Saturday, April 28, 2007

Latest Kubuntu should be more usable


I haven't blogged for months: mostly because of two exams that I have taken, a project at office that was plagued by so many problems, which came to some shape only recently.

Got a few days to try out new things and this time it is the recently released version of Kubuntu (Feisty 7.04). I already have a dual boot on my computer (Windows XP and Ubuntu 6.06). With a 40 GB hard disk having 2 Operating systems, there is absolutely no space. So I decided to try out Kubuntu in a VMWare Virtual machine, with the VM sitting on an external hard disk.



Downloading Kubuntu 7.04 and burning a CD with the iso image are straightforward. You get a live CD along with the install image out of this. Live CD allows you to try out the OS without any changes to your existing system.

Install within a VM was a breeze too and you get a pretty KDE Desktop with all bells and whistles. But is that good enough? I found that it is not so. (K)Ubuntu claims to be the OS for human beings, not for geeks. So, this means there should be minimal configuration to get a workable system. Ubuntu 6.06 lacked a lot of stuff out-of-box for reasons beyond the scope of the normal users (playing windows codecs, java enabled browser, flash plugins). But, people have made it really easy to install them in one shot. Check out EasyUbuntu and Automatix. With a click of few buttons, you can download and install all these third party stuff.

However, there is no such facility for (K)Ubuntu 7.04 yet (perhaps because it is pretty new). As a result, I have to do a few tweaks to get my new Kubuntu to the same level of my original Ubuntu. And I'm not successful in all the steps.

For those people who try the latest version of Kubuntu, I'm listing what I tried out to make it more usable. This is not a complete list, but will get you going:

1. Install Kubuntu Feisty.
2. Adept Manager is the default software package manager for Kubuntu. It may have a problem opening, despite entering the right password. Do these steps to fix it:

Open file: /etc/sudoers
sudo cat /etc/sudoers
and check for your username. If it is not there, add an entry by running
sudo visudo. The entry should look like:
ALL=(ALL) ALL

3. Install ntfs-3g (If you want NTFS read/write support)
4. Install libxine-extracodecs (if mp3 files won't play)
sudo apt-get install libxine-extracodec
5. Download flash from Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

6. To add Flash support to Konqueror
mkdir .mozilla/plugins
Install flash which should detect the above directory and add a few files to it.
Go to Konqueror Plugin Configuration Window and add the above folders in Netscape Plugins section and scan for plugins. It should find the flash plugin.
7. Install StreamTuner (for Internet Radio)
8. Install XMMS (This is used by StreamTuner by default)
9. A biggest drawback of default KDE menu is, it does not have recently/frequently used applications. Installing Kickoff will fix it. It is available for
download from here:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Tools/Suse-Kickoff-for-Kubuntu-20919.shtml
To install it use this command:
sudo dpkg -i kicker-kickoff_1_i386.deb
Kickoff is not that pretty, however it does the job.

End note: The above configuration apart, I have noticed a few more problems with KDE as such. My desktop freezed twice when I was creating some shortcut from the KDE menu. This never happened to me when I use Gnome. Not to say that you will have the same problem, just watch out.


Update: Oops!! I failed do a good research before claiming that Automatix is not available in Kubuntu Feisty 7.04. I just figured it out and I can now play mp3, avi, VCDs and DVDs without any problem. Detailed installation instructions are available.

However, my endnote still stays.