Category Archives: Tech stuff

The KDE saga

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have been running Linux Mint for some time now.

A good friend – Kirk – suggested I try it initially, and I have been using it ever since.

I was talking to Kirk the other night and we got onto the topic of Mint 10 KDE which has been imminent for some time.  He gave me the address from which to download it, which I promptly did.  However, Kirk suggested I just update my existing KDE to 4.6.00, as I only wanted to have a look to see if it was worth switching over from Gnome.  He gave me the address for the software repository ( ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports ) which I duly entered.

That was when the fun began.

I ran a check to see if there were any updates, knowing that there would be some, as I was running and old version of KDE.  It came up with a list of 380 updates!  The following morning, I told it to install the updates, but it refused, saying that I had a broken package.  Unfortunately it didn’t tell me which one. 

I hunted the Internet for a solution to my broken package problem and found several suggestions, none of which worked.  One of the suggestions had been to run Aptitude and supposedly it would at least tell me which package was at fault.  It didn’t but during the process I must have hit a wrong key somewhere because it suddenly announced that it was installing and uninstalling a list of programs.  I don’t know where that came from!

To my disgust, one of the programs that Aptitude removed was Oracle VM VirtualBox which I use a lot.  I tried reinstalling it from Software Manager, but it steadfastly refused.  In the end, I downloaded the package and manually installed it. 

At this stage, I was more or less back where I started, but still was none the wiser about broken packages.  I decided to install updates a block at a time, selecting just twenty updates.  That worked.  The strange thing though was that I worked my way through the entire list of 380, and not one update failed.  Weird?

With all the updates installed, I tried to run KDE by logging out and logging in again.  No go.  For some reason, I was only presented with Gnome as an option.  Back to the drawing board.

I can’t remember the exact details, but my next step was to install KDE 4.6.00 directly from Kubuntu.  That worked.  At last.

KDE 4.6.00 running Windows 7 within VirtualBox
KDE 4.6.00 running Windows 7 within VirtualBox

I used KDE for the rest of the day, and it was good.  There were a lot of features I liked, but I won’t be using it.  My distro download (which is now officially released) is tucked away for emergencies, but I won’t be installing it.  Why not?  Partly because I am so used to Gnome at this stage, but mainly because I found KDE to be a lot slower despite this laptop having 4Gb of memory.

Where I would recommend Linux Mint 10 KDE though is for someone who would like to try a Linux distro but is afraid of it being too different from Windows.  KDE 4.6.00 is a lot closer to Windows than Gnome, and would be an excellent introduction to Linux.

A question of ethics

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Here is the scenario…

I have a laptop, which has plenty memory and disk space.  It was bought with a licenced copy of Windows 7 installed.

I have repartitioned the hard disk into a Windows area and a separate area where I have installed Linux Mint.  It is of course a duel boot machine now.  The Windows area is hardly used at all now, and is there mainly as a fallback.

There are one or two programs that I like and am used to that only run under Windows, Windows Live Writer being one of them.  To avoid constant reboots, the obvious answer is to install a Virtual Machine within Linux.  This leads to my little question regarding ethics.

I need to install Windows 7 within the VM, as that is the whole point of the exercise.  Technically, under strict interpretation of the law, I should buy a new copy of Windows 7.  I see from Amazon, that this would cost me around $180, which is quite a lot for the privilege of running one free program.  However, I already have a licenced copy for this machine, which by definition cannot be used if I am within Linux.

Legally, I presume I should purchase a new copy of Windows, but ethically, I don’t think that should be necessary.

What do you think?

Stumble strikes again

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have mentioned before how I get occasional surges of traffic from Stumbleupon.  The page in question was posted in October 2007, but periodically it rises in the ranks of Stumbleupon.

Last Monday, at 4 in the afternoon, the latest ‘storm’ started.   I call them storms, as the usual pattern is a sudden peak in traffic before the page slides into obscurity again.

This time was different however.  What emerged over the last week is a quite remarkable pattern of traffic.  The Monday evening storm developed into one of the biggest since 2007, and instead of subsiding, it developed into a whole series of cycles.

graph1
Hourly traffic over seven days

For some reason, traffic drops to a minimum at around ten in the morning before rising to the next peak.

graph2
Daily traffic over thirty days

The decay in traffic is also quite remarkable in that it follows a mathematically precise curve.  I took the snapshots a couple of days ago, but the traffic is still following the same very precise pattern.

graph3
Monthly traffic over a full year

As the second illustration shows, the quantity of traffic is quite significant too.  In fact the site is receiving more traffic in one day than it would normally receive in a whole week.   Even more startling is that by the 9th, January’s traffic had already created a new twelve month record.

The traffic is still pretty heavy, but the rate of decay has slowed right down.  Mathematically, it is indicating that I can expect a permanent increase in traffic of around 500%.  However I recognize that is extremely unlikely which probably indicates why I’m not a climatologist?

Iomega iConnect solutions?

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have noticed quite a few people landing here as a result of a search for Iomega iConnect.

After a lot of tests, trials and tribulations, I finally got my iConnect to work.  In fairness to Iomega, their support was second to none, as between us, we tried just about everything in the book.  It was  Régis in Iomega who finally cracked it.  I sent him a few software dumps and he noticed that the device was rebooting itself on a regular basis. 

The solution, while not ideal, works.  All I had to do was disable the Media Server. That’s all.

It’s not quite the end of my problems, as at the moment anyway, I can’t access the management area of the hub.  I have tried connecting directly using my browser, but it just says “server not responding” or similar.  I can’t connect using the dedicated software either – it connects and displays the iConnect but claims that the “device is currently unavailable”.

However……

The iConnect has been running now for around 72 hours.  I can access the drives that are plugged into it and it seems to be stable.  Leastwise, I have been copying large numbers of files back and forward across the iConnect without a single failure.

Seeing as that is all I require of it, I am happy.

The Iomega iConnect saga

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

It has been a busy couple of weeks with my iConnect.

After a lot of emails back and forth between myself and Iomega, we decided the unit was faulty.  I returned it to the shop yesterday and got a replacement.  The difference is amazing.

By now, I am somewhat of an expert on the Iomega iConnect!  I hooked it up to the laptop and lashed through the setup.  This time it went smoothly and it is now sitting on a shelf in another room with all its wee blue lights in the right places.  (One of the symptoms of the previous unit’s problems was that a port light would remain lit long after a device had been removed from it).

One of the “features” of the iConnect is that it can be incredibly slow to do things.  A reboot takes quite a while and external drives can take a couple of minutes to appear after being plugged in.  But then this is a device that really can be forgotten about once it is set up, so in the long term that isn’t a problem.

I must say I was impressed with the support I got.  Granted, my initial approaches met with a certain level of indifference, but once my status had been escalated, they pulled out all the stops.

All in all, I’m happy with my purchase.  Now.