looking more attractive

Visitors to the MX Linux website might be pleasantly surprised by some recent developments:

Yep, MX includes Fluxbox on their main isos along with the default Xfce, and now there's also a KDE iso! Kinda makes me a bit nostalgic for the old Mepis days, when I mainly used KDE.

For more info about available MX Linux downloads, see: https://mxlinux.org/download-links/

I took a look at MX's Fluxbox setup a few months back (https://monksblog-malspa.blogspot.com/2020/05/fluxbox-in-mx.html), but it seems that there's been a lot of work done on it since then. Check out the latest announcement about it, here.

I haven't look at the KDE spin yet. It might be a nice option for some users, if choices like KDE Neon, Kubuntu, and Debian w/ KDE Plasma aren't enough.

distraction-free fluxbox

I installed Fluxbox to use in Kubuntu 20.04. I wanted to keep things clean and simple. Besides the fluxbox package and its dependencies, I added numlockx and dmenu. I've got a trimmed down root menu, with entries for only a few apps:

No cute icons on this desktop. Here's Konsole showing my neofetch, with a couple of windows shaded, and dmenu in action along the top of the screen:

For KDE Plasma apps to look right in Fluxbox, I added the following line to the ~/.fluxbox/startup file:

export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=kde
 

A middle click on the desktop brings up the handy Workspaces menu:

I like the distraction-free feel of this setup. I'm not sure how long before I get tired of the plain background provided by the zimek_darkblue Style I've chosen, but it's nice for now. As usual, I relied heavily on man fluxbox, my saved config files from previous Fluxbox setups, and my notes. Here's the contents of my ~/.fluxbox/menu file, for those might want to make use of it:

# Revised fluxbox menu

[begin] (fluxbox)

   [exec] (firefox) {firefox}
   [exec] (konsole) {konsole}
   [exec] (double commander) {doublecmd}
   [exec] (dmenu [mod4+space]) {dmenu_run}

   [submenu] (fluxbox) {}
      [config] (Config)
      [workspaces] (Workspaces)
      [submenu] (styles)
         [stylesdir] (/usr/share/fluxbox/styles)
         [stylesdir] (~/.fluxbox/styles)
      [end]         
      [reconfig] (reconfigure)
      [restart] (restart)
   [end]

   [submenu] (exit) {exit}
      [exit] (logout)
      [exec] (reboot) {systemctl reboot}
      [exec] (poweroff) {systemctl poweroff}
   [end]

[end]

theming fix

I've added the Audacious music player to Kubuntu 20.04, but when I started it up, it looked like this:

Not good. Toolbar buttons don't even show up. This is KDE Plasma 5.18.4. Under System Settings > Appearance, the Global Theme is set to Breeze Dark, as is the Plasma Style. Application Style is set to Breeze.

From the Application Style window, I clicked on the "Configure GNOME/GTK Application Style..." button down at the bottom of the window. In the next window, I could see that the GTK2 and GTK3 themes were set to Breeze, and there was a preview:

I changed the GTK2 and GTK3 themes to Breeze Dark:

Issue fixed:

focal, installed

I finally got around to installing Kubuntu 20.04 LTS ("Focal Fossa"). I went with the "Minimal installation" option, which gives me a fair amount of control over what goes into the installed system. I elected to "Download updates while installing Kubuntu" and to "Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats". I chose the "Manual" installation type and set up the partitions myself.

The installation itself went quickly and painlessly. After that, I spent quite a bit of time configuring and customizing things to taste, and now I've got a system that differs quite a bit from the default setup I tested out in the live session.

One thing that was bugging me was that I don't really want to mess around with Ubuntu's controversial snap packages at this time, and I didn't know if there were any snaps present in my new installation. I ran the following command to check:

$ snap list
No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'.

No snaps, but then I ran the apt search snapd command, which showed that the snapd package was in fact present. I took care of that by running sudo apt purge snapd. Also, I did some other cleaning:

$ rm -rf ~/snap
$ sudo rm -rf /snap
$ sudo rm -rf /var/snap
$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/snapd

I've removed some other things, like unattended-upgrades, vlc, snapd, muon, and plasma-discover. And I added some of my favorite apps: ntp, localepurge, geany, doublecmd-qt, audacious, nomacs, geeqie, mc, synaptic, inxi, libreoffice-writer, libreoffice-calc, neofetch.

I'm quite pleased with what I've seen so far. Kubuntu LTS releases have worked out very well for me in the past; as much as I love Debian and Arch, I've been running Kubuntu on my "primary" computer, and Focal Fossa looks even better than previous releases. Here's a link to a review of Kubuntu 20.04 LTS by the great Dedoimedo. Enjoy!

kubuntu focal live

Kubuntu 20.04 LTS ("Focal Fossa") was released last week. I downloaded the iso and took a look around in the live session; I haven't installed it yet, still hanging with 19.10. Some shots:

Discover and Muon:

This was my first look at the Elisa music player (see https://kde.org/applications/multimedia/org.kde.elisa and https://github.com/KDE/elisa), playing some music files from a flash drive. The VLC media player is also included.

An online review of Elisa: https://technastic.com/elisa-music-player-kde/.

Doesn't look like it'll be replacing Audacious on any of my installed systems.

Overall, the live session feels very nice, and it's loaded with enough useful apps to get the user up and running. I finally went into the settings and added a virtual desktop -- I don't see the sense of being limited to only one desktop/workspace, and haven't had to do that since my Windows XP days -- but other than that I didn't tweak the default configurations at all. Nothing but love here for KDE Plasma! I'll get around to trying Kubuntu 20.04 on bare metal soon, hopefully.

kubuntu focal beta

Kubuntu Focal Fossa (20.04 LTS) Beta Released

I took the beta for a spin in a live session.

Oh yay, an emoji picker.

The Kubuntu 20.04 beta looks pretty good. I'm very tempted to proceed with an installation, replacing Kubuntu 19.10, especially since I've got some time on my hands right now. But I'm very pleased with Kubuntu 19.10, which I'm using on my "home base" computer. Support for that release doesn't end until July, so there's no rush.

I prefer to go with the LTS releases (of Ubuntu and "Ubuntu Flavours" like Kubuntu), but the in-between releases have worked out great for me, too. I wish they had a longer support period, like they did in the past; now the EOL comes around after only about 9 months.

Anyway, I'll stick with Kubuntu 19.10 for now.

ripping with dolphin

While most KDE users will turn to k3b for ripping music files from audio CDs, KDE Plasma's Dolphin provides a fairly easy way to do it, as well. For info, check out "Encode and copy audio CD tracks" at the KDE UserBase Wiki, down near the end of the "Dolphin/File Management" section: https://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management#Encode_and_copy_audio_CD_tracks

I've ripped quite a few CDs using this method, with KDE Plasma 5.16.5 in Kubuntu 19.10. After inserting a CD, a "Device Notifier" popup appears on the desktop. I select "Open with File Manager". There's something about the kioclient examining the CD, then Dolphin opens the files.

Also, with a CD in the drive, one can simply open Dolphin and click on "Audio CD".

Then, the user can copy the music files from one location to another -- drag, drop, copy. Dolphin presents the files in .wav format, but also puts corresponding .ogg and .mp3 files within the "Ogg Vorbis" and "MP3" directories, respectively. I prefer to go with the .ogg format.

Very cool. This is one of many reasons people say that Dolphin is the best Linux file manager. (I use Double Commander for most file management, though!)

bionic installed

I installed Kubuntu 18.04 LTS ("Bionic"), choosing the "Minimal installation" option in the Ubiquity installer. "Minimal" is kind of a stretch, turns out, but it's a good way to go -- provides the user with a nice, working system without some of the stuff that might not be wanted or needed.

I ended up with Kubuntu as the second distro in a dual-boot setup with Debian Stretch. I ran the installer from the live session by opening Konsole and using the ubiquity --no-bootloader command. Nice little trick.

The default Kubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop:

After some tweaking, my empty desktop, with vertical/left panel:

Konsole, showing off my neofetch:

I spent a good amount of time messing around with the System Settings, eventually getting things set up to my tastes. I'm running KDE Plasma with most of the desktop effects turned off. I've added a few apps -- Pale Moon, Geany, Double Commander, and some others.  I'm finding Kubuntu 18.04 to be an excellent release, in the live session as well as installed to the hard drive.

bionic live

A few shots of the live session of Kubuntu 18.04 LTS ("Bionic Beaver"), running from a flash drive on my HP 15 notebook.

The default KDE Plasma desktop, empty:

With the desktop right-click menu opened up:

KInfocenter:

Dolphin and Konsole:

Via Dolphin, it was easy to access my hard drive's partitions right from the live session.

Here, the main menu is opened up to the Live session user's Favorites (Kubuntu 18.04 ships with Firefox 59.0.2):

VLC played my wma and mp3 files (stored on another flash drive) with no problem:

Kubuntu 18.04 LTS performed fine from the live session. For kicks, I set up a few extra desktops, and played around with the desktop cube a little:

The official release announcement: https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-18-04-has-been-released/

back to the 'buntu world

I kinda gave up on Ubuntu this past summer, feeling that I'd finally had enough of Canonical's relationship with Amazon, and of having Amazon stuff on my computer. Whatever. Ubuntu, anyway, is a great distro (with great repositories!), and most of the Ubuntu "flavors" or derivatives I've tried (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.) have been, in some ways, better than the parent. The Ubuntu repos, which (as I understand) draw a lot of packages from the Debian Sid repos, turn out to be great for other distros to use as a base.

With all that in mind, I'd been considering adding one of the 'Buntu derivatives to my lineup. Yesterday, I downloaded Kubuntu 17.10.1 ("Artful Aardvark") and tested out the live session. A couple of shots:

Kubuntu 17,10 ships with KDE Plasma 5.10.5, Firefox 57, LibreOffice, VLC media player, and the great KDE apps and tools we've come to know and love.

Here's a shot of my empty desktop, after a good amount of tweaking:

With the application menu opened up and the cursor highlighting Synaptic on the Favorites bar:

My desktop right-click and left-click menus, respectively:

The Discover Software Center -- the user could get lost for hours digging around in here:

Kubuntu also ships with the Muon Package Manager:

I don't know if Muon is any better than Synaptic, which is available in the repos:

My Compaq Presario CQ56 notebook has kinda weak specs; I've turned off most of KDE Plasma's special effects, and Artful performs well, but with a few minor graphical glitches that I haven't yet figured out how to fix.

I've used Kubuntu off and on over the years; it is never perfect, but it's always something I can work with. After some tweaking, I always seem to end up with a solid, dependable system. As I mentioned above, 17.10 ships with an excellent collection of apps and tools; I added a few more, and I think that the end result gives me a great Plasma setup to work with over the next several months. Looking forward to the LTS release!