The other day I was doing some cleaning and came across some old Ubuntu & Kubuntu Disks. I can’t bring myself to throw them away since, they no longer do the disks and it reminds me of when I first discovered the world of Linux.

Ubuntu & Kubuntu Disks

Adding Google+ to your desktop is simple for KDE users. Simply download and install the PhoneWebView Plasmoid and use the following url as your default url https://m.google.com/app/plus/?force=1 There you have it..a beautiful mobile view of G+ right on your KDE Desktop!

Well Lord of the rings online is going free to play on the 10th of September. Some of us over at the Ubuntu forums were wondering if pylotro would be updated. So I email the developer and asked him and he has since posted over at the forums that he indeed plans on updating pylotro for the change. So good news for all you linux loving lotro players, including me!

I wanted to share how I have gotten both Lord of the Rings Online & Dungeons & Dragons Online Eberron Unlimited working on my Kubuntu 10.04 install

My Methods will require you to either have a copy of windows running in virtualbox or a dualboot with a working LOTRO install.
First I downloaded pylotro Though the program is called pylotro it is a launcher for both LOTRO & DDO. I also download and installed wine. My current working version is 1.2-rc1

1. I used the regular download manager from turbine in Virtualbox and downloaded both LOTRO & DDO . You should make sure to do full download of all game files, be forewarned it could take a while.
2. I created a folder called Turbine in
   /home/angel/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/
3. Using grsync I copied everything from
   C:\Program Files\Turbine\
   to
   /home/angel/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine
4. Using winetricksI installed
   • win2k
   • gecko
   • vcrun2003
   • vcrun2005
   • vcrun2005sp1
5. I then installed pylotro in wine
6. Once I ran pylotro I had to go into the settings and point it to my LOTRO and DDO installs. While I wasn’t able to patch DDO I can play it just fine. With LOTRO I was able to patch and everything runs just fine.
7. Note You’ll have 2 folders(1 if you only play LOTRO or only play DDO) in your /home directory called
   Dungeons and Dragons Online
   and
   The Lord of the Rings Online
   These would generally be the folders that would appear in your Documents
   folder in windows.This folder will normally hold your
   UserPreferences.ini file along with your lotro.keymap file. For reference HERE is a copy my UserPreferences.ini file

I haven’t had any sound issues and my game seems to run fine. Of course I
don’t use pulseaudio being on kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. One thing I
did notice is that settings aren’t saved to the ini file so if you say
adjust your sound one session then log and come back later your need to
readjust them. I worked around this but just editing the volume settings
in the actual UserPreferences.ini file instead of using the in game
options.

I just finished installing Kubuntu 9.10 and it’s absolutely amazing.I didn’t have any of the issues that occurred when I installed Jaunty, my sound worked great right out of the box!

Aside from not having any sound issues, the new notifier is great, even my gtk apps have kde style pop-ups. I even found a new extension for Thunderbird witch uses libnotify. In jaunty, firefox and other gtk apps looked like gtk apps, however even firefox looks very beautiful in kubuntu karmic. I’m assuming the that means gtk-qtcurve has been updated in some manner. Speaking of firefox; kubuntu karmic now has a nice installer for it, that really made things easier. kopete now surpports facebook which in my opinion is a plus. Karmic is faster, I suppose that’s because I’m now using the ext4 file system instead of ext3. Overall I would say Kubuntu karmic just feels nicer. It’s not clunky or resource consuming. The over feeling you get is one of comfort. The only downside I found was for an application and can’t be laid at kubuntu’s feet. The new version of amarok has removed the shoutcast plugin due to some licensing problems.

After having installed KDE 4.3 on my Ubuntu installation and really enjoying using it, I decided I wanted the full Ubuntu/KDE experience. So I decided to wipe my Ubuntu installation and install Kubuntu 9.04. It turns out the switch wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. There we’re definitely a few stumbling blocks along the way.

First I couldn’t get tomboy notes to work. I’m aware that KDE offers Basket Notepad but I really prefer Tomboy. I love the wiki style and simplicity of it. I could install it fine but attempting to launch gave me errors. I never did quite figure out what the issues was but I knew it was very important for me to get it working as all my installation notes we’re in tomboy which I sync to dropbox so I can have them available to me anywhere (this is really handy as tomboy also has a windows version so I can run them back and forth). Well after much googleing I discovered it’s some kind of issue that won’t let tomboy run with out gnome. Well I thought, at the very least I can install ubuntu in virtualbox and access my notes this way. So that’s what I proceeded to do. Well I decided to have a look at the article on how to forge entitled The Perfect Desktop – Kubuntu 9.04 This article is very thorough and allowed me to get everything I needed on kubuntu without the primary use of my notes.

After following the guide and picking the software I wanted (I didn’t install all the software mentioned as I use alternatives to some of them) I then went to google to search for a way to test my browser plugins. This is when I noticed I had no sound in my browser. Flash, totem and mplayer remained silent. So off to google again. Many hours and much googleing later I discovered the reason for my sound issues was that Kubuntu does not install pulseaudio by default. So I needed to install it. So I followed the instructions found in this post. But for some reason I still had no sound. This drove me completely insane, at this point I was highly frustrated. Well somewhere in the mirad of google pages I came across a post and the reply to that post was that this person had discovered that their PCM volume was turned down and when they turned it up they had sound. So I checked my PCM volume using the mixer option available when clicking on the volume in the system tray and sure enough it was turned all the way down. Now I had sound in my browser. Flash, Mplayer totem they all worked!

Supposedly they are working on these sound issues and most of them should be fixed with the release of Karmic Koala in October. I really hope so as this is a bit complicated for anyone to fix.

I updated my KDE to 4.3 which is far supieror to the KDE that ships with Kubuntu Jaunty. The widgets are great and I love using them, also I noticed that the networking widget, which refused to work under kde installed on top of ubuntu, now worked perfectly under Kubuntu. Also I no longer have annoying sounds when using gtk applications under kde this was the most annoying thing about using kde ontop of ubuntu.

I almost forgot to mention that after following the Perfect Desktop article, my tomboy notes began working. So I have it installed now and running as well. From the error I was receiving when attempting to launch it through the terminal, I know it was some kind of Mono error, though I can’t be sure what as I don’t know anything about programming.

Today I have my very first all Linux Box! This system came without an OS and windows has never touched it. First Some Specs:

• Systemax AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.30GHz
• 3GB DDR2 800 (PC2-6400)
• 250GB Hard Drive
• 9-in-1 Media Reader
• Realtek ALC883 High Definition Integrated Audio
• DVD±R/RW
• Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6100
•  I have added a NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 512 mb card

We paid $249.97 for it from tiger direct.

The other PC works fine, we purchased this with the intent on taking the other computer to the living room and hooking the T.V. up to it. We are planning to cancel our cable to save more money in the long run.

After getting the box setup in it’s proper location, I proceeded to turn it on. It of course informed me that there was no OS and I should pick something to boot from. I inserted the Ubuntu 9.04 disk & within 20 minutes had a fully functioning Ubuntu Desktop.

The System runs great I also finally have a working microphone, as my other p.c. had some sort of bug which refused to allow the microphone to work in Linux.

I’m totally stoked about having a new rig which runs Ubuntu so wonderfully.

Have you ever had one of those? Where just wanna smack yourself upside the head? Well tonight was mine. I went to bed, then I woke up because my foot & back were hurting me and then I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I decided to get up and mess around the computer for a bit. I get in here and I have no sound?!?!?!? So I turned to google, and tried a few different fixes I found, but nothing seemed to work. I still had no sound. Finally after about a few hours I decided to just download a copy of 9.04 and try a fresh install, I already had everything backed up from the upgrade. So I slip the disc in and go through the normal routine. But when the computer starts I still have no sound! At this point I’m completely stumped. So then I finally decide to re-install 8.10 I get the disc out, drop it in the computer and go through the whole routine once again. The computer reboots, and now I have no sound on Intrepid either?!?!?! I sat here for a few moments, completely stumped not sure what to do. Well at this point I dropped a pen on the floor and as I bend over to pick it up I notice (drumroll please) that the headphones are plugged into the headphone jack roflmao…. seems my son had borrowed them and when he brought them back to my computer instead of pluggin the microphone into the microphone jack he plugged the head phones in to the head phone jack . I didn’t know whether to strangle him, or smack myself in the head. So at this point with a vanilla 8.10 on the computer I said what the hell and just decided to install 9.04 nothing to lose at this point.

So that’s my Falce Palm Moment of the Day…..lol.

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted , so I figured I would share what I’ve been doing with Ubuntu since the last time.

First off I finally decided to try out KDE and have installed KDE 4.3 along side gnome. It took a bit of getting used to but once I figured out how to get it set up the way I wanted it’s not been bad at all. The widgets are nice, and I enjoy having them there. I’ve also grown to like Amarok 2, it’s been a while since I used the older version, so I can’t make a comparison, but this Amarok has been working quite nicely for me.

I have always preferred Kopete’s Layout over pidgins, it just seems a bit cleaner to me, though I still use pidgin for facebook, myspace, and IRC.

Once I got into investigating how to configure Kmail it’s quite lovely, I have also been using akregator for my news feeds and it’s working out quite well.

I Still prefer Tomboy for my notes, and I still use firefox for my default browser. I have konqueror set up as a guild wars browser, which I use only while playing Guild wars for quick wiki checks or price checks. Firefox running with Guild Wars seems to push the CPU up.

I still feel that KDE runs best on Ubuntu, where to me Kubuntu feels like there is still a lot of back end work to be done to get it right.

So Anyway that’s what I’ve been up to these past few months.

I’ve been looking into Linux Games lately I did demo Knights and Merchants from http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com But it just didn’t have zing you hope to see in a video game. The graphics weren’t that great and the game seemed a bit difficult to learn. It would be great to find some good Linux games, but as of yet I’m at a loss. though I’m still enjoying my Guild Wars 😀