Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Back to AfterStep

I am back to Afterstep. While I’ve found KDE to be very usable and powerfull, my fingers are trained for Afterstep. I will still use KDE at home though, where I am not pressured with time.

While I was testing KDE this time, I have found khelpcenter (Help icon in the main menu) to be extremely useful. It does a good job integrating KDE specific documentation with the rest of manuals, info pages, etc installed on the system. Yeah, info pages in particular.

I am thinking about a small project which will incorporate many of my small notes. What I have in mind is to create a new user on one of my hosts and generate step-by-step complete home environmnent starting from the shell prompt, vim, mutt, procmail, simple scripts that make everyday life easier and ending with… Well, not ending actually. Some Bash prompt tips will come handy later on.

Back to Red Hat Linux 7.2

I have decided to downgrade my DVD box to Red Hat 7.2. I am tired of fighting with the laggy picture and sound. 7.2 had it all nice. 7.3 broke it and I cannot find whether it’s the kernel, XFree, something else, or the combination. I’ve got to find those antique CDs. :)

KDE vs. Gnome

Gnome logoKDE logoOnce again I am willing to try out something bigger and slower then AfterStep. These time it is KDE version 3 that comes with Red Hat 7.3. I upgraded my KDE 2.2 from Red Hat 7.2 and the whole day spent already :) It runs much faster on my machine and I don’t actually know if it is KDE, my machine (1GHz, 512 MB RAM), or both. Anyway, it feels faster and smother then ever before. In my opinion, it is way better then Gnome from the same distribution (which is like 1.4 beta :)), although I was Gnome’s biggest fan for all the time before. There are several things, which pushed me into KDE camp:

  • Naming convention. Most of the software for KDE starts either with “kde” or with “k”. Of course there are exceptions like “kernel” but in general it is much easier to find packages on the CD. Gnome is not all that friendly with “abiword”, “gnumeric” and “*gnome*”. But that might be only me.
  • Lots of small helpful utilities. Gigagilions of things are installed with full KDE installation. From knotes to that tea management program :) Gnome is either following different path or is not there yet.
  • Smother integration of ingridients. Again, MHO, but with every next version of both desktops I feel it more.

This is roughly the overview. Let’s see if I will manage to stay away from Afterstep this time. One day passed already.