for KDE3 but being used on KDE4. I can of course delete the files outside the photo manager.

In short despite this hiccup it was a pleasure to use and in fact far easier and faster than the manufacturers import software for windows. The feature rich but not too confusing photo manager is excellent so I hope this silly bug is squashed soon.

One of the advantages of linux is there are a number of desktop environments to choose from whereas the Mac or Windows only gives one.

I’ve been using Ubuntu (32bit) for a while as a basic user dual-booted with Vista (64 bit). I mainly use Vista for gaming and Ubuntu for everything else and that works out well for me. Vista sits on one disk and Ubuntu 8.10 on another. Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment which is clean, simple and stable in my experience though it’s default theme is awful and it’s not strong on eye candy. I wanted to try out KDE to experience that desktop and see if I liked it more or not. So I installed kubuntu-desktop via the repositories in what’s supposed to allow me to use either desktop as I chose (at the login screen).

The Good

It seemed to install fine and indeed I can indeed choose either gnome or KDE desktops to work in.

There is one thing I like about Vista. Call me shallow, but it’s the widgets. KDE has something similar. I haven’t tried it out that much yet but it’s nice to see it there. Ubuntu (which uses GNOME) let me install something widget-like but that experience wasn’t very satisfactory.

The sound is better. A lot better. For example, in DOSBox the experience is much sharper less stuttered sound, especially music.

KDE is prettier. I guess that’s shallow too but then part of the point of a GUI is the pretty, otherwise might as well hide in the CLI. The default theme and icons are nicer though you can certainly improve gnome there. What you can’t improve as much is the positioning and layout. Gnome seems stretched out and almost pixelated. KDE comes across sharp. Gnome might be able to say it’s cleaner if it weren’t for the brown because it’s sparse which is a good thing I think.

The Hmm

The startup sound is cut off abruptly.

Logging out produced black screen, however it was recoverable by control alt backspace.

Using the updater appeared to work but sometime after closing it a crash box popped up.

The reminder of Vista is again brought about with the aero-like mini windows which are just as crummy and pointless on KDE as they are in windows.

Dolphin has one drawback for me which is the lack of video preview which gnome does. Dolphin will preview for several other file types though.

The menu is a bit clunky much like Vista’s. I may get over it once I figure out the quicklaunch equivalent.

Compiz-fusion. It’s a bunch of GUI eye candy and some functionality which is both cool and better than anything in Vista though not so sure about the Mac. I wonder how it works in KDE if at all.

The odd graphical glitch especially when a window expands.

The Ugly

Literally ugly. Firefox tabs have odd artefacts below them looking somewhat like tabs. It’s moves around just by passing the mouse over them. My search on google revealed this is a common problem for which people are awaiting a fix. Selection buttons and other graphical elements also draw badly.

My windows NTFS drive will not mount via dolphin. It says;

An error occurred while accessing ‘Volume (ntfs)’, the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1. Missing codepage or helper program. Or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try dmsg | tail or so

in a small box inside dolphin. I can use the ntfs disk fine in the GNOME desktop if I switch and can use windows itself fine. I’ve looked around via google etc for answers and found many mount issues but nothing that seems to work for me. sudo and kdesudo dolphin didn’t work.

I’ve found if I go to the GNOME desktop and mount the drive there then logout and come back into KDE I can then use the drive normally.

This last issue is the one most irritating me at this time which is why I’ve detailed it in case some reader has a fix.

Overall KDE seems to have quite a few small problems. It’s appearance reminds me of Vista but also OS/X of the Mac. Of course the nuts and bolts are still the same as for Ubuntu. I’ll stick with it for a while to get a deeper feel for it, especially to use the various KDE designed applications and see how good they are.

Update: Fixed the hard drive issue with ntfs configuaration tool.