Although they sometimes get a bad rap because of Novell’s agreement with Microsoft, stuff which I could care less about - partly because I’m a MS consumer as well, and I make my living largely by Administrating Windows Server Operating Systems, openSUSE does some great things for the Linux Community.

Personally, on several occasions, I have tried and failed to run openSUSE as my personal distro. I’m not going to get into those reason here, but we are simply not a “match”. That aside, there is a great tool given too us by openSUSE and that is the Build Service and the “KDE Four” Live CD.

The KDE Four Live CD comes in two versions, and both are installable, based on openSUSE 11.0 and are a handy tool to keep up with KDE 4 development.

Both versions are available here, and let me explain the differences.

The first CD is based on KDE 4.1.1 (I’m sure soon to be updated to 4.1.2) and represents the latest “stable” build of KDE 4. The second CD is based on the KDE 4.1.64 development snapshot, which will become KDE 4.2.

Since I’m running Mandriva 2009 with KDE 4.1.2, I opted for the “development” CD to download, and install in VirtualBox. Now, since it’s a LiveCD, I don’t have to “install” it, I could simply boot the ISO up in VirtualBox. My purpose for installing it is to keep it up-to-date over time.

Although I’m using VirtualBox, you could choose to use VMware, KVM, QEMU or any other Virtualization program you choose to check this out, or you could boot up a PC with the live CD, or if you really like living on the edge, you could install it onto your PC.

Once you decide how you’re going to use the CD, head over to the link I provided earlier and download one of the ISO files. I’ll wait…

Ok, now that you have the ISO, for sake of simplicity, let’s just say you’re using VirtualBox, so go ahead and make your Machine, mount your ISO and power on the virtual. Once at the desktop, you’ll notice it’s a plain jane KDE 4 without any openSUSE customizations (this raises a question for me later).

Now, the “installer” isn’t really visible anywhere, and I had to dig a little to find it, but go into YaST, and go to Miscellaneous and you’ll see Live Installer - click that, and go through the install, and reboot your Virtual Machine - again, I’ll wait…

OK! Now you have it installed. By default the standard openSUSE 11.0 repositories are configured, along with the Build Service repo’s for the KDE 4 “Unstable” builds. You can go ahead and do a full system update with YaST, and if you do this regularly, you’ll have an isolated test enviroment to keep up with KDE 4, and where it’s progressing on it’s way to 4.2!

Remember two paragraphs ago when I said the vanilla KDE 4 I got initially off of the CD ended up raising a question for me? Well here it is. After doing the update, and rebooting, I was greeted with KDE 4 with the Aya Plasma theme rather than Oxygen. I’m thinking this is an openSUSE customization (since the little openSUSE Lizard guy is hanging out on the Window Title Bars now), but I can only hope, wish and dream that the KDE 4 team has decided to make Aya the default for 4.2 - I know openSUSE 11 used Aya, and Mandriva is using it as well. I hate that black panel that’s there by default (trying to look like Vista?), and Aya takes on the system wide selected color scheme, which looks far more professional and polished to me. This is personal taste, but I can only hope that distro’s follow openSUSE and Mandriva’s lead by using Aya, although Kubuntu and Fedora so far have been using the ugly black panel. I did like this look I got after I updated the LiveCD, see here for how it affected my personal Mandriva setup.

And now, the obligatory screenshot:

In case you are wondering why the frequent posts, I’m simply documenting my acclamation with KDE 4 in real-time; as I discover stuff.

Although I was very happy just a few hours ago to discover the Plastik window decorations were available in KDE 4, things move very fast when you are feeling your way around a new environment.

Just now I was playing around with the openSUSE based “KDE Four LiveCD” in VirtualBox (this will be my next blog-post, so stay tuned), I discovered this little combo.

I personally can’t see a huge difference between the Oxygen and the Ozone window decorations, and honestly I’m not sure which is the KDE 4 default, but I knew I didn’t like either one in the context they have been previously presented too me. I just discovered though, that I can kill the “stripes” and have a solid colored decoration with Ozone, which I like a lot - I didn’t like the “blended” or “same-color” windows that I saw before.

This is a livable option for me, and definitely looks more “modern” and more “KDE 4″ than Plastik.

Check it out (excuse the task-bar clutter, I was preparing for my next blog-post when I got sidetracked with this):

Note: This is using the Oxygen widget style and Oxygen Color Scheme as well.

Since I’m just now getting down and dirty with KDE 4 I decided to explore the “Kickoff” menu.

I was initially pleased that Mandriva had set up a traditional menu, but I started to get “Icon Creep” on my panel. There are a few key applications I use often, and I don’t want to dig through menus, and sub-menus to get to them.

In previous versions of KDE, I always added (if not there by default as in Kubuntu) the “Quick Launch Applet” to my panel, which allowed for 2 rows of smaller icons for frequently used applications, and also taking up less real estate than adding full sized icons for each application. While I was able to find a Quick Launch “plasmoid” in the Mandriva repositories, I wasn’t quite successful in getting it working. I decided to go ahead and give Kickoff a try. Here are a few steps for you to do the same if you’d like.

First, here is a quick tip. I have my widgets locked, so if you’ve done this, unlock them now. You should now see a funny little half-circle w/ a “comma” in it to the far right of your panel. This is your key to adjusting anything on your panel (moving Icons around, etc.). Once you get things the way you want them, you can “re-lock” your widgets and that annoying little bugger goes away

To start, right-click your Mandriva menu and click remove. Now right click the panel and “Add Widget” and choose “Application Launcher”. It will probably show up all the way tothe right edge of your panel, so click your little half-circle thingy, and you should see a “target” when your mouse is over the newly placed menu (which [thankfully] looks like the traditional K-Menu icon), and drag it far left. Now, right click and lock widgets again.

Once there, go through your applications menu and add your favorite, most used applications to Favorites, and they are just a mouse-click away!

I was just reading a blog-post on Planet KDE, and I noticed someone who appeared to be running KDE 4, but with Plastik window decorations, so I looked in Desktop Settings, and sure enough - there it is - my beloved Plastik window decoration.

Life is complete

EDIT: Also, I wanted to note that “Plastique” is a KDE 4 widget style similar to Plastik, and there is a KDE4 port of the Plastik color scheme which can be found here.

EDIT AGAIN: See here for another KDE 4 Window Decoration/Widget Style combo I really like.

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote a post about my initial, just after install impressions of Mandriva 2009 (with KDE 4 as the desktop environment). This post has been getting quite a number of hits (~1,300 so far), and has seen incoming links from a number of sites. I’m really happy to see such a positive buzz and vibe around this distro, as even after living with it a few days, I’m still quite happy. Since the release of KDE 4 back in January I’ve yet to load up a distro with KDE 4 as the desktop and be happy. This caused me to flip over to GNOME and explore that for a while, and I just can’t get comfy in GNOME. It has sent me into a tail-spin of distro-hopping that I’m happy to report is over. Have you ever had that feeling that something was just “right”? I get that feeling with Mandriva. I’ve never really given this distro a chance in all of my distro-hopping, and I’m honestly quite sad that I hadn’t until now. I really like the way things are laid out, I like the configuration tools (Mandrake Control Center), and I can “feel” the amount of work and effort that went into making this a quality, professional piece of software - not just a bunch of packages lumped to gether. It “feels” like a complete system.

If you regularly follow my blog, you will have seen just about a week ago, I finally sat down and typed out “my” personal Ubuntu setup guide - basically, the steps I go through setting up an Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu system. Mandriva has made me feel silly for going through all of that - honestly! First off, it feels much faster out of the box, so I have felt less of a need to “tweak” as much. I’m not going to go into great detail, but let me outline what I’ve done so far.

I did “trim-down” some of the default services

I’ve installed just one extra software package that wasn’t installed by default (I installed “Free” from the Dual-Arch DVD, basically doing a net install and selecting Custom, w/ KDE and Development tools and games). That additional package was VirtualBox OSE, which I was quite happy to find in the repo’s (and also to find it actually worked as expected). Although several other distributions include VB in their repo’s, I’ve had less than stellar results with distro-provided builds of VirtualBox, but Mandriva was the exception for me here.

I like Mandriva’s default theme, although I did make one minor change. For the KDE color Scheme, I didn’t feel that black text “fit”. I’m not sure if it was an oversight, but I simply changed it to white to match the Minimize, Maximize and Close controls.

Although the out-of-box font rendering was beautiful, I did turn on subpixel hinting, and I did import some MS fonts. I have set up my fonts according to these screenshots (KDE and Firefox respectively).

KDE:

Firefox:

These settings are a matter of personal tastes, but it gives me a consistent feel to my fonts across all of the machines I use (Windows and Linux).

I wound up turning Kwin’s desktop effects off (for now). I’m not sure if it’s my card (ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, 512MB) or just a lack of maturity in the code (which I’m sure will come in time, if that’s the case), but my desktop just “felt-better” after turning it off. I didn’t necessarily have any problems, it just felt smoother and snappier when them turned off. I did like what I saw however, and I think Kwin will surpass Compiz in both looks and functionality long term.

I removed that ugly, (useless?) Folder-View thing from the desktop, and the Trash Icon. I did add both a Track applet and a launcher for Dophin on my panel however. I did add the attractive “Analog Clock” plasmoid to my desktop. I installed and tried the Weather plasmoid but I wasn’t too thrilled, so I removed it.

That’s pretty much all I’ve done. So far, nothing has crashed, Plasma has behaved itself and everything has “just worked”. Mandriva has made me forget that I’m using KDE 4, which is actually a good thing! They have made KDE feel like KDE again, and not some foreign thing that is installed my computer. Everything works, and it doesn’t feel “fragile” as every other KDE 4 install I’ve tried. So, for that, Thank you Mandriva for giving my KDE back again!

I do hope that other KDE-Centric distributions, such as Kubuntu, openSUSE and Fedora’s KDE Spin can create a KDE 4 environment as smooth and polished as this, as I want to see KDE rise again! When I first started using Linux way back when, almost everyone used KDE (or so it seemed), and lately, especially after the KDE 4 release, I’ve seen a trend towards GNOME, and even other Window Managers such as XFCE, LXDE and OpenBox. While I respect those enviroments and users, I love KDE and I want to see it prosper once again on the Linux desktop!

In closing, a lot of Linux distributions call themselves “Distro-Hopper Stoppers” or something along those lines, but for me, Mandriva was my stopper.

In my last post a few commenters were disappointed that there were no screenshots, so here are a couple for your enjoyment.

EDIT: See here for a new KDE 4 discovery and settings change, and yes another screenshot

I had to make one last “Distro-Hop”. First, I felt pretty bad about basically not even trying w/ Mandriva’s RC a few blog posts back, and I’ve read stellar reviews about how great of a job Mandriva did with implementing KDE 4. I wanted back into the land of KDE so badly, there was no way I was going to pass up the release of Mandriva 2009 today.

I had been steadily trying to try Kubuntu Intrepid 8.10, but I’ve yet to get either one of the “official” (Alpha 5, Alpha 6, Beta) builds or one of the “daily” builds to successfully boot into X on my machine after install. I have the same problem with Fedora 10 (Beta/Rawhide), and I think it’s an ATI/Xorg problem - if I’m correct, and this is the case, there will be a lot of disappointed Kubuntu/ATI users come the end of the month if it is not corrected by then. Thing is, I probably won’t find out (at least first hand anyway).

Please don’t regard this post as a review of Mandriva 2009 - these are simply my first impressions upon booting up the system.

First, I have one word: Wow!

Now that I have that out of the way, I can get on with it. I felt really bad in my previous blog-post were I talked about testing out some KDE 4 distro’s when I simply said I wasn’t “comfortable” enough with Mandriva to troubleshoot a pre-release build, and I was mildly scolded by a commenter on that account. I decided to give Mandriva another spin, to see how the RTM bits would fair on my PC, and so far, so phenominal!

I chose to install from the “mini” Free Dual-Arch ISO and do a net-install of the complete distro. I chose this method because there is no “Mandriva One” build for x86_64, and I did this install once before, and I remembered that although this is the “Free” build of the distro, not only can I add my codecs later, I’m asked during install if I want my proprietary video drivers. I was not disappointed in that regard doing this install - it went just as I expected. My only disappointment so far, was with the limited number of mirrors for 2009 right now - I ended up doing my net-install from a  European mirror, which I’m sure took longer than a USA mirror would have taken, not to mention, with so few mirrors apparently online right now, the ones that are there are probably getting hit pretty hard. All in all, it took about 1 hour to complete the install, so I can live with that.

Now, let’s get back to the item at hand - the distro itself!

First, I’m simply amazed at the amount of polish that the Mandriva team has given to KDE 4. It looks better than I thought it could possibly look! I love the theming, and just poking around the desktop, this is the first KDE 4 install of any distro I have done where I didn’t feel like I was going to break my computer simply by clicking the mouse. I need to find some wood to knock on, but I have yet to have Plasma crash on me yet! Besides KDE 4 (or is it?) I’m blown away by the default Font config. My fonts look better on my screen than they ever have, regardless of distro or operating system. Also, I haven’t seen any of the visual inconsistencies I’ve seen with other KDE 4 installs, such as garbage around the system tray icons, etc.

I’ve only made just one settings changes so far. I got rid of the Trashcan widget from the desktop and added one to the “Panel” (Kubuntu habits die hard, I guess ) I also love the more “Traditional” menu by default - I never could get used to “Kickoff”. I also had to edit my Xorg.conf to add compositing (it was set to Disabled) so I could enable Kwin’s desktop effects.

This is honestly about as far as I have gotten, but I wanted to get these initial impressions “down” so to speak while they were fresh. I haven’t gotten deep into the system yet, and I’m sure I will have some things to re-learn.

I’m beginning to question if Ubuntu really is better than other distros, or have I always perceived it as better because of familiarity, and not having to re-learn something. I have never seen this amount of polish in a “just relesed” version of any (kx)Ubuntu to date. This is phenomenal.

Great job Mandriva team! I think you have a new user. I’m going to stick with 2009 through it’s cycle (personal commitment) without distro-hopping (if you know me hold me too this), and if it’s successful, I plan to purchase the 2009.1 Powerpack. Would I pay $59 for Ubuntu? Heck no! Would I pay $59 for this, with all codecs pre-installed, and a few commercial apps? Heck yeah!

Rock on Mandriva! I remember with “Mandrake” was always No. 1 on Distrowatch - perhaps with this release, the tables could be turned!