I’ve owned a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 for nearly 2 years now, and I use it pretty often with my previous phone ( the Sony Ericsson P1i ), and my current iPhone 3G. I also use it occasionally on my laptop. It has worked fine in Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7. Getting it to work with Linux, however has been an EPIC FAIL. The last time I tried it was probably a year ago, and I just gave up in frustration and continued to use my EP-630 as the earphone.
While exploring Fedora 10 Beta, I found this neat little app called Phone Manager.
The about page of PhoneManager states
Phone Manager is a program created to allow you to control aspects of your mobile phone from your GNOME 2 desktop..
It’s the season of Linux distribution releases! Ubuntu was released about 3 weeks ago, and now it’s time for Fedora 9, aka “Sulphur”. So What’s new?
Much Like Ubuntu’s Add/Remove Programs, Fedora gets a similar one, known as “PacakgeKit”.PackageKit is a cross-distribution package management solution that has a complete yum backend. It has been designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier, and aims to unify all the graphical package management tools used in different distributions.
As with Ubuntu 8.04, GNOME 2.22 will power Fedora 9. GNOME 2.22 features lots of new features and improvements, such as a new Nautilus that uses GVFS as its backend. GVFS makes it possible to fix shortcomings of Nautilus such as the inability to restore files from trash, pause and undo file operations, and will make it possible to escalate user privileges for certain operations using PolicyKit for authentication. It also brings a significant performance boost to many operations.
Quite a lot of people have been waiting for the latest release of Ubuntu, version 8.04 dubbed the “Hardy Heron” – primarily because it’s a LTS release. So how does the Hardy Heron stack up? I decided to jump into the Hardy Heron brigade and have a look. Is it worth the upgrade?
Read on to find out more!
I used my beloved Dell Inspiron 1520(Intel Core2Duo T5250 @ 1.5 Ghz, 2 GB DDR2 667 RAM, nVidia 8600m GT, Intel 3945 Pro/Wireless) for testing out the Hardy Heron.
I had a pretty bad time with Gutsy – no sound despite the sound card being detected, LCD brightness varying as if its possessed etc – these resulted with me removing Gutsy and going back to openSUSE 10.3.
Also, generally I’ve always tested the 32-bit versions of most distros. This time I decided to break the tradition and go with the 64-bit version.
Ubuntu Mobile is an Ubuntu edition that targets an exciting new class of computers called Mobile Internet Devices.
Ubuntu Mobile, based on the world’s most popular Linux distribution, and MID hardware from OEMs and ODMs, are redefining what can be done in mobile computing.
Ubuntu Mobile, a fully open source project, gives full Internet, with no compromise. Custom options may include licensed codecs and popular third-party applications.
The product of Canonical collaboration with Intel® and the open source community, Ubuntu Mobile is the software that makes it all possible.
After countless days of waiting, KDE4.0, the first release of the KDE4 framework was released on Friday, January 11.
Here’s an official announcement from KDE’s site:
The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.
The KDE 4.0 desktop
The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better power management.
The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.
Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications — you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new file manager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0′s new technologies.
The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all the user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.
Learn more about KDE’s new desktop interface in the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide.
Some applications are introduced in more detail in the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide.
Filemanager, System Settings and Menu in action
KDE’s TechBase knowledge library has more information about the KDE libraries.
The KDE 4.0 Visual Guide provides a quick overview of various new and improved KDE 4.0 technologies. Illustrated with many screenshots, it walks you through the different parts of KDE 4.0 and shows some of the exciting new technologies and improvements for the user. New features of the desktop get you started, applications such as System Settings, Okular the document viewer and Dolphin the file manager are introduced. Educational applications are shown as well as Games.
For those interested in getting packages to test and contribute, several distributions have notified us that they will have KDE 4.0 packages available at or soon after the release. The complete and current list can be found on the KDE 4.0 Info Page, where you can also find links to the source code, information about compiling, security and other issues.
The following distributions have notified us of the availability of packages or Live CDs for KDE 4.0:
Technorati Tags: opensource, linux, KDE4.0, desktop environments
Laptop Review:
As few might be knowing I’ve purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520. Here’s a short review on it.
Laptop Specifications:
The Sony PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) is based on a 3.2GHz Cell Microprocessor, with 256MByte GDDR-VRAM. The processor is PowerPC compatible. The alliance of (IBM/Sony/Toshiba) who created the Cell processor have been active creating Linux kernel patches for the processor since Linux Kernel 2.6.13. Sony has created kernel patches specific for the PS3 in Linux Kernel 2.6.22, as well as maintaining the GNU toolchain (gcc, binutils etc).
While looking at the packages available in Adept, I saw that Dolphin was available. I was a bit surprised, considering that Dolphin is still in beta stage but nonetheless decided to have a look at it
For the uninitiated, Dolphin will be the default file manager in KDE4 breaking away from the tradition of Konqueror being the web browser/file manager combo. While Konqueror will still be available in KDE4, it will no longer be the default file manager. I really like Konqueror, especially with its integrated KParts-based document viewing, something which I initially detested, and now can’t live without.
Coming to Dolphin, it was a small (really small to be honest) download,with a download size of 1.2MB and an install size of 2.4 MB.
Dolphin loads really fast, unlike Konqueror which takes a good 3-5 seconds. Looks wise,it looks a bit like Nautilus, with the “bread crumbs” style of Navigation present in Nautilus and Vista. The individual path elements in Dolphin’s navigation bar act as menus that enable users to switch to sibling directories. This feature, which is also found in Windows Vista, is unfortunately absent in Nautilus. Clicking on the button at the side of bread crumbs, shows the full URL, Konqueror style. In addition Dolphin also has some nifty features like the split view, indispensable for copying/moving files. In addition, each of these splits can be independently set to “Icons”, “Details” or “Preview” mode. This is really useful, say when you want to transfer some pictures or documents to a removable drive. Just split into 2 views, with left side having the default Icons view and the right side, containing your pictures in “Preview” mode, thus you can transfer only the documents/pictures that you need, without having to open and examine each document individually. The status bar at below shows the percentage of hard disk space used, and the total number of files and directories.
Coming to the bad parts, What I missed in Dolphin the first minute is the tree view in the left column. Also in the extended menu noticed that Actions menu only has option to send file/folder via e-mail, no burn with k3b, send via bluetooth, and others. Another great feature that Konqueror has and Dolphin is missing, same as Konsole for example, is able to have multiple tabs in one window.
Considering that Dolphin is still under development, I’d like to see these features to added.
Despite these shortcomings, Dolphin is pretty nice and useful to use, especially for newcomers. For me, though I’ll stick to Konqueror, wait for the final release of KDE 4 & Dolphin.
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