I came across this blog post, which, among other things, has this excellent tip for us, laptop and netbook users – how to disable touchpad while typing. The tip is specific for Gnome desktop and is rather easy to follow. Navigate to System / Preferences / Mouse menu, switch to Touchpad tab, and check “Disable touchpad while typing” box. Then close dialogue window and enjoy. Here is a screenshot to make you life even easier.
Last time I wrote about KDE 4, I said that it wasn’t very usable for me. Recenlty, the much praised upgrade to KDE 4.2 became available via Fedora updates. So I got it and switched to KDE for a couple of days.
What can I say? Quite an improvement indeed. Mostly stable, with only a few issues, which are nicely balanced out by nice desktop effects, overall graphics, and plasmoids. A few things moved around and I had to look for them (such as keyboard shortcuts for switching between desktops), but overall it was a pleasant experience.
Why am I back to Gnome for now? Because of the following:
I’m sure I’ll be back to KDE very soon. The progress between KDE 4 and KDE 4.2 is huge and if it goes like this, then I won’t have to wait long.
Slashdot is running the post about annoying software. The fact that Slashdot crowd mostly consists of computer geeks is sort of a guarantee for some interesting comments.
With my Fedora 9 saga I had to review and try a lot of new software. Needless to say, I found quite a few annoying bits. Here is a brief list, just to give you an idea:
Now, what piece of software were you annoyed with recently?
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user tvset on 2005-10-17
Gnome users might be a bit luckier than KDE users when it comes to image viewers and browsers. Gnome features an excellent application – Eye of Gnome (eog). Another good alternative that many people find satisfying is GQview (gqview).
KDE also ships a couple of image viewing and browsing applications, but they need some work.
Firstly, one could always use KDE’s file manager Konqueror (konqueror). It can browse through the directories nicely, generating thumbnails for preview, and even editing EXIF comments via the Properties dialogue. Scaling image to fit window is not trivial, but can be achieved. And it is somewhat slow. I wouldn’t spit on better keyboard navigation too.
Secondly, KView (kview). This is a pure image viewer. All it knows about browsing is “Previous image” and “Next image”. For a simple program that it is, I can’t stand its startup times. It takes ages to start and load the image. If I have to go through a collection of pictures, I am reading to kill myself by the time I reach the third image.
Thirdly, Kuickshow (kuickshow). This one is both a browser and a viewer. It shares the slow start up time with KView. It also has a rather limited functionality and poor keyboard navigation. My biggest problem with this one is absense of “Delete” in the viewer. Which means, I have to switch back to the browser to delete an image and than go back to the viewer to see the next picture. That’s simply annoying.
I have asked for suggestions in #kde today and some people pointed me towards Gwenview. I looked through the website and decided to try it. Luckily, it is also in Fedora Extras, so all I had to do to install it was to run yum install gwenview.
Gwenview (gwenview) is a really nice application. It works fast. Navigation is extensive, flexible, and natural. It also has all the usual functionality for simple image manipulation (rotating and flippig) as well as configurable menu of external tools (edit in Gimp, set as wallpaper, open in Konqueror, etc). EXIF comments can be edited via same old “Properties” dialogue. Image viewing is avaiable in a number of forms (thumbnail, small preview, full size, full screen) with an easy keyboard-oriented switch between them. Bookmarks are available as in most of KDE applications that deal with file browsing.
Gwenview also has support for Kipi plugins. Kipi, in case you don’t know, is the KDE Image Plugin Interface. It is an effort to create a base for exchange of plugins between several graphical KDE applications (Digikam, KimDaBa, Showimg, and Gwenview).
With all those nice plugins available I am still missing the historgram preview.