Knetworkmanager in Portage....

I just noticed that Knetworkmanager was recently submitted to portage (Aug 23rd).

It has support for NetworkManager's vpn plugins as well (OpenVPN, PPTP, and VPNC).

This is great news. Currently, I had been maintaining a live build on KnetworkManager in the Xeffects overlay, which really needed some love and attention. Now, with version 0.2 actually in portage, I can remove this from the overlay in favor of a static/stable build.

Xeffects cleanup and some Portage news...

Well, two exciting things happening in the Xeffects overlay for Gentoo; a) Lot's of QA clean-up to make things better for the end user and b) a proposal by the Xeffects admins and some Gentoo developers to make a new Desktop Effects Herd.

What does this mean? Well, once the clean-up is done, we will be looking at moving some apps from Xeffects into regular portage and maintaining them officially. Finally, Gentoo will have some official bleeding edge support for things like Compiz-Fusion, that any user can test spin without having to use layman or setup a cumbersome overlay via svn or something similar.

A wider audience will also mean more bugs will be revealed and hopefully we can get them fixed upstream quickly. This will help make the entire experience better for all.

I'll follow-up when I have more news on this.

Kwine - KDE Wine integration

A while back someone posted up a package for better Wine integration into KDE. This appeared on KDE-Look, and seeing as I was both a Wine and KDE fan, I figured I'd try it out.

First, I did the manual compile thing. Worked fine. Then, the next logical step was to package it up for inclusion in an overlay. Well, I had this done a loooong time ago, and it's been sitting in my local overlay for ever.

Anyway, it's now hosted in Xeffects overlay.

Updates for Kickoff...

I have been getting some requests for changes to kickoff from the Gentoo, Xeffects team and users.

Here are a couple of the highlights:

• Make the applications menu update on hover


• The Menu should be dockable


• Add in translations

As well, there are things I would like to implement like themable menu (it's easy to change the icons/images, but I'd like a nice theme engine integrated into kcontrol).

Also, there are some specific defines for KDELIBS_SUSE that I think I could enable .. just gotta reasearch more.

Oh, and I want to get the latest snapshot patch from the KDE tree for SUSE kickoff (ver 640621 at this time).

So, number one on my list is update to latest snapshot... currently in progress. THe second will be to implement the hover function for the applications menu. Both are fairly easy.

To make the menu dockable... not sure about that one. Will need some research. And the translations... I may be able to hack my way through this, but I wouldn't hold my breath - yet. I'm still fairly green with hacking KDE.

Drop Shadows with Kickoff menu

I'm testing out the drop shadow patch for kickoff menu used by kicker. The patch is against kdelibs to allow kicker to display a drop shadow around the kickoff menu.

Currently, kicker has this drop shadow coded into the UI but it doesn't display as I never applied the patch against kdelibs. This is not a problem, and the only side effect is that the menu doesn't have any visible border to differentiate it from a white background, which make it look odd.

So, I just tested the patch against kdelibs, and it looks great. The main issue now is integration. This drop shadow should be able to be turned on/off via the Menu drop shadow setting in kcontrol under Appearance & Themes/Style/Effects. Currently this is not the case.



Why is this important? First of all, is should be integrated for consistancy. If you disable menu shadows (e.g. due to low system resources), then this effect should be global. Secondly, this does not play nice with Beryl when you have shadows enabled in Beryl and also have enabled Menu Drop Shadows (which this patch does for Kickoff menu).

The current solution for Beryl users (in general) is to disable the KDE Menu drop shadows if you have enabled shadows in Beryl. However, the patch to kdelibs, as it stands, does not allow you to disable the drop shadow around the kickoff.

So, expect in the next few days for me to release an updated kdelibs build which enables drop shadows. Hopefully, I can get the whole enable/disable via Menu drop shadows figured out so that it works both for Beryl users and non-beryl users alike.

Please see my post on xeffects located here for additional info.

qt-copy in xeffects...

So, a while ago, Gentoo user nxsty (aka Simon) put together an overlay for an enhanced Qt, based on the KDE snapshot qt-copy. The snapshot contained enhancements to the free Qt provided by Trolltech.

Nxsty has since moved away from Gentoo, and this left the overlay in limbo, without a maintainer. There was a copy of this build included as part of the pertty overlay, which I once helped maintain, and is now included in the xeffects overlay.

To help keep this alive, I have spoken with Nxsty and figured out how to get new qt-copy snapshots. These new snapshots are now alive and kicking in the xeffects overlay as of qt-3.3.8.

To find out more, check out my post on the xeffects forums.

Xeffects new additions...

Been busy for the last few days, so haven't posted.

Here's a brief update on what's new in the xeffects overlay for KDE:

1) Taskbar - Compiz : This is a drop in replacement for the Kicker taskbar applet that attempts to play nice with compositing WM's (like beryl and compiz).

2) Kde Autostart manager : Ever wonder how to tell an app to start automatically from a default or new KDE session (other than saving the session)? This little gem provides a front end to your .~/.kde/Autostart folder and allows you to add apps from your K-Menu to Autostart.



3) KIO Resouces : Added a new KDE IO Slave which allows you to type a URL like resources:/ to access configs, wallpapers, etc., and not having to remember that these could be stored local to your user, or system-wide. For example, resources:/wallpapers will show all wallpapers available. You can add new ones and it will save to your local .kde dir.

Anyway, for additional info, please read the full posts on the xeffects forums under KDE/Kickoff.

-Rod

Beryl, AIGLX and Intel...

I am amazed everyday at the work being done on Beryl. I started back last summer, working with a couple of people trying to get Xgl and compiz working under Gentoo. We spent long hours making packages, install scripts, etc., just to make it run.

Back then, there we a couple of basic plugins like cube, wobbly windows, and basic window decorations. Today, there are a plethora of plugins included with Beryl, and more being developed everyday.

Of course, Beryl is a fork of Compiz, and for Gentoo, a couple of us maintain an overlay called Xeffects which has Beryl among other things.

For me, I have an Acer 9412 Laptop with an Intel 945GME, and I can tell you, that everything is sweet. Now, even the water plugin (which was previously not working on Intel) works wonderful.

Gentoo KDE gets a new menu...

SUSE has been working on a new menu replacement for the KDE kicker, to replace the old K Menu. This branch is called kickoff, and integrates a search bar right in the menu. There are also lot's of other interesting features, and it looks like an exciting time for KDE development and definately a better time for the end user's overall desktop experience.

So, since this work has not yet made it into the main KDE repositories, many Linux distro's are beginning to make patches from the SUSE branch, and build their own packages.

Well, I'm not one to be left behind, so off I went looking for the required patches and built kickoff for Gentoo. Once I had this working locally, I threw together the package and added it to the xeffects overlay.

I must say, this patch looks rather nice.

Linux Desktop Revolution...

I been recently helping out adding improvement patches to Gentoo's distribution via the Xeffects overlay.

Gentoo is a great Linux OS which is source based. Gentoo supports managing and creating an overlay which allows you to customize individual packages.

What does this mean? Well, when people are testing modifications and improvements to things like KDE, X, etc, you can take these patch files and make an overlay to test them one Gentoo as well.

Xeffects is such an overlay, and contains fixes to KDE, as well as other desktop improvements for Gentoo (like Beryl).

Beryl is a Revolutionary way to look at your desktop and shows exactly what Linux can achieve, which is far beyond anything Vista has to offer.

Beryl is an branch of Compiz, which was originally developed as a proof of concept by Novel. The source was released to the public, and it has developed beyond a simple proof of concent into a full blown replacement window manager.