TuxCentre

Compiz 0.7.6 is out with a splash. The long tested Full sphere is out in the stable XGL repo and trust me it looks amazing.Though it took a little time for me to find out from where to turn it on. Well u can find it in the “effects” group under the “Cube reflection and deformation” plugin. There under the “Deformation” tab you can chose between the sphere and cylinder or a notmal cube. And if u select sphere and remove the tick from the “Deform caps” and “Cube Atlantis” is on then u will see a very very cute aquarium i have added a screen shot with it.

Another thing added is the “Static Switcher” plugin which shows thumbnails of all the open windows and moves caret instead of thumbnails.

One more thing added is the wallpaper plug in.This plugin helps u keep a different wallpaper for each phase of the cube. The only problem with this plug in is that right now Kdesktop doesnt support transperency so u wont be able to see the wallpaper set by compiz. At this point of time you have 3 options — first is that you can kill kdesktop but the problem is you wont be able to see the icons on your desktop. Second option is there is a patch available for transparency support but you will have to re-build kde-base.Third option is that u wait for the changes to come pre-built with the new kde-base

These were the differences i noticed n there might be more. If any of u find out, can paste it as a comment to this post

Kiba dock is a beautiful application dock that uses the Akamaru physics engine to render
complex interactions. Its a MAC style dock that i built for Linux. It works on Linux with graphics effects turned on. Can be used with both KDE and Gnome. Well what more can be said…the with the video below you can see it all for your self…

Installing Kiba Dock :–kiba dock source can be downloaded form its svn server using the command “svn co https://kibadock.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/kibadock/trunk kiba” which will copy the files to kiba directory in the directory you execute this command. Then you will have to install it normally by using the commands — make , make install and intall.
If you are using openSuse simply use 1 click install option from the link www.software.opensuse.org/search.

By default amarok saves all the downloaded album covers in “/root/.kde/share/apps/amarok/albumcovers” but if u re install your linux then all the covers are lost, and also if you use an external drive to keep music files and want to play these files in different computers and you will have to download covers on each computers.

Solution For this problem is using Copy Cover script of amarok  from http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=22517 or directly download this from script manager of amarok (from tools menu) and use Get More Scripts. From here you can also get many more useful scripts like ( script to play video from amarok, display song name in pidgin and many more… )

When i first used compiz fusion with kde the way to enable was using the command “compiz ccp” (which is also there even now) but another way introduced was the compiz fusion icon which have many advantages as will be discussed further…

Previously compiz was enabled automatically but making an executable text document containg the command “compiz ccp &” in the bin folder of the user you use to log in. The compiz fusion icon which came in fedora from the start only, can be started  in the same manner by making an executable text file in the bin folder of the user you log-in into and adding the text “fusion icon &”.

Revison of the steps to do so :–>

1. Open the bin folder in the folder of the user u log into (eg: for root user open “/root/bin” for other users use “/home/user_name/bin”).

2.Create a text file in it.

3.Open the file and write in it “fusion-icon &”.

4.Save and Exit.

5.Right click on the file and in open properties for the file.

6.Under the permissions tab check is executable.

Restart and u will see the compiz fusion icon in system stray.

The greatest advantage of the fusion icon i think is that whenever compiz crashes (which happens many a times due to unstable versions) u can simply reload it by right clicking on the fusion icon and clicking on the reload window manager. Secondly you can Switch between various window decorators installed on your system (again by right clicking on the fusion icon). Thirdly you can change the window manager whenever you want (like when you are doing some serious work and the effects are irritating you). Fourthly you can also access the settings manager from it….

Please note the you need to have fusion icon installed on your system.In openSuse its available in the XGL repository.

Dont worry if you are using compiz and the title bar of all your windows suddenly disappear…this is just because the window decorator you are using has crashed….

Now there are two ways to get out of it…clean one is restart you machine….but if u r stuck with something and dont want to restart then just use the following command —>

1. “kde-window-decorator –replace” (if you are using the kde3 window decorator).

2.”emerald –replace” (if you are using emerald window decorator).

3.”kde4-window-decorator –replace” (if you are using kde4 window decorator).

And if compiz-fusion as a whole crashes the try the command “compiz ccp&”.

But u will need a restart eventually to make EVERY thing normal.

Tata Plug2Surf USB modem works with wvdial and kppp(for sure and maybe with others too).

Steps for KPPP:–

1.Connect USB modem to the comp. and wait for the green light to come.

2.open terminal.

3. use “dmesg” command to check to which /dev device file is your modem mounted to ( usually its “/dev/ttyACM0″ ).

4. open kppp and select to configure it.

5.In the Accounts tab add a new account.

6.Add phone number as #777 and rest all account settings remains the same.

7.Now in the modems tab add new modem.

8.Select the device as identified using “dmesg” command.

9.Go to modems tab and open modem commands… Don’t change anything and just add “AT+CRM=1″(without the quotes) to “Initialization string 2:”.

10.Come to the main window and set both username and password as internet and just connect and enjoy

For wvdial just connect the modem and type “wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf” commmand on the terminal as root.This will add the modem specific configuration to “/etc/wvdial.conf” file .After that open “/etc/wvdial.conf” in any editor and add “AT+CRM=1″ to “Init3″ and add phone number and username and password and rest all remaining same.Save and exit.To connect just type the command “wvdial” after connecting the modem and enjoy the net.

While trying both softwares i have felt that wvdial gives a better surfing speed than KPPP but it may not be true (its just a personal experience and can be a myth).

To execute .jar files on linux u need to have java runtime evniornment (JRE) and simply run the command ” java -jar path_to_jar_file”.

example to run your-freedom on linux go to terminal and type the command “java -jar /root/freedom.jar” (here the path of jar file can vary.

to add shortcut of your-freedom to k menu do the following steps:-

1. right click on the k menu icon.

2. click on “menu editor”.

3.select where you want the shortcut to be added and from the file menu select new item.

4.enter the name of the item. eg:- freedom.

5.on the right side fill in the command as mentioned above(command to run the .jar file).

6.select the icon and in the file menu click on save.

7.a new shortcut is added in the k menu at your desired position.