Relying more on Desktop Client for Emails

After switching to Akregator from Google Reader and learning to live with a little inconvenience, I was struck by a comment about the danger of email accounts being broken into by the criminal elements.

I now have setup an imap account and am using Kmail. Contents of any folder/label which need not available for easy access online, I plan to move to a local folder. I will miss out on the power of Google search, but I think, along with consuming less energy, learning to live with some technological inconveniences is the preferred/imperative option.

Update - Came across an interesting news of excessive reliance of technology -  When technology fails a news anchor, there are no words.

Will my 82 year old mom be able to handle Gnome 3?

As I had been expecting, Arch Linux update now includes Gnome 3. I updated my Lenovo netbook first and tried Gnome 3 though I am normally using KDE Plasma Netbook profile.

My initial reaction was, "Oh, no! I will no longer be able to keep my mom's computer current." There was no way that I could get my 82 year old mom to use the empty screen. My experiment with a rolling distribution was about to end.

On Arch Linux, the classic Gnome display was shown - nearly blank panels and no desktop. It was easy to fix the classic Gnome issue as I needed to install gnome-shell.

Now, I had a blank desktop with the Activities action only. There was no way I could inflict the mouse movements needed to get an app to run on my mother. Had the favourites been always visible as in Ubuntu's Unity display, I may have considered that option.

I would have to use the Gnome classic display for her. I should be able to get her accustomed to two panels. For many years, her desktop is configured to use only one panel at the bottom. An alternate option would be configure KDE plasma to look like her current environment. My mother's needs are very simple and few. She uses Thunderbird for email, Rhythmbox for playing music and AisleRiot to play Freecell. Occasionally, she may use Firefox, OpenOffice or Image Viewer if somene has sent a link or an attachment. (In the case of attachments, she now often needs our help.)

It is unfortunate that I needed to use gnome-tweak-tool to get the file manager to manage the desktop. Given the controversy KDE4 developers had faced, I would have expected that this option would have been enabled by default.

Suddenly, Gnome 3 looked much closer to the familiar environment.

The classic Gnome did not seem to have a 'favorites' dock. A little playing around led to the discovery that I could drag a menu item to either panel. Now, the desktop is far closer to the familiar. I can add a script to shutdown the system so that she is not confused by the status menu or, even the alternate status menu.

So, in principle, I can continue with the experiment. But I will save the current setup in a partition so that I can fall back to it in case my expectations are belied.

I still have to consider whether to stick to Gnome or switch. LXDE may be the best option if I can customise the theme for large fonts, high contrast which are needed for my mother to be able to read emails with greater ease. But in all my efforts, I have to make sure that I do not frustrate her.

It is going to be a tough call!  Drop the experiment and stick to what works or take a chance with one of the three options. Which one? Decision taking is hard :(

KDE 4.6 on Arch Linux

The first reaction to KDE 4.6 on Arch Linux was that it looked nicer. Minor display issues in Netbook workspace were gone.

Earlier, it would often display only one favourite application. If one dragged the icon to the left edge, all would show up. Some times the application categories would not show at the start. Searching for an application would make them appear.

The graphics effects would cause the desktop to hang. Now, that is working very well. One nice new feature is that one can close a window on the screen displaying all the windows.

The power button of Lenovo S10-3 would not trigger the power off/suspend menu on KDE Plasma Netbook workspace. This problem is sort of resolved. On first attempt, it takes about half a minute to show the dialog. But if one cancels it and retries, the menu is displayed immediately.

But there is a new 'bug'. Wifi does not connect automatically. It waits for me to click ok on the password. I will try with a fresh KDE session just to confirm if the problem is related to some change in the configuration files.


Update:
The 'bug', where the network manager fails to start the wifi without any user interaction, seems to be that I was not using the KDE Wallet. Once I used the KDE Wallet, network manager starts the wifi without any prompt.

Arch Linux update and KDE graphics problem with Lenovo S10-3

My last update of Arch Linux affected quite a few packages including updating the kernel to 2.6.36. There was one more issue in addition to the resumption from sleep problem. The additional issue related to graphics effects of KDE.

The edge effect of showing all the windows worked. However, I could not select any of the windows and there was no way to return to a usable window. The display seemed to hang.

I could switch to a tty (ctrl+alt+Fn) and 'pkill ksmserver' to get a new login and start a new desktop session. My workaround was to disable desktop effects until I found the cause.

I rolled back a number of packages which seemed likely, e.g. kernel, mesa, xf86-video-intel. Finally, I located that the culprits were intel-dri and libgl. I had to downgrade both from 7.9-1 to 7.8.2-3.

I also needed to downgrade xf86-video-intel from 2.13.0-4 to 2.12.0-3. The display did not freeze but was very erratic and unstable.

Mouse - Click to Move

I had switched my parents to Fedora 4 years ago when I moved to Delhi area from Goa. One application from Windows98 remained - Freecell. My mother loved to play it and she just could not use drag and drop functionality. She has Parkinson's disease.

Then, after an update, I noticed 'Click to Move' option in AisleRiot. Had I missed it earlier or was it a new feature - I don't know. But after that, even Windows' freecell lost its place on the computer.

The reason I recalled this incident was that I was finding it extremely hard to use drag and drop on Kpat on the Lenovo netbook using the touch pad. Some operations with mouse can be very-very difficult as we age. KDE4.5 has more keyboard short cuts so I found that to play Kpat, I could use them. Not the best of solutions but a workable solution. An option for 'pick and drop' as an alternate to 'drag and drop' would have been very useful.

Sadly, keyboard shortcuts are just that. They are not very useful for older people who may have problem with mouse as well as remembering which key does what in which application.

KDE 4.5 on Lenovo S10-3

Kubuntu 10.10 beta does not have a separate netbook edition. Instead the plasma workspace type can be changed to Netbook.

I could not boot with the Kubuntu 10.10beta livecd on Lenovo S10-3. Fortunately, this bug was reproducible and will hopefully be resolved soon.

One of my desires was to learn the setup of netbooks in more detail. A great way of doing that is to use Arch Linux. It is currently using 2.6.35 kernel and KDE4.5.

Since I wanted to have a reasonable but not too fine a control over what I installed, I decided to follow the route of kde-meta packages. The available meta-packages were obtained using
# pacman -Sg kde-meta

I decided to install kde-meta-kdebase, kde-meta-kdeutilities, kde-meta-kdenetworking and kde-meta-kdemultimedia.

The first problem I encountered was pretty simple. X wouldn't start. It turned out that xorg package had to be installed separately.

Next, I installed intel driver for X.

Working with the mousepad was a problem - it was very jerky and sensitive. It took a while to realise that touchpad has a separate driver. I needed to install xf86-input-synaptics package. It was a great relief being able to work with the mousepad without going crazy.

I changed the workspace type to Netbook in the settings and I had the new look.

While it will take time to get used to it. The main page starts with the search and launch options. Most likely it is the usual kde4 menu but with a very different look and feel. One can search for an application or select it from application groups.

Once the application is started, the top bar is hidden. The entire screen is taken up by the application. I prefer this approach. It reminds me of the reason why one commentator had praised dedicated eBook readers - There are no distractions. On the desktop, while watching a youtube or similar video, I frequently find myself making use of the extra space to start a game of solitaire!

It is going to be enjoyable exploring it and getting used to it. At my age, learning something new is a necessity :)