KDE

One of my laptops which is running on Kubuntu Lucid decided to stop connecting to my network today. I found that the KDE network-manager applet (or is it a plasmoid? :S) had decided to disable itself. Clicking it stated so with no option to re-enable it (nice UI, boys). Getting to the commandline and starting the network-manager service did not help. I also found that accessing the System settings networking configuration gave me corrupt XML file errors.

I ran into this curious predicament earlier today when I found that the numeric keypad was not working in Kubuntu. Now, I have a KVM setup here and therefore could easily verify that the keyboard itself was working fine. This meant that the problem was a software issue.

Compiling KTorrent 3.3 RC1 on Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic with KDE 4.3:

Update 1: This works with 3.3 final as well.
Update 2: This works with 4.0 beta1 as well.

1. Install cmake and related tools:
   sudo apt-get install cmake automoc build-essential gettext
2. Install other required libraries:
   sudo apt-get install kdelibs5-dev kdebase-workspace-dev kdepimlibs5-dev python-kde4 libboost-dev libtag1-dev libqca2-dev libgmp3-dev

Upgrading KTorrent from 3.1.2 to 3.2 RC1 on Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid with KDE 4.2:

1. Install cmake and related tools:
   sudo apt-get install cmake automoc build-essential gettext
2. Install other required libraries:
   sudo apt-get install kdelibs5-dev libqca2-dev libgmp3-dev kdebase-workspace-dev kdepimlibs5-dev libkrosspython0 libkrossruby0
3. Remove the existing ktorrent installation as a precaution: sudo apt-get remove ktorrent. This should not affect your configuration files.

I just found out yesterday that Konqueror natively supports sFTP and another protocol which I wasn't aware of named FiSH. To use either, just enter sftp://foo@example.com or fish://foo@example.com as necessary in the Konqueror URL bar to create a connection. My fledgling experience with FiSH seems to indicate that it's considerably faster than sFTP.

If you've run into the error message KDEInit could not launch '/usr/bin/ktorrent' on KDE 4, you are not alone. It appears that this is a KDE Bug that should be resolved in a bug-fix update in the near future. This also apparently affects other applications besides KTorrent.

In my case, when I clicked on a torrent file, the error message cropped up, but the file itself was open fine ...

In KDE 4.1, whenever you open a window, it invariably is never opened in a maximised state - something that annoys the crap out of me. While it's something of a chore, the following is how you can sort this out:

1. Open the application and right click on its title bar.
2. Select the advanced menu and move down to click special application settings.
3. In the ensuing pop-up, click on the geometry tab and tick both maximised horizontally and maximised vertically.

I use SoundKonverter to accomplish all my ripping and trans-coding tasks. It's something of a front-end for all the command-line apps and is a serious time saver.

Twice over the last couple of weeks, I've added a new drive to my Kubuntu box and run into the error hal-storage-fixed-mount refused uid 1000 when I attempted to access any existing partitions via Dolphin or Konqueror. The first time this happened was with a Windows drive with NTFS partitions and the second time with a drive from another linux box with reiserfs partitions.

A few months back, I wrote about my trials and tribulations with Samba in KDE + Feisty, but, now that I had a fresh install of Gutsy to play with, I tested the sharing applet once again. Once again, however, it failed out of the box, although I must say that it was not as fucking bad as the last time.