Harsh J

Memoirs of a QWERTY Keyboard

Archive for the ‘Operating Systems’ tag

KDE4 - WTF :O

with 9 comments

Check out this preview of KDE4!

The only words gonna come out of my mouth for the next 20 minutes are “Holy CRAP! When am I expecting this?! Bye GNOME!”

Since it comes out in December, this has _got_ to be the best Christmas present ever.

And Amarok with that Cover Flow thing and totally revamped interface … This is too much for me right now. I need it, I need it running on my system ASAP!

Written by Harsh

October 13th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

New blings in Compiz-Fusion!

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Compiz Fusion

Just noticed these cool Aero-like blings in the default Compiz-Fusion theme! And of course, like everything else, its way better than what Aero gave us, cause it partially extends out of the window!

Here’s it in action on my Pidgin windows:

Notice those cool lines? Yep that’s them in action!

Get Compiz-Fusion now, on Ubuntu 7.04! Install it from the disc lying around and follow this! I don’t think you want to see anymore videos of it in action ;)
Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Harsh

September 2nd, 2007 at 10:33 pm

GUI XORG Conf Tool

with 4 comments

God always answers your wish, with a nice GUI! :P

Yes you got that right, a GUI tool for editing that dreaded /etc/X11/xorg.conf file you’ve always had to when your Ubuntu Linux never showed up on the screen. Its coming soon, in Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu ‘October’ 7.10) and is presently in Alpha.

Still, I’d prefer editing it myself with a nice text editor lest something screws up, as GUI mostly tend to ;)

Source

Written by Harsh

August 21st, 2007 at 6:27 pm

Posted in Linux

Tagged with ,

Microsoft: I’m in ur internets, killing ur hopes.

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Microsoft has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the operators of “Longhorn Reloaded,” a project that was dedicated to reviving an earlier beta of Windows Vista from before the company removed certain features, such as WinFS. The operator of the site has since posted a message saying that he had removed the download link, and this was followed up by a statement from Jean-Marie Houvenaghel??”the founder of the web site Joejoe.org and supervisor of the Longhorn Reloaded project??”that the project was officially discontinued.

Via

Written by Harsh

June 30th, 2007 at 9:52 am

Posted in News

Tagged with , ,

Google Desktop Search for Linux and More about the same

with 3 comments

Google launched its new Desktop Search software for Linux and it looks like the widget below.

Google Desktop for Linux

It searches only a few kind of files as of now, but then, Google Desktop never was the best in searching. But it sure gives a handy application to search the web quickly.

Download as [ DEB ] or [ RPM ]

Or if you wish to add Google’s Linux Software repository to your OS, look here.

But the thing with me is, I never really needed a search in my daily OS use. Over the past five years I’ve learned how to manage your files side by side as I work. Sure it was difficult at first, but when some friend of yours dumps about 500 songs on your HDD, you realize how painful tagging is. Yeah, I tagged them all manually (Right Click - Properties, Google for info) on Windows and then after I finished the 3 day work and arranged them well, with Album Art and all, I discovered that MusicBrainz did the same. Only, automatically. Haha, I felt like deleting the entire collection after I discovered the software.

It might be that I don’t really keep a lot of files, like documents and all. And even if I do, not for a long time. The only thing I start the Search applet or software of an OS is to find a system file or something hidden deep under the User Profile folders. But otherwise, I always know where my files are and never really have hassles searching them out.

Sorting music is now much easier, thanks to both Amarok and Windows Media Player 11 coming with automatic file tagging and Album Art downloads. My music folder is arranged in the Artist - Album - Files and Art way. Like the breadcrumb view below:

Music arrangement

And though its arranged in such a way, its still obsolete cause these modern player libraries are beautifully sorted and very easy to use if your files are well tagged.

I don’t think anyone these days actually goes through the File Explorer and selects something to play. Its way easier in a library or a manager, can be sorted in a hundred different ways and all your files are accessible from your player itself, thus making playlists from them a cake.

So what am I getting at? Nothing, just saying that once tagged and categorized, your files are way easier to navigate through. But don’t categorize like /home/name/Documents/Office/June1 and /home/name/Documents/Office/June2 and so on. That’s just stupid and makes it more difficult to browse through. Instead just stop at the Office sub category and dump all files with proper descriptive names in it.

No one really listens to all this crap but if you actually keep categorizing and spending that extra few seconds in placing the saved file in the right folder with the right name, it makes retrieval way easier, and completely reduces your need on the search module of the OS which usually gives you a hard and dumb time searching. I mean, how innovative can a search get and be helpful to you when you simply don’t know what and where you seek.

And after the long off-topic blabber, I just wanna say that this GDS tool is quite heavy, just like Beagle is.

Written by Harsh

June 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pm