New Klassroom course: Krazy fixes 2

March 19, 2010 — Hans

A new course is now open for participation over at the KDE Community Forums. This time the students will use a KDE utility called Krazy Code Checker to improve the code quality of a KDE application of choice, mentored by our own administrator (and System Settings maintainer) bcooksley.

The course requires basic C++ knowledge and a KDE development platform (kdelibs) >= 4.4 (self-compiled or distribution packages). If you want to get a feel of how it’s like, you can take a look at the previous krazy course.

Interested? Head over to the forums and read the course description. If you want to participate, post a reply with the subject you want to work on. Have fun!

Klassroom – Krazy fixes 2 ยป

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One hundred push ups in one week

March 16, 2010 — Hans

Experience has shown that if you follow the program below, you’ll be able to do 100 consecutive push ups after one week. Make sure to get at least one day rest between each workout, and don’t overwork yourself.

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Remaining time in the Battery Monitor widget

March 14, 2010 — Hans

Mostly as a reminder to myself, here’s how to show remaining battery time in the Battery Monitor widget shipped with KDE Software Compilation >= 4.3:

Remaining time in the Battery Monitor

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Posted in KApplication KTips, KDE, PlanetKDE. 16 Comments »

Why don’t you use Userbase?

March 9, 2010 — Hans

Being an Arch Linux user, I know how helpful a good wiki can be. Userbase, however, has never felt like the wiki for KDE software users to me. Don’t get me wrong – I very much appreciate the work of the Userbase contributors – but being part of both communities, I see a clear difference in how both wikis are used.

In the Arch community, it’s common praxis to check the wiki before asking a question. Many users also contribute to the ArchWiki by adding content, translating pages and whatnot.

The number of Userbase contributors are growing, but getting on the top list is still very easy – a few edits will do. The wiki is still unknown to a large part of the user base; it doesn’t feel like the natural place to seek and add information about KDE.

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Posted in KDE, PlanetKDE. 24 Comments »

New blog address is new

March 9, 2010 — Hans

Starting from today, the blog has a new primary domain which is one character and a “.wordpress” shorter:

http://hanschen.org

So now is the time to update your bookmarks and feeds! (Actually you don’t have to – the old URLs should still work. But if you need a little distraction…).

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10 things you might want to do in KDE SC 4.4

March 4, 2010 — Hans

With the release of KDE Software Compilation 4.4, many may feel tempted to give KDE Plasma Desktop (previously known as just “KDE”, see Repositioning the KDE Brand) a try. Plasma Desktop introduced in KDE SC 4 behaves quite differently from other popular desktop workspaces, and without doubt many new users will feel slightly lost and confused the first time.

I’ve gathered some tips for new users to get a more familiar desktop, based on frequently asked questions I’ve seen in various places. This is in no way a “10 things you should do” list – it’s up to you to decide which way you like better.

The post is mainly aimed at those who are new to Plasma Desktop, but even experienced users might learn something new.

KDE Plasma Desktop

Just a short note before we begin: the images with a play button are linked to short screencasts – just click to watch them. The screencasts are encoded in GIF and can therefore be played in most web browsers without any additional plugins. The downside is that the quality is quite poor, hope you can bear with it.

Without further ado, here are 10 things you might want to do in KDE SC 4.4:

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Posted in KApplication KTips, KDE, PlanetKDE. 19 Comments »