Red Hat 8.0 for KDE Users (and Newbies)

  By Robert C. Dowdy - Posted on 2002-10-08 02:36:03
at OSNews [http://www.osnews.com/]

I know what you're thinking, but don't worry. This article isn't 'Yet Another Red Hat 8.0 Review'. This article is primarily about using Red Hat 8.0 if you happen to be a newbie, but it's also about using Red Hat 8.0 [http://www.redhat.com/] if you happen to be a KDE [http://www.kde.org] user. Why? I happen to be a KDE user, so it makes sense I'd focus more on what I know the most about. Plus, I still remember the frustration of staring with something akin to terror at a blank command line with lots of ideas about what I'd like to do and very little knowledge of how to do it.

Introduction

Again, KDE is the desktop environment I know the most about and feel most comfortable with: my focusing on it is not an attempt to pour gasoline on the Red Hat & GNOME vs KDE debates. If you are a newbie who prefers the GNOME desktop, Red Hat's default, then you might still come away from this article having learned something since several of the topics discussed apply to users of both desktops.

At the end of this article, after the good stuff, I offer my opinion on the state of KDE (among other things) in Psyche. Feel free to skip it or not, as you see fit. That being said, let's get started. This article will show you, among other things, how to add the following to Red Hat 8.0:

A general discussion on using KDE with Psyche is included after the topics mentioned above. This section includes tips for undoing certain Red Hat changes to the way KDE behaves and for customizing KDE using tools provided by Red Hat as well as those freely available on the Internet. This section also includes information on theming GDM, the default and wonderfully configurable login manager.

Nvidia Drivers

If you have an nVidia graphics card and intend to do any 3D gaming or rendering that benefit from hardware acceleration, you might want to switch over to the latest official nVidia reference drivers. If you do not explicitly need this 3D functionality there is no need to make the switch. In that case you would probably be better served by the default drivers, since those provided by nVidia are widely reported to be less stable than the admittedly less functional drivers XFree86 ships with. That isn't to say that the nVidia drivers are unstable, merely that they introduce extra layers of complexity to your system, and with all such things you should only make changes that serve a vital purpose.

nVidia has yet to provide pre-built drivers for Psyche, so we'll have to build them from source packages. If that sounds intimidating, don't worry, it's actually a fairly trivial matter. First, visit the Linux section [http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123] of the nVidia driver download area and get the following two files:

NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-3123.src.rpm (at top of page)
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-3123.src.rpm (at bottom of page)

Save these files to your machine. Now, open up a terminal (konsole, gnome-terminal) and become root (also called superuser). Change to the directory containing the packages and install them with:

cd /path/to/packages

rpm -i NVIDIA* (or rpm -ivh NVIDIA* for verbose output and to print hash marks [#] indicating installation progress)

Since these are only source packages, we haven't actually installed any drivers yet, we've just placed the necessary files onto the system to get us started. To verify that everything is where it should be, issue the command:

ls /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/

You should see two files listed: NVIDIA_GLX.spec and NVIDIA_kernel.spec These two files simply tell RPM how to create packages using the source files. These source files were installed into /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. Once you're satisfied everything went according to plan:

cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS

This is the directory the source packages were installed into. /usr/src also contains the source code for the Linux kernel itself (assuming it was selected when you installed Psyche). Once inside the /usr/src/redhat directory, you might want to take a look around and see if you can get a feel for what the various directories are for. If you aren't comfortable with that, don't worry, it's not necessary. Next, the hard part (if you've been exploring, before you proceed make sure your working directory is /usr/src/redhat/SPECS – you can use the pwd command to display this for you):

rpmbuild -bb NVIDIA* (“rpmbuild” should be self-explanatory, the bb means “build binary” -- man rpmbuild at the console or #rpmbuild into Konqueror's address bar or a command box for more information)

It should only take a few minutes for the two packages to be built. You'll see information scrolling by as your request is carried out. Don't worry if you don't know what any of it means, since not many people do. Once the build process finishes, you're almost there. Now, to install the packages we just built:

cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ (this is where rpmbuild puts the packages after they are ready)

rpm -Uvh NVIDIA*

RPM will process for a moment, indicating its progress with hash marks and by displaying a percentage. If all has gone well, you should see both packages install and then be returned to a command prompt. At this point, I would suggest you view the README located on nVidia's website, as it contains a great deal of information about using, troubleshooting and customizing the nVidia drivers. For the impatient, I'll include here the minimum changes you need to make to your system to get the drivers working.

At this point the drivers themselves are installed and ready to go. Now all we have to do is tell XFree86 we want to use them instead of its own drivers. Since this requires making changes to the (vitally important!) XFree86 configuration file, we'll make a backup copy of it before going any further. This is extremely important! Without a clean working copy of this file, you will not be able to access your desktop.

cp /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/X11/XF86Config-original

Now if you manage to mangle XF86Config you can copy XF86Config-original to XF86Config and start over with a known-good configuration. For those of us who aren't vi or emacs aficionados, Red Hat has included an excellent screen-based text editor called pico. Considering the number of capable and friendly GUI-based editors included with modern Linux distributions, you might question the need for using or even being aware of console-based alternatives -- until, like now, you're doing something that has the potential to render your GUI unavailable. As a general rule, you should always have a familiar console-based editor available for just such times. There are few things more frustrating than needing to make a simple change to a configuration file and being stumped because you have no idea how to do so from the command line. That being said, still as root user, issue the command:

pico -w /etc/X11/XF86Config (always use the -w switch with configuration files, since it prevents pico from applying any line wrapping and thus mangling the file)

Locate the line containing Driver "nv" and replace it with Driver "nvidia". To search in pico you press CTRL+W and enter the search term (shortcuts are displayed at the bottom of the interface). Now, find the section called Module and make sure Load "glx" is one of the entries. If not, add it to the list. Also in the Module section, remove or comment out any lines that contain Load "dri" and Load "GLcore". (You comment out a line by prefacing it with a hash mark, as in #Load "GLcore".)

That's it! You should be ready to go. Save all your work, and press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to restart the X server. If all went well, you should see the nVidia splash screen pop up briefly and then be presented with the standard GDM login screen. Once your desktop has loaded, press ALT+F2 to bring up a command box and type in tuxracer (this assumes TuxRacer is installed, of course) to test your new drivers. If something has gone wrong along the way, make sure the nVidia packages are installed correctly and that your changes to XF86Config are correct (now you'll see why I pointed out the need for a backup file and an easy-to-use editor!).

rpm -qa |grep NVIDIA will query the RPM database for any installed package with "NVIDIA" in its name (as always, case matters). If you don't see both packages listed, something has gone wrong. Back up to the section that explains building the packages and try again.

Fonts

Without question, font rendering in Psyche is the most beautiful I've ever seen in a Linux distribution. Of course, I'm sure everyone knows opinions on such things are quite subjective. That said, in my own subjective opinion, Psyche's font rendering on my desktop machine is easily the equal of Windows XP; on my laptop Psyche is the hands-down winner. This makes it all the more irritating that Red Hat hasn't provided a GUI tool for installing new fonts. The excellent KDE Font Installer is not in evidence for Psyche. I'm assuming this is because it couldn't be reconciled with the nonstandard (but visually superior) way Psyche handles fonts. Thanks to the inclusion of a little-documented feature, however, this isn't the glaring omission it might at first seem, especially if you're a KDE user (and how's that for irony?).

If you have a Windows installation, installing your Windows fonts is quite easy. First, create a directory to hold the fonts in your own home directory (you should be logged in as a regular user, not root, when you create this directory to ensure that you “own” it).

mkdir ~/.fonts (note the dot, which will make the directory a hidden one, and the fact that this directory must be named exactly as shown!)

Now, all you have to do is copy whatever fonts you want to use into that folder. For instance, locate your Windows installation's Fonts folder and:

cp *.ttf ~/.fonts/ (the ~ is a shortcut for specifying the current user's home directory, such as /home/foo; if you're working as root ~ refers to root's home, which is /root; note that your prompt ends with $ when you're a simple user, and changes to # when you become root)

Note that it may be necessary to become root to access the Windows partition the fonts are stored on. In that case, copy the fonts to your .fonts directory as root (substituting ~ in the pathname with the actual pathname, since ~ now points to root's home, not your own). Once the fonts are copied they'll be owned by root, which isn't what we want. To change this, issue the command chown -R user:user /home/user/.fonts/* where user is your regular login name.

After restarting the X server, KDE will see the fonts and KDE and its apps (such as KOffice and Konqueror) will be able to use the fonts without any further intervention on your part. On a side note, if you haven't used the latest incarnation of KOffice, you should definitely check it out. Version 1.2 is an impressive update to a solid set of tools. Aside from standard KDE applications, the fonts will also be accessible as options in KDE Control Center -> Look And Feel -> Fonts. AbiWord, by default, will not see the new fonts. I have not investigated a workaround for this (or even whether it affects all other GTK apps). AbiWord suffers from an apparently obscure bug on my machine (in several distributions and across several minor versions of AbiWord) which renders it unusable and for which I haven't been able to find a workaround.

If you don't have a Windows installation available, you can find the Microsoft core fonts (used in many web pages) on Sourceforge [http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/]. The installation procedure is nontrivial but not difficult and is outlined clearly on the download page.

Unfortunately, OpenOffice.org also won't see the new fonts without a bit of intervention. Fortunately, OO.o includes an excellent utility that will have you up and running with the new fonts in no time. If you haven't yet fired up the version of OO.o included with Pscyhe, what are you waiting for? You'll be in for a pleasant surprise. The horrible, jagged font rendering of the past is gone. Even the user interface font is nicely rendered. It seems OpenOffice.org's last usability barrier (at least for me) has finally been lifted. It's not that I'm extremely picky, just that I use my laptop for most of my word processing chores, and LCD screens tend to exacerbate even slight font problems. All that being said, the greatest font rendering in the world is useless without fonts to render, so let's fix that. Open a terminal and become root user. From there, issue the command:

oopadmin

After a short wait, the OpenOffice.org administration tool should pop up on your desktop. At the bottom of the dialog, click on the button labeled "Fonts ..." and point the resulting dialog to the .fonts directory beneath your home directory. A few more clicks and you should be able to fire up Writer and have all your new fonts available. This tool can also be accessed via the system menus under Office -> OpenOffice.org Printer Setup. Note that the first method (as root) makes the fonts available to all users. Starting it as a regular user will only make the fonts available to that single user.

APT, Mp3 and DVD Playback - Part I

Any time Linux package management is discussed, the often overstated horrors of "dependency hell" are a hotly debated topic. Any time dependency hell is being debated, the resident Debian users will invariably refer to Debian's own apt-get install simplicity. "Why use an RPM-based distribution when Debian's package management is so obviously superior?" the Debian supporters will ask. "Why use Debian when the software is old and out of date and you have to be a systems engineer just to install it?" comes the reply. The discussion generally deteriorates from there into the all-too-familiar "mine is bigger" vein that, well, all such discussions tend to deteriorate into.

With Psyche, your options are a bit more open than in previous versions of Red Hat Linux, where package management after the install was sorely lacking. For the first time, Red Hat has included a GUI package manager (separate from Red Hat Network) capable of adding and removing packages intelligently from the installation CDs. You can start it by opening up a command box and running redhat-config-packages or by pointing to Start Here -> System Settings -> Packages. For working with the packages on the official Red Hat CDs, this is a convenient and powerful tool. Once you step outside the box and start adding third-party packages, things get a bit more complicated. Thankfully, the folks at FreshRPMS [http://www.freshrpms.net/] have given us another option in the war against dependency hell: a full Red Hat 8.0 apt repository, including some very interesting custom packages created by FreshRPMS.

Setting Psyche up to work with apt and the FreshRPMS repository is simplicity itself. First, visit this page [http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt/] and click on the link for Red Hat 8.0. Grab the apt and apt-devel packages (you don't need the source [.src.rpm] rpm) and save them to your machine. Then open a terminal, switch to root user, and install the packages with:

rpm -ivh apt*

Once that's done:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

You should see the following:

# Red Hat Linux 8.0

rpm http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386 os updates freshrpms

rpm-src http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/8.0/en/i386 os updates freshrpms

# Red Hat Linux 7.3

#rpm http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/7.3/en/i386 os updates freshrpms

#rpm-src http://apt.freshrpms.net redhat/7.3/en/i386 os updates freshrpms

If everything looks good, we're ready to update our sources (as root user):

apt-get update

It should go without saying that this requires an active Internet connection. After issuing this command you should see a variety of messages scrolling past as apt connects to the FreshRPMS servers, logs in, and takes a look around. Once you're returned to the command prompt, assuming there were no errors, the full power of apt is at your disposal. (Be sure to type man apt or enter #apt into a command box or Konqueror's address bar to learn more about this powerful tool.)

First, let's make sure our Psyche installation is correctly set up to use apt. That is, we'll ask apt to make sure there are no broken dependencies or duplications in the RPM database that will keep apt from working.

apt-get -f install (think of the -f as fix)

As you might have guessed, this tells apt to verify your RPM database. It should do a bit of checking and exit with something similar to:

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... Done

0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 removed and 3 not upgraded.

If not, inspect the errors carefully and be very sure you know what you're doing before allowing apt to make any changes to your system. Since both of my installs thus far haven't produced any errors at this stage, I'm going to assume your installation was equally flawless.

APT, Mp3 and DVD Playback - Part II

With 8.0 Red Hat made the decision, based on murky patent issues, to strip MP3 functionality from the distribution. While many have criticized this move, I tend to agree with it. Thompson Multimedia, holders of the patent in question, have not unilaterally stated that Linux distributors are exempt from the licensing fees associated with providing MP3 decoding functionality in a non-free product. While XMMS and other players are free, Red Hat sells them as an integral part of Red Hat Linux, thus leading to the confusion over Red Hat's licensing obligations (including one school of thought which suggests free MP3 players can't legally be placed under the GPL, because they contain patented algorithms that aren't freely redistributable for all users all the time) . Without an unequivocal statement from Thompson, this isn't a chance Red Hat is willing to take, for which one would imagine Red Hat stockholders (eager to avoid lawsuits) and supporters of Ogg Vorbis (eager to overthrow MP3 as a standard) are grateful. Those of us stuck with a huge collection of unplayable MP3s, on the other hand, are likely less enthusiastic about the decision, pragmatic though it may be. It seems this would be a good time to start taking advantage of the (arguably) superior Ogg format for future audio encoding, since because of this licensing issue the MP3 format can hardly be considered a truly open standard. In the meantime, now that we have apt installed and configured we can restore MP3 functionality to XMMS with a single command:

apt-get install xmms-mp3

Once that package is installed, XMMS will be ready to work with your MP3 collection. To find any other XMMS packages that might interest you, issue the command:

apt-cache search xmms

Inspect the list this produces, and if something catches your eye a simple apt-get install and you'll be set.

Another possibly vital bit of functionality not included by default is DVD playback, since the commonly available tools for watching encrypted DVDs under Linux are technically illegal (at least for users in the United States). That is, watching a DVD you own under Linux, while legal in and of itself, is illegal because the required decoding libraries and algorithms violate the terms of the United States' DMCA. Bearing that in mind, if this isn't illegal for you (or if, like me, you are an American who doesn't mind becoming a federal criminal in your quest for digital entertainment that does not involve stealing from anyone) issue the command:

apt-get install ogle ogle_gui (specifiying multiple package names on a single apt-get install command line is perfectly acceptable)

Apt will offer to install a few additional packages (including the aforementioned felonious libraries) to resolve Ogle's dependencies for you. Say yes, and when you're returned to the command prompt you'll be ready to go. Invoke Ogle with (you guessed it) the ogle command. The GUI is logically organized, and assuming Red Hat properly detected your DVD drive you should be watching DVDs in no time.

Note that in my case, since this laptop has a CD-RW/DVD combo drive which uses SCSI emulation for the CD-RW portion, the DVD portion of the drive isn't recognized as such by Red Hat (or any other Linux distribution, so far). This doesn't mean the DVD drive doesn't work (that is, that you can't mount DVDs) simply that Red Hat didn't create a special device file for it in the /dev directory. That is easily remedied (as root):

ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd (this assumes /dev/cdrom is your CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, which you can check by typing cat /etc/fstab and noting the device assignments listed there)

Now when you configure Ogle, you can simply point it at /dev/dvd for playback.

What follows is a rant you may safely ignore: In a recent column [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020926.html] Robert Cringely suggested that the best way to defeat laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is to break them, not singly but en masse. He further suggests that we should then march in our thousands to the local police station and turn ourselves in, demanding the jury trial that is our due. That is by all accounts unlikely to happen. At the same time, something in the idea resonated with me: I do not like the idea that my government has enacted a law that turns me into a criminal for watching on my own computer a movie I paid for unless I do so using an operating system that same government acknowledges as an illegal monopoly (note that I'm not bashing Microsoft, just pointing out the absurdity of criminalizing me if I choose for moral reasons not to support a criminal corporation). You see, there literally cannot be a legal open source DVD player under current law, since providing the source code necessary to decode an ecrypted DVD is illegal. In line with Mr. Cringely's idea, I'm confessing to a federal crime: I own several DVDs and I have watched them using Linux. I own my computer and I choose to use open source software. In my defense, I claim that using “illegal” methods to decode DVDs I have purchased is in fact covered by the “fair use” provisions of copyright law, and that the DMCA as it stands is unconstitutional on its face. Laws like the DMCA presume guilt and seek to preemptively prevent “criminal” acts by certain members of society by restricting the rights of all citizens. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Why should I surrender my rights to fair use because certain of my peers abuse those rights? I choose not to be punished for the actions of others. Nonetheless, under current law I should, no doubt, be removed from the sight of decent law-abiding American citizens. Mind you, I've never once watched a DVD (or other digitally stored movie) I do not own, and I've never “ripped” a DVD at all. Still, I am a criminal. I confess. Take me away, officer ...

Now, back to the topic at hand. At this point, all you GUI lovers are probably thinking, This apt stuff is cool, I guess, but there should really be a GUI...

There is. Type:

apt-get install synaptic

SynAPTic is a simple GUI front-end for apt. After you install it with the command above, it is available in the system menus or by typing synaptic into a command box. Fire it up and have a look around. You'll find the GUI is straightforward and easy to navigate. A link to SnyAPTic will also be added to Start Here -> System Settings -> Synaptic.

Yes, it is still KDE - Part I

If you've been following the controversy surrounding the KDE implementation in 8.0 but haven't actually experienced it for yourself, you probably have no real idea of just how modified Red Hat's KDE truly is. I'm not a software engineer. As a simple user, I can state that aside from the beautiful font rendering and the removal of certain things (such as KDE's excellent font installer and MP3 functionality from Noatun) the majority of the changes appear to be only skin deep. The changes may in fact run much deeper than that, but if so the effects are not immediately obvious to me. With only a few minutes effort I was able to undo the changes I didn't like and bring my KDE desktop into line with my personal tastes. In short: Yes, it's modified, but it's still KDE. This section will show you how to get started with making Red Hat's KDE your own.

You'll notice as you explore that there's a small, seemingly useless blank space in the KDE system tray. When you launch an application that requires root privileges and successfully supply the root password, this space will be filled with a small set of keys. The keys will continue to display for a short while (I haven't timed it), during which time your user privileges remain escalated. This way you can carry out several related tasks as superuser (such as working in the Start Here folders) without having to repeatedly supply a password. Always bear this in mind when making changes that effect your entire system (or when walking away from your system in an insecure environment!).

GDM

The first component of Psyche's desktop the user is confronted with is of course the login manager, which in Psyche is GNOME 2's GDM. The default look is tasteful and attractive and, no offense to the KDE developers, vastly superior from a purely aesthetic point of view to KDE's own KDM. Add to this that GDM is easily and fully themable and KDM doesn't stand a chance. From Kicker, you access the GDM configuration tool by navigating to System Settings -> Login Manager. From there you may choose among several options, including automatically logging in a user at boot time or having a user logged in automatically after a specified amount of time has passed. You might also wish to configure XDMCP (for remote logins, such as from your laptop to desktop) and login security settings as your needs require. A small selection of themes (including the infamous Bluecurve default) are included. To obtain more, a great starting place is the Theme Depot [http://www.themedepot.org/], which also contains themes and skins for other popular tools such as Mozilla and XMMS. You might also want to check out the list of “Related Sites” on the front page, which provides links to other theme-oriented destinations.

If you find a theme that appeals to you, save it (it will most likely be a gzipped tarball archive) to your machine. From the GDM configuration applet's Graphical Greeter tab, select "Install New Theme" in the lower right-hand corner. In the resulting dialog, point to the saved file and click OK. Your new theme should now appear in the list. Select it and you'll see a small preview. Repeat this for any other themes you've downloaded. Note that in accordance with the GNOME 2 human interface guide, the configuration applet has no "Apply" button. The theme selected when you close the applet is the theme that will be in use the next time GDM is displayed.

THE KDE CONTROL CENTER

Psyche's KDE Control Center will behave pretty much as you expect, with the previously mentioned exception of the missing Font Installer. We'll start by doing away with some of the more GNOME-like changes to which Red Hat's KDE defaults. So, fire up Control Center and we'll see how bad the damage really is.

By default, KDE will be set up to use double-click for activation. This may be jarring to long-time KDE users (as well as people like me who are just too lazy to click twice when once will do). The fix is simple. Point to Peripherals -> Mouse and select "Single click to open files and folders". You might want to make other changes, so have a look around and see what's available. Clicking the "Advanced" tab will allow you to change more esoteric settings, such as pointer acceleration and the number of scroll lines a single click of the mouse wheel generates.

If you like having visual confirmation that the program you just started is actually doing so, you should turn on "Busy Cursor" and "Taskbar Notification" under Look And Feel -> Launch Feedback. This is one of those features you don't really notice until it's not there anymore. Being a KDE user, I was subconsciously accustomed to watching the little hourglass spin in the taskbar and having the blinking icon following the pointer around. Using Psyche for the first time, I found myself wondering at times whether the program was really starting – which sometimes led to inadvertently starting multiple instances of a program (stop making fun of me, you've done it too at some point!). It's interesting how such small psychological cues can have such a large impact on the user experience.

One of the first things I did after being dropped into my desktop was to remove pretty much everything from the default panel and start fresh. I then right-clicked and reset the size to "Normal". You may then add back any buttons and applets you want using the panel's right-click context menu. You use the panel a lot, so setting it up efficiently for your computing style is worth a few minutes of your time. You might also want to navigate to Look And Feel -> Panel and on the "Look And Feel" tab select "Enable Icon Zooming" (you'll either find this feature is useless or that it provides useful visual feedback when selecting a panel button). To return the "KDE 3" image to your Kicker menu, click on the "Menus" tab and select "Show Side Image". At this point, we've undone many of Red Hat's modifications and a familiar-looking KDE is beginning to emerge. Just a few more changes to go.

Yes, it is still KDE - Part II

Now would probably be a good time to surf over to KDE-Look.org [http://www.kde-look.org/] and grab some new background images and icons. I suggest the Conectiva Crystal Icons Beta 0.6 or higher, which contains Everaldo's excellent icon set (finally including a few of the animated variety). The process for installing a new icon theme is nearly identical to the process for theming GDM. Just download the archive, then select it from inside Look And Feel -> Icons and click on "Install New Theme". Once you have the Crystal icons (or another set of your choosing) installed, the default look of Red Hat's KDE is nearly gone.

Next, select Look And Feel -> Window Decoration and choose one of the alternate decorations Red Hat has provided. I suggest Keramik, which seems to be fully functional here, even (thankfully) following the system color scheme instead of overriding it with its own light blue. Next, select Look And Feel -> Style and experiment until you find a style you like. Again, I suggest Keramik. That done, visit Look And Feel -> Colors and select (or create) a new color scheme. At this point I suggest anything but Keramik. You might like it -- maybe I'm just allergic to light blue. I use a slightly modified KDE Default.

Now, stop for a moment and have a look around. The infamous Bluecurve is no more, but there's still lots of room for further tweaking. Finish exploring the Control Center! There are lots of great little options, such as Web Browsing -> Konqueror Browser -> Appearance. By default, Konqueror is set up to display a minimum font size of 7. Change this to 9 or 10 and you'll be amazed at the difference in the display of certain websites (such as DistroWatch [http://www.distrowatch.com/]). While you're exploring, check out Enhanced Browsing, where you can set up search shortcuts for Konqueror. For instance, to query Google with the search term "linux" you can type gg:linux into Konqueror's address bar or any command box (you might want to add a command box to your panel by right-clicking it and selecting Add -> Applet -> Application Launcher -- it's more than the name implies, however, since you can also type in Internet addresses, search queries, and requests for nicely formatted manual pages).

KDE is highly configurable, to say the least. I could go on and on, but I feel I've given you a strong enough start that you can confidently customize KDE to suit your personal tastes. As you can see, modified or not, at its heart this is still KDE.

PLUGINS

The download edition of Psyche doesn't include the popular browser plugins such as Java and Flash, but as you'll see the situation is relatively easy to rectify. We'll start by getting Java up and running in Mozilla and Konqueror. It is possible to install the Java plugin from your normal user account by starting Mozilla as the root user, but in both my attempts Mozilla would hang at the end of the installation. So instead we'll just break all the rules and log in to root's desktop. So, log out of your regular user account and at the login screen, log in as root. Bear in mind that you never want to do this in general, since it's almost certain you'll wreck your system eventually!

Now that you're logged in, go ahead and fire up Mozilla. Point it to this page, [http://cgi.netscape.com/cgi-bin/pi_moreinfo.cgi?PID=10048] where you will see information on “Java By Sun Microsystems” with a link entitled “Click To Download”. Click that link and it will offer to install Java for you. After it finishes downloading, it will be automatically installed. Mozilla will now load up Java applets nicely with no further work on your part. To get Konqueror going, we have to do a bit more configuring. Fire up Konqueror and from the main menu select Settings -> Configure Konqueror and in the dialog that pops up choose Konqueror Browser and select the 'Java' tab and under 'Global Settings' click 'Enable Java Globally'. In the lower right-hand corner you'll see 'Path to java executable, or 'java'. In the text box, type (or navigate to) the following: /usr/lib/mozilla-1.0.1/plugins/java2/bin/java. Now restart Konqueror and it should be ready to work with Java applets. A word of warning: I found Konqueror to be significantly slower than Mozilla at opening applets.

Next, we'll get Flash installed. Click here [http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&P5_Language=English] to visit the download page. Save the player (it's a gzipped tarball) to your machine, then open up a terminal and change to the directory you saved it to. Now we need to extract the files (you don't need to be root yet):

tar xvzf flash_linux.tar.gz [http://linux.tar.gz/]

cd flash_linux (to switch into the newly-created directory)

Now we'll become root and copy the plugin files to Mozilla's plugins directory:

cp libflashplayer.so ShockwaveFlash.class /usr/lib/mozilla-1.0.1/plugins/

Mozilla should now be ready to render Flash animations. Visit a Flash-enabled [http://www.bestflashanimationsite.com/] website to test it. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince Konqueror to use the Flash plugin. Due to time constraints, I have not investigated this in detail.

There are also other plugins [http://wp.netscape.com/plugins/search_pi.html?cp=plp] available for Linux browsers that I have not tested with Red Hat 8.0, but that you might find of interest.

You might want to check out CodeWeavers' Crossover Plugin [http://www.codeweavers.com/], which uses WINE [http://www.winehq.com/] to integrate plugins (and other small utilities such as the Trillian instant messaging software and various document viewers) designed for Microsoft Windows into Linux. The Plugin will also install Microsoft's core fonts for you, which you can then copy into your own ~/.fonts/ directory as described above. A freely downloadable and fully functional demo is available. Codeweavers uses the excellent Loki installer and ample documentation is provided. While fully functional, the demo does contain a small "nag screen" urging you to purchase the product. The nag screen pops up randomly during use, but as far as I can recall Crossover Plugin has the only nag screens that have ever made me laugh out loud. It's definitely worth checking out.

As of this writing, Macromedia [http://www.macromedia.com/] is conducting a beta test of Flash 6.0. I haven't personally checked into this, since Flash functionality isn't a priority for me, but you may find it worth investigating.

Don't forget to log out of the root user's desktop and return to your own.

Red Hat Ambition, Modified KDE

At the beginning of this article, I stated that my purpose in this writing wasn't political. The real meat of this article is everything above this point, and if that's all you're interested in you can safely stop reading now. There are no more tips or how-to's beyond this point. That being said, I do have an opinion on the controversy surrounding this release. Again, this is my opinion as a simple user of Red Hat and other Linux distributions. Am I wrong? Maybe so, but consider this: instead of flaming me, try to see where I'm coming from. Figure out why I feel this way, work back to the source of my assumptions, and focus your efforts at that point. If my views are both flawed and shared by many others, it stands to reason the information on which those views are based is flawed and that only by providing a logical alternate foundation for such beliefs can those views be altered, presumably for the better. I'm not a Red Hat supporter or a KDE supporter in the sense that being one precludes the other: I refuse to accept that, in the wake of Psyche, it's an either-or proposition. Read on and you'll see why.

Free software, its supporters are often eager to point out, is about choice. This might be the choice to use KDE or GNOME, KWord or AbiWord, vi or emacs; but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The choice isn't merely to use one tool in favor of another, but to choose to modify that tool to whatever degree you deem necessary to meet your needs. Red Hat has exercised this freedom with Psyche in accordance with the licensing schemes of the affected projects. If this seems particularly onerous to you, respond by exercising your power of choice: do not bolster Red Hat's activities by supporting their product, and present your reasoning for this decision to others in a reasonable, logical manner. Flaming others in support of a certain viewpoint often does more damage than good to the cause, after all. What kind of message do we as a community send when we shout about freedom of choice from one side of our collective mouth while condemning Red Hat (or anyone else) out the other side for exercising that very freedom in a manner we find personally objectionable?

Mandrake, SuSE and many other distributions ship more or less unmodified KDE packages. ELX, Lycoris, Lindows, and Xandros (and probably others) ship versions of KDE with modifications ranging from slight to sweeping depending on the distribution. Often, these "enhancements" are marketed near the top of the list of "unique, must-have" features. How many awful things have you heard about Lindows? How many of those awful things centered specifically on the heavily modified KDE that is the heart of Lindows' desktop? How many times have you heard Xandros criticized for continually letting shipping dates slip? How many times have you heard it criticized for shipping a modified KDE?

Red Hat, of all the distribution producers, is seen by and large as "more corporate" than the others (with the notable exception of the much maligned Lindows). As such, Red Hat is often seen as somehow more threatening than the others, leading to the obligatory shouting by certain members of the community of: "Red Hat wants to be the Microsoft of Linux! Resist! Resist before it's too late!" This is not the closed source world, where Microsoft (or any other entity, such as Apple in the Macintosh world or Sun in the high-end server arena) reigns from on high and does whatever it wants, safe in the knowledge that users will fall in line simply because they have no other choice. Apple's legendary stability and ease of use stems from its tight control of its products, for which it is generally lauded by its users. Microsoft, by virtue of being orders of magnitude larger (and subsequently more threatening) than Apple, is widely condemned for attempting to exercise such control over every aspect of the end user experience (such as driver signing, and software and hardware certification). Arguably, this is why in a very real sense the Macintosh user experience may be superior to the Windows user experience: Microsoft is placed in the unenviable position of having to support a nearly limitless array of PC configurations, often using low-quality hardware, while Apple is not. There's a lesson in that, to be sure, but in the end it just doesn't matter when the topic at hand is Linux: the rules that govern the closed source computing world simply do not apply to open source projects such as Linux. There can be no monopoly in such a system. The open source software model was carefully crafted from the ground up specifically to prevent such an eventuality.

Red Hat literally cannot become the "Microsoft of Linux". Microsoft's source code is jealously guarded and fiercely protected, Red Hat's is available to anyone who wants it, not just for viewing but for modification and reuse by anyone. Red Hat, should it misbehave badly enough to anger a large enough faction, could be undone with its own code. It bears repeating: the open source world is not structured to tolerate a monopoly. Red Hat is a service company, and as such its primary interest is in supporting its Linux distribution. Any changes Red Hat makes to its distribution must be viewed in this light. Suggesting that Red Hat is intentionally including software in the form of a modified KDE just to harm an open source project is suggesting that the (allegedly) fearfully ambitious corporation that is Red Hat is run by a gaggle of fools eager to commit financial suicide. Red Hat's primary interest is in supporting its distribution, remember. One finds it hard to believe the company would ship an intentionally broken or inferior product which would only serve the dual purpose of increasing the burden of providing support and of alienating the company's paying customers -- not you and I, but Red Hat's real customers, corporates with volume buying power and millions to spend on software support contracts. Whatever the end result and eventual outcome of these changes, you can rest assured that Red Hat did not intentionally set out to ship bad software. Working within the confines of the GPL, Red Hat set out to minimize support needs and associated costs and to maximize user experience as they see it for their target user base.

Open source projects which chafe at Red Hat's (or any other entity's) handling of their code within the legal -- if not moral or ethical, unquantifiable as such things are -- confines of the project's licensing might wish to take a closer look at their choice of licensing. Is it acceptable to claim a project is "free" in all senses of the word -- but only so long as:

1) The exercise of those freedoms are "acceptable" (whatever the consensus on that might be at any given time among the project's many developers) and

2) so long as the entity making the changes is "friendly" with the free software project in question (again, how does one quantify this?)

Let me point out here that I am not aiming criticism at the KDE project or its developers, but at the large number of various people who have condemned Red Hat (often based on wildly incorrect data and vague rumors) for modifying KDE. The vast majority of these people aren't affiliated with KDE at all, except maybe as simple users. To these people, I say this: A project is either free or it is not. The GPL does not provide for the arbitrary picking and choosing of entities "worthy" to participate in those freedoms. That is just one among many of the checks and balances the elegant simplicity of the GPL provides to prevent development stagnation (anyone can fork a project and try to do a better job than those handling the original) and to stop cold the ability of any one entity to summarily take over a project (for the very same reason). The GPL, love it or hate it, is the cornerstone of Linux development. So long as the GPL remains effective neither Red Hat nor any other distributor will be capable of -- or sanely interested in -- "taking over" Linux in whole or in part. It seems that former Windows users, accustomed to Microsoft's (and others') business tactics, are wary perhaps to the point of paranoia about such things and immediately suspect the worst whenever what appears to be purely corporate interests are involved with their computing experience. The idea of a takeover and the subsequent destruction of choice that would follow is a legitimate fear in the closed source world, but attempting to supply a rationale for it in the open source world depends on a logical fallacy. Any entity attempting such a thing would be met with failure and rejection. Odd that the most successful of all Linux distributors should be accused of charting just such a course for disaster on a such a regular basis, don't you think?

( Original Story URL at http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1890 )

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