Can't sleep and for once its because I'm in a good mood!

You know despite a few things that nearly ruined my entire Veterans Day there was one amazing bright spot that has had me smiling tonight. My son's class put on a show at the school he goes to. As a veteran I was proud to attend and my son was I happy I came. So I just want to share the moment.

My wall will never be the same again!

Firefox Developers Edition is available: How to install it on Linux.

I just downloaded and setup Firefox Developer Edition. Though I haven't delved into using it yet I really like the interface and features I have gleaned over so far. Its also HTML 5 compliant (very important.)

There is no deb or rpm file available yet but it runs out of the box once you unpack the tar file. To make it available as a global place the unpacked folder (you don't have to do this but I renamed the folder firefoxDM to differentiate the the two versions of Firefox) somewhere in your available executable paths. (I went with /usr/share/) I then used my menu editor to create the entry so it appeared in my menu. For me the full path to the executable is /usr/share/firefoxDM/firefox

I also grabbed a Icon to make the difference between the standard browser and the developer edition visibly apparent.

Yes its that simple to setup. Enjoy

Hiding the Cashew

I use KDE but I am not, and never have been a fan of the Desktop Cashew. It's of no real use to me and I just don't like it on my desktop. Though I can't actually remove it I did learn how to hide it.

In the current version of KDE you can drag the Cashew to the bottom of the screen and place it underneath the panel. If you have a transparent, or semi-transparent, panel this may become slightly more annoying. However if you have a non transparent panel its a great way to hide the Desktop Cashew. So this is what my desktop looks like.

Yeah it works for me.

I actually started off today with the intent of blogging about KDE features that are now working in Kubuntu 14.10 that didn't do so well in 14.04. Screenshots and all. The one I wanted to rave on the most was KDE Connect. However, despite having Android Jellybean, which has a built in screen shot feature, when I used the button combination my phone restarted instead. So I spent a good part of my afternoon in chat with a Samsung rep trying to get it fixed (After a factory reset we did.)

End result, no blog on KDE Connect or Cloud Storage Manager, as I have to work on getting my phone back to the way I had it. Thank God for Google settings backup services which had my app settings stored but I have to completely redo my layout to get it back to where I had it. What was the cause of the problem? An Android System update sitting in my queue waiting to install. Go figure.

Getting Kolab on Ubuntu

These are the steps I needed to do to setup the Kolab Repositories for Ubuntu. Please note these are minor corrections that are listed from the Kolab Site:

For Ubuntu 14.04: Add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list;

deb http://obs.kolabsys.com/repositories/Kolab:/3.3/Ubuntu_14.04/ ./
deb http://obs.kolabsys.com/repositories/Kolab:/3.3:/Updates/Ubuntu_14.04/ ./

Get the gpg key:

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --search devel@lists.kolab.org

To import the key:

sudo bash
gpg --export --armor devel@lists.kolab.org | apt-key add -
exit

Put the following in /etc/apt/preferences.d/kolab:

Package: *
Pin: origin obs.kolabsys.com

Pin-Priority: 501

sudo apt-get update

aptitude install kolab

When asked to confirm that you want to install the package and its dependencies, press Enter.

How to actually get Kontact to Sync with Google Calendar.

After spending the last few days figuratively banging my head on a brick wall to get Kontact to sync with my Google Calendar I found the proper way to do it, alebeit by accident. Everyone else's how to simply isn't working. So here is the correct procedure.

All do give the correct first few steps;

For Debian flavored distros:
sudo apt-get install akonadi-kde-resource-googledata

for RPM based distros, using yum:
yum install akonadi-googledata

Next they tell you to Select Akonadi Google Calendar Resource. This is incorrect, you should actually select Google Calendar and Tasks.

The following window will appear when you do;

Your's of course will be empty. Click on the Add button at the top to setup access to your Google services. In the next dialog box enter your Gmail address and password.

Lastly you need to accept the following so you can get your calendar and tasks loaded into Kontact;

That's it, your done and Kontact now has access to your Gmail services.

Using Linux As A Promotional Tool

Okay before anything else I need to state the following. The following video is showing how I set my system up to support my Football Team the Houston Texans using graphics and files I created specifically for that purpose. I will not release this setup as a distribution because of the many copyright issues that doing so would cause with the NFL and the Texans. This setup exists only on my Laptop and that is it. However, it does show how Linux can be setup to promote any business, organization, charity, product, service or just about anything one can think of.

I also need to apologize for the quality of the beginning of the video showing the boot up and log in process. I had to use my phone to capture the video as Virtualbox was balking on many things so I couldn't record the screen. The video is nowhere near professional quality but it gets the idea across.

I am running LinuxMint 17 KDE version for this demo.

What's important to look at here is that:

The entire boot to desktop process is all showing the Organization I am supporting.

The creation of the elements used are simple and fairly straight forward to create and incorporate into the Linux system. Though some technical knowledge is required, things can be kept simple or if desired things can be made to be even more impressive using various engine functions in Plymouth, Ksplash and Kwin to wow the target audience.

Those who wish to promote whatever, can do so, essentially for the cost of a DVD, and even print labels on to the DVDs using a specialized printer, which gives a even higher polish to the end product.

It also promotes Linux.

The variations are many, Boot Splash, Login Themes, Desktop Environment, Icons, Desktop Themes and Graphics, and what applications can be used.

Many LUGS use their own distributions to promote themselves. This just taking the concept further.w

Kmail and Gmail: Filters and Operations

Its been a long time since I posted anything here but then, haven't had much to post. However, I recently had a fight with my email management solutions. Thunderbird 32 does not have a Lightning extension available for it. Not good when you rely on your calendar like I do. Also I have discovered that Thunderbird isn't as compatible with Gmail as some other solutions. So I went back to Kmail but did a few things very differently.

As best as I could I made all my email filters at Gmail. Reasons for this is I'm simply tired of making filters. Putting the responsibility on my cloud service (a.k.a. Gmail) means they will always be there regardless of what email client I use.

Thunderbird for some damnable reason did not setup all my gmail folders (Personal and Work were ignored) and that caused me some issues. Kmail, on the other hand does recognize them and loads them.

Nepomuk is the default database for Kmail and as we all know it, and Kmail, are both rather buggy. However, using the IMAP protocol Nepomuk doesn't become a big issue, and Kmail works a whole lot better.

As you can see I have a rather extensive set of folders and sub-folders (Gmail calls them Labels) All folders, filters, and email remain on the Gmail server, Kmail downloads no email (it simply loads the email you are reading like a browser, which is handy.)

Here are the instructions for making labels in Gmail. Here are the instructions for using filters in Gmail.

There is one huge advantage of using Kmail over Thunderbird as well, Kmail actually lets you move email between folders (labels) on the Gmail server. Thunderbird balked on that big time. 

If your primary email account is Gmail, you may want to look into this solution.