Do you search without getting tracked?

Last year the good folks over at Linux Mint turned me on doing web searches with DuckDuckGo. I’ve tried other search engines and ended up going back to searching with the Big G but DDG is better than any other search engine I’ve ever used. They have great results that almost never leave me needing to repeat my search on other engines, and I’ve switched to doing all of my web searches on DDG.

SolydXK makes the cover of Full Circle

Schoelje, the developer of the SolydXK Linux distribution, tells us that my new favorite Linux distro has made the cover of Full Circle Magazine. For those not familiar with the magazine, Full Circle is an independent monthly electronic magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community. I was a regular reader of it back when I ran Ubuntu on my computer but I’d stopped paying much attention to it since I moved to Linux Mint Debian Edition. But not only has SolydXK made the cover, which alone is pretty surprising since SolydXK is based on Debian Linux not Ubuntu, but they made the cover of the magazine’s 6th anniversary issue!

Art Schreckengost’s review is quite nice, although the reviewer didn’t see much to set it apart from other distros he’s looked at. He has a point, although I think he doesn’t realize how different it is from others in that it recognized all his hardware, something that even he acknowledges is a rarity in Linux distros. He may also not be aware of the fact that SolydXK is intended to make life easier for small business owners, especially with SolydXK BO (Back Office Edition) which is now under development.

I had forgotten how useful Full Circle is for people who don’t run Ubuntu-based distros. Every month they include tutorials on how to do things, and this month they have a trio of tutorial articles on programming in Python (part 43), LibreOffice (part 25) and network settings. You can check out all the back issues of Full Circle, and you can also download compilations of previous tutorials on LibreOffice, Python, virtualisation, Scribus, and more. I particularly enjoyed the Scribus tutorials, and I made use of them when I helped create a PDF catalog for Nanci’s store in SecondLife.

Katia is dead. Long live the new lappy!

A couple of weeks ago the LCD panel on my laptop decided it didn’t want to work anymore. I should have seen it coming since a second, and at times even a third, line had shown up running across the width of my screen, but when it hit I ended up dead in the water computer wise. I went on one of the computers at my local library and posted notes on Facebook and the SolydXK forums letting my friends there know they probably wouldn’t see much of me anymore since I was down to a mere hour of online time a day. It was a Royal PITA but there wasn’t much I could do about it since plugging in an external monitor simply isn’t something I can do, nor would I consider dragging an external screen around with me just to be able to use my laptop.

Once again the Linux community came through in a totally unexpected way. Some of you will remember that way back when, when my desktop computer died a member of the Linux community offered me a Lenovo T61 laptop that his company was getting rid of. I gladly accepted his offer, and I loved being able to bring Kathryn (the name I gave it) with me to get things done in more places. Unfortunately within a year I made the stupid mistake of setting my earbuds on the keyboard and closed the lid part way when I stepped outside Starbucks to freshen the air in my lungs. When I came back in I closed the lid the rest of the way to pick the laptop up, only to break the screen. I was able to use it with an external monitor for a while, but eventually I had to give up the monitor and go offline. I contacted the person that gave me Kathryn in the first place to see what they recommended as far as replacing the screen I was told that they didn’t even bother with it, they just replaced the laptop. Their company still had a couple of T61′s they were getting rid of so a second one was sent to me, and was quickly christened Katia.

When folks in the SolydXK community heard about my laptop they started looking to see if they could help, and while their first idea fell through one of the folks there said he had a 4-year-old Sony VAIO sitting in a drawer that was mine if I wanted it. Like so many folks in the tech industry, as well as a lot of gamers, I’m not a big fan of Sony after their debacles with rootkits and trying to kill Star Wars Online with their new game engine, but I rally couldn’t turn down the laptop just because of who made it. And it turns out that was a really good thing, too.

My new laptop is a Sony VAIO VGN-NW230G, and it turns out it’s an upgrade for me. The CPU is the same as my old system, and I have a slightly larger hard drive than on my old laptop but the same amount of RAM. Of course the screen is a lot better than my old one, but I’d expect nothing less from Sony. Here’s a rundown on the major specs, as reported by KDE’s KInfoCenter and the spec sheet from Sony:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6670 processor running at 2.20GHz
• Toshiba 250GB Serial ATA hard drive
• 4GB of RAM
• Widescreen 15″ display (1366×768)
• Intel GM45 Express video chipset
• Pioneer DVD-RW drive
• PCI-E Gigabit ethernet controller
• PCI-Express 802.11 b/g/n wireless network adapter
• Intel HDA (ALC262 analog) sound card
• HDMI video output
• Secure Digital (SD memory card) slot
• Built-in camera and microphone
• Three USB ports
• Up to 4 hours battery life (when new, of course, and depending on how I use the laptop when it’s on battery)

It doesn’t have bluetooth, which is a shame because it was handy to connect my phone and Katia via bluetooth to transfer files back and forth but the SD card reader makes it almost as easy to get files on and off the phone. It also doesn’t take PCMCIA cards like Kathryn/Katia did, but I never had a card to use so not having a slot for them isn’t a big deal to me.

The laptop didn’t have an operating system installed on it but the person who sent it to me was kind enough to include DVD’s for SolydK and Dreamparted 2013 (Partition Magic) so it was easy to get it up and running. I’m still having issues with connecting my old hard drive to get the data transferred over, but hopefully I can start a new hunt to get that annoying little bug squashed. In the meantime I’m swapping the hard drives in my new laptop and using the 8GB microSD card for my phone and a 4GB USB flash drive to move files over. It’s a really slow process, but I’m glad I have the files to be able to transfer.

There are two issues, and one is more of an annoyance than an issue. The screen on my old laptops have a 1440×900 resolution, while the new one’s resolution is 1366×768. What’s the big deal? I have a policy of resizing images I want to use in my wallpaper rotation to the size of my screen just to limit the load on my CPU/GPU when I’m already pushing my laptop pretty hard. This means I have scads of images to resize, but luckily many of them, including the ones I get from Webshots, come in 1920×1080 or 2560×1440 sizes, which resize exactly to 1366×768. Now I just have to re-download most of the images in my wallpaper rotation so I can resize them for my new screen. It’s going to be tedious as hell, but I think it will be worth it, especially since now I can get larger images and not have to crop them to fit my oddly sized screen.

The other issue is even more annoying. On all of my old computers the buttons for Home, End, Page Up and Page Down were all either in their own section or they were along the top row of keys. As you can see in the picture above, on this keyboard they’re all in one column on the right hand side of the keyboard. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to hit Backspace or Enter and ended up hitting Home or Page Down. I need to find a way to train my brain to be more careful because it’s a real pain to realize I hit the wrong dammed key. Yet again.

Of course when I was installing SolydK on the VAIO it asked what I was going to call the new laptop, and that was a hard question to answer, especially since I hadn’t thought about it sooner. It was a new enough machine that I didn’t want to reuse Katia, or any variation on Kathryn, for it. Normally I name my electronic gadgets using the first letter of either the manufacturer, brand name, or the model number. My Samsung cell phone is Sam and my old iriver E100 media player was Erika, and I came close to naming the laptop after Snoops, my bestest buddies in the world, but I wanted to ask if they minded before I did that. Before I got in touch with Snoops I came upon an even better way to name my new laptop: I’d create an acronym for some of the really cool people I’ve met since I moved to Boston 24 years ago. Of course I had to limit the number of people I celebrated with the acronym or else it would get Jabba-sized in a hurry. I ended up calling the laptop “acsrsk,” calling it “ac” for short. Who are the friends I’m celebrating with the name? I’m going to keep that info to myself, partly because not all of them and I are still friends (as of this writing) and because I didn’t ask any of them if they minded. They probably wouldn’t care, and they may even appreciate that I think highly enough of them to celebrate them like this, but I’m not asking them so even if they ask me if they’re one of the people in the name I may not tell them the truth. Some of the letters could represent a few different people, and I wouldn’t want to risk hurting their feelings by telling them that they’re not who I was thinking of when I came up with the name.

I look forward to spending many hours working and relaxing with ac, and if anyone was looking for a new/used laptop and they didn’t mind who made it I’d give the VGN-NW230G a very strong recommendation. It looks to be a great machine to run SolydK on.

[HOWTO] Installing Muon on SolydK

Every Linux distro and desktop environment has their package manager and software manager. SolydK has their Software Manager and you can also use the Synaptic Package Manager, but long time KDE users may want to use KPackageKit, the old KDE package manager. When the Ubuntu team released Kubuntu 12.04 they introduced the Muon Software Center, a software manager integrated with the KDE  Software Compilation that’s turned into a suite of several apps for installing, managing and updating packages in KDE. I had wanted to use Muon on the LMDE KDE respin but it wasn’t available, and it’s not in any repo for SolydK either, but after posting a request for it on the SolydXK Forums zerozero, one of the admins for SolydXK, wrote a great little tutorial for getting it installed. I ran into a little glitch as I got it installed, and had I read zerozero’s instructions completely I would have seen there was a way to resolve it, so I wanted to take the time to post a tutorial here.

We’ll be building Muon from source code so I’ll be assuming you already have the usual assortment of packages installed for building programs from source code installed. First let’s grab the source code for libqapt and muon you’ll be needing.

• http://download.kde.org/unstable/libqapt/1.9.97/src/libqapt-1.9.97.tar.bz2.mirrorlist
• http://download.kde.org/unstable/muon/1.9.97/src/muon-1.9.97.tar.bz2.mirrorlist

You’ll want to extract them and install them one at a time, first installing libqapt then muon, but let’s get a dependency installed first so you don’t have the problem I had.

sudo apt-get install libqjson-dev

Now let’s get those packages built, starting in the folder where you extracted each of those tarballs, and run these commands for each tarball, one line at a time

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
sudo make install

If at any point you get an error about something being missing you’ll want to go ahead and install anything you see is missing. If all goes well you’ll see a number of new programs available for you to run.

Muon Discover

Muon Discover is an experimental front end to the Muon suite of apps and will eventually replace the Muon Software Center itself.

Muon Software Center

You’ll recognize this app if you have used just about any other software manager like the ones from Ubuntu, Linux Mint or SolydXK.

Muon Package Manager

This will remind you of apps like Synaptic, but I’m not seeing any way to search for packages. Hopefully this is simply something I’ve missed and someone will let me know how to do a search in it because otherwise it looks pretty useless.

Muon Update Manager

Again, this app will look familiar to anyone who’s used an Update Manager in most Linux distros. I don’t use UUM too much because I’m assisting the SolydXK Testing Squad and need to be getting updates in the SolydXK Update Manager as well as via the terminal.

Yooouge thanks to zerozero over at the SolydXK Forums for writing his little tutorial. It turns out I’m not the only one who was looking for Muon on SolydK. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks about Muon. Have you replaced your distro’s other methods of installing software with it? What tricks and tips have you found that others may be able to use? Let us know in the comments.

[HOWTO] PLAY BALL! Enjoy the new MLB video this season on Linux with MLBVIEWER

[Updated 2 April: Deftcat, the developer of mlbviewer let me know that the section about NexDef and the detector aren't needed and mlbviewer no longer uses it. I've also added an important note about watching condensed games. Big thanks to daftcat for checking the article.]
[Updated 5 April: I goofed on the install instructions for mlbhls. I've corrected the steps below. I've also added a link at the bottom of the post to the support thread over at LinuxQuestions.org.]

The new baseball season opens tomorrow and with spring training over you’re probably looking forward to seeing your favorite team start playing games that count and start their march to October and the World Series. Last year I wrote a tutorial on how to enjoy the games in Linux with mlbviewer but I wrote it at the All-Star break so this year I wanted to make sure my fellow baseball fans are ready to watch the very first game of the season.

For those who aren’t familiar with mlbviewer, it’s a way for Linux fans to be able to watch games since Major League Baseball once again seems intent to completely ignore fans who don’t run Windows or the MacOS. You’ll need to run it in a terminal rather than having a pretty GUI but thanks to curses it’s easy to scroll through lists of available games and even dates. It turns out the MLB Advanced media is not only aware of mlbviewer but several of their devs have either used it in the past or continue to use it. This is not to say that mlbviewer is a way to get around parting with your hard earned money to watch the games, because the developer of mlbviewer is very clear that it isn’t his intention at all. After all, if someone uses his code to get past the MLB payment gates it could mean that the league could come down hard on mlbviewer and have their lawyers talk to his lawyers, and I think we can all agree that would be anything but welcome news.

There are several improvements for 2013, including a way to run the app without pyxml, one of the biggest pains of last year since it’s no longer in development. He’s also got some good news for us poor folks who can’t afford to buy a subscription to MLB.tv.

Before we get the mlbviewer code let’s make sure you get the dependencies met. You’re going to need to have these packages

• python 2.x (Python 3 isn’t supported by mlbviewer, and you should use Python 2.7 if it’s available.)
• rtmpdump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) for audio and basic service video
• mlbhls for NexDef video
• mplayer2
• Either an MLB.tv account for the whole enchilada or an MLB.com account for some basic free goodies. You no longer need an MLB.com account for the free content. You’ll see an error about an unsuccessful login but you can ignore it.

Since some of them are already available in the repositories for most distributions let’s fire up a terminal and make sure we have them installed. I’m going to give you the command based on the SolydXK repos since that’s what I’m running and I can see what they have available. Run this in your terminal

sudo apt-get install build-essential python2.7 subversion rtmpdump mplayer2

If you already have build-essential installed it won’t install again. RTMPDump may not be in your distro’s repos, and if it isn’t I’ll walk you through installing it below.

Now that you have those basics taken care of let’s get the programs installed that your distro doesn’t have.

Installing mlbhls and rtmpdump

If you don’t have a paid subscription to MLB.tv you don’t need these programs but you may get a chance to get a free trial of MLB.tv so I’d recommend installing them so they’re already installed when you need them. Unfortunately you can’t download mlbhls from their Google Code site any longer so you’ll have to grab the code with Subversion. Open a terminal in the folder you want to install it from (I prefer to use a folder called Installers) if you don’t already have one open and run these commands one line at a time. Updated 5 April to correct the steps required, including taking care of some additional dependencies. The changes are in bold.

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libconfig8-dev
svn co https://mlbtv-hls-nexdef.googlecode.com/svn/branches/experimental mlbhls
cd experimental
make
sudo cp mlbhls /usr/bin

As I saw on SolydK, if you’re running Debian Linux or a distro that uses the Debian repositories installing rtmpdump is amazingly easy. You can simply run sudo apt-get install rtmpdump. If it’s not available in your repos you’ll need to use git to get the latest code. if you don’t already have it installed you can install it with sudo apt-get install git. Once it’s installed run these lines one at a time in your terminal, again pointing to the folder where you want to install programs from.

git clone git://git.ffmpeg.org/rtmpdump
cd rtmpdump/
make sys=posix

Before you close the terminal you should copy the rtmpdump binary to /usr/bin by running this in the terminal once you’ve run make:

sudo cp rtmpdump /usr/bin/rtmpdump

Finally, it’s time to install mlbviewer

There are two ways to install mlbviewer, getting it from the mlbviewer website or getting the very latest code via Subversion. If you choose to download it from the site you just have to extract it and it’s ready for it’s first run. If you want to grab the latest version with Subversion you’ll need to run this command in your terminal

svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/mlbviewer/code/trunk mlbviewer-2013

Regardless of how you installed mlviewer point your terminal at the folder you installed it to (mlbviewer2013 if you download the code from the site, if you went with svn code use mlbviewer-2013). Then simply run

python mlbviewer.py

When it finishes it will tell you to review the settings of ~/.mlb/config and set your user name and password. Open that file in your favorite text editor and at the top you will see

# See README for explanation of these settings.
# user and pass are required except for Top Plays
user=
pass=

You’ll need to put your username (email address) and password associated with your MLB.TV or MLB.com account. There are a number of settings in this file, such as a way to note your favorite team(s), and to see what everything is look at the README file that came with mlbviewer. If you’ve installed mlbhls you want to change line 54 so it reads

use_nexdef=1

Once you’ve finished changing the settings (please try not to break anything) save it and go back to your terminal window. Once again run

python mlbviewer.py

As you can see from the screenshot (showing yesterday’s games) I’ve set the LA Dodgers as a favorite team and set the favorite color to blue, and since I’ve scrolled down to that game you’ll see that the final video is available. If you want to watch the video for a particular game just use your up and down arrow keys to scroll down to the game you want and hit Enter. You can also change to the AWAY coverage of the game by hitting S anywhere on this screen, and if you want to get the audio for the game as I’m about to do just press A when your game is selected. If you have a paid subscription to MLB.tv you can watch a condensed version of some games. Simply scroll to the game you want and see if the Status says Final (Condensed Game Available). If it does press C for the condensed game.

Updated 2 April: If you don’t have a subscription to MLB.tv you need to leave the user and pass fields in the config file empty to be able to enjoy the condensed games.

If you have a favorite team specified mlbviewer will default to the team’s coverage, regardless whether they’re at home or on the road. If you want to change the date for the games shown you can use your left and right arrow keys to go back and forward one day and if you want to jump to a particular date just press J and enter the date.

You can view all of the highlights available from the game by pressing T, and it will show a list of all of the highlights. You can go through the clips one at a time and press Enter to see them , and if you’re using mplayer or mplayer2 as the player for the Top Plays you can hit Y to get a playlist of all of the available highlights one after another.

There are a number of other keys you can use and they’re all listed in the README file, or you can simply press h. If you run into problems you can post them over on the mlbviewer thread over at LinuxQuestions.org. They’re really quick to respond and you may find that your problem has already been addressed by another user. Enjoy your baseball games, and may your beloved team win more than it loses. Unless they’re playing the Dodgers, of course.

In addition you can also create a launcher for mlbviewer. I used the KDE Menu Editor to create it and you can use whatever tool you prefer to create launchers. The important information is:

• Name: I used mlbtv since that’s what I use mlbviewer to watch
• Description: Watch MLB.tv with mlbviewer
• Command: This is the path to where you have mlbviewer installed.
• Go to the Advanced tab and click the box to run it in a terminal

I created a custom icon for the launcher that uses the league’s logo as a starting point.  I do not have permission to use this and if you download and use it you may be in violation of US copyright laws, but if you want to use it as well you can get it here.

Updated 17 May: If you’re wanting to see NexDef streams on the MLB.tv site you’ll need to run this in a terminal:

java -Xmx128m -jar /opt/nexdef-plugin/Library/Application\ Support/NexDef/lib/nexdef.jar

I’ve also uploaded the old debian-nexdef-installer script in my Dropbox for those wanting it. Simply make it executable and then run the script in a terminal, and then run the above line of code in a terminal to be able to see NexDef content on the MLB.tv website.

Want to download SolydXK? They have a new mirror to help you get it more quickly.

One of the biggest problems with trying to download an ISO disk image for a new Linux distribution or a new release of a distro is the simple fact that the download can take quite a while until more people have it to make it available, especially via torrents.  SolydXK, a great new distro available with the Xfce and KDE desktop environments, has been a challenge to get simply because it’s so new. Yesterday the SolydXK site let us know that HEAnet.ie, an Irish research and education network, has been kind enough to mirror the SolydXK ISOs to help them get downloaded more easily.

You can get links to download the ISOs directly from either the SolydXK site or from the mirror on the SolydX and SolydK pages.If you have already downloaded a torrent file please download a new version of the file from the SolydX or SolydK pages. I’ve seen the download time cut to less than a half with the new torrent file. 

For more information on SolydK you can read the First Look review I wrote yesterday.

First Look: SolydK

Last Thursday I wrote that the unofficial Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) KDE respin had been discontinued but that the developers had launched a brand new distribution, SolydXK, with the KDE and Xfce desktop environments on a Debian Testing base. I had begun getting the SolydK ISO disk image from torrents so I could give it a spin to make sure it was what I wanted to install on my laptop, but since the ISO is so new there aren’t many people making it available and since I’m on a somewhat slow, and quite busy,  free wifi signal I’m still looking at over eight hours of downloading let to go despite having Ktorrent getting the file for a while each day since Thursday. I can be pretty impatient, especially when it comes to tech goodies I want to try, so yesterday I did something I won’t recommend anyone else do: Since I was already running LMDE KDE UP6 I went over to the SolydK tutorials page and followed their simple directions for upgrading from the unofficial LMDE KDE respin to SolydK.

The process looks almost frighteningly simple: Just run eight commands in a terminal window.

su
echo "deb http://packages.solydxk.com/ solydxk main upstream import" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get install solydxk-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get install solydk-meta
apt-get update
reboot

For those who don’t speak bash I’ll translate. First get superuser access by running su. Usually when you want to run commands as a superuser you’d simply put sudo at the beginning of each line, and you really don’t want to use su to get superuser access unless you’re absolutely sure about what you’re doing so you don’t accidentally mess your system up with a stray keypress, but in this case it’s ok since you’re either typing very carefully or copying and pasting one line at a time. The next line adds the SolydXK package server to your sources.list so you can get packages from it, and the following line updates your local list of packages available. Once the information you’ll get an error message.

W: GPG error: http://packages.solydxk.com solydxk InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY EADB2FB0BCA63C3C

This is actually the proper response since you’ve told your system to get package information from a new source server and your server doesn’t know if the new source can be trusted. The next line in the instructions downloads the solydxk-keyring package which tells your system that packages.solydxk.com is a source it can trust, and once it’s installed your local list of package information is updated again. The next line of instructions is where the important things will happen.

When you run apt-get install solydxk-keyring you’ll want to pay attention to what comes in the terminal, because you’ll be asked if you want to install and remove some packages. When I ran it on my system I got this

The following extra packages will be installed:
debian-plymouth-manager gtk3-engines-oxygen plymouth-themes-solydk
solydk-artwork solydk-grub2-theme solydk-info solydk-system-adjustments
solydxk-flashplugin-11 solydxk-softwaremanager solydxk-sws solydxk-system
updatemanager
The following packages will be REMOVED:
dpm grub2-theme-lmdekde hunspell-en-us linuxmint-keyring
lmdekde-system-adjustments mint-artwork-lmdekde mint-common
mint-configuration-lmdekde mint-debian-mirrors mint-flashplugin
mint-flashplugin-11 mint-info-debian-kde mint-md5sum-kde mint-search-addon
mint-stylish-addon mint-translations mintbackup mintinstall
mintinstall-icons mintnanny mintsystem mintupdate-debian mintupload mintwifi
plymouth-themes-lmdekde sws
The following NEW packages will be installed:
debian-plymouth-manager gtk3-engines-oxygen plymouth-themes-solydk
solydk-artwork solydk-grub2-theme solydk-info solydk-meta
solydk-system-adjustments solydxk-flashplugin-11 solydxk-softwaremanager
solydxk-sws solydxk-system updatemanager
0 upgraded, 13 newly installed, 26 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 28.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 10.8 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

You shouldn’t see anything about packages being held back on your system if you’ve kept your system up to date. I had already seen that there were updates to Google Chrome and Firefox  that I had held off taking since both upgrades would be major version updates and had the potential to break extensions I use. Firefox wanted to upgrade from version 17 to version 19, and I had passed on version 18 because I hadn’t seen that there was that much of a reason to take it (not to mention the fact that I still think the Mozilla devs are idiots for pushing out so called “major” upgrades so often). Chrome’ s upgrade was to version 25, which I knew could cause problems for my LA Dodgers theme and I hadn’t had a chance to take the time to make sure things were working properly. Most of what’s being removed are Linux Mint-specific packages and they’re being replaced by SolydK packages, which makes complete sense. I told apt-get to go ahead with the upgrade and I was amazed at how little time it took, even on my slow wifi connection. During the install I was asked about whether or not I wanted to replace configuration files for /etc/lsb-release, /etc/lsb-release, /etc/cups/classes.conf, /etc/cups/classes.conf, /etc/cups/printers.conf and /etc/cups/printers.conf, and after checking to see what the changes were I decided to just let each file be replaced with the newer versions rather than risk confusions between settings for the two distros. Once the install was complete I updated the available package file information one more time and ran the command to reboot the system.

When my laptop started booting again I immediately noticed the lovely splash screens for SolydK, as well as the new login screen. I had my LMDE KDE set to log me in automatically but the upgrade process removed that setting so I selected my username on the login screen and entered my password. Once SolydK reloaded I saw a familiar sight with a few slight changes.

I ended up needing to select the 1900×1200 version of the SolydK wallpaper since there isn’t a 1440×900 version but that scales down to my desktop perfectly. I also needed to change the icon for my Quick Access plasmoid (the second icon on the left in my panel at the bottom of my screen) because the usual Quick Access icon was changed to a second instance of the SolydK icon, but it was a piece of cake to change it to the Desktop icon.

When I fired my laptop back up last night I noticed that I didn’t have any sound, which seems to be a fairly common problem for SolydXK users. After checking this thread on the SolydXK Forums I checked my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and saw that there were a pair of sound card entries.

options snd-hda-intel model=thinkpad

options snd-hda-intel model=generic

I’m not sure why there are two, but I commented out the second one, rebooted, and found my sound worked again. When I go into the Phonon configuration settings I see that I’m still getting a warning that my default audio devices for capture and output (HDA Intel (AD198x Digital)) were supposedly removed, a problem I noticed in LMDE KDE, was still happening but it didn’t interfere with hearing anything from my laptop (a lenovo T61) so I’m not worrying about it for now although one of these days I want to look into why it’s happening and what I can do to resolve the issue.

This morning I got online at a location with a faster wifi signal and ran sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade to get the 468 updates I knew were waiting for me.

The following NEW packages will be installed:
amd64-microcode deb-multimedia-keyring intel-microcode iucode-tool libdns88 libisc84 libqtdbus4
libxvmcnvidia1
The following packages will be upgraded:
akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-backend-sqlite akonadi-server alsa-utils apt apt-utils base-files bash
bind9-host bogofilter bogofilter-bdb bogofilter-common bsdutils ca-certificates ca-certificates-java
console-setup console-setup-linux coreutils cpio cpp-4.6 cpp-4.7 cups cups-bsd cups-client cups-common
cups-ppdc dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service ddm debconf debconf-i18n debian-multimedia-keyring
dictionaries-common eject emacsen-common exim4-config extlinux firefox firefox-l10n-en-us firmware-atheros
firmware-bnx2 firmware-bnx2x firmware-brcm80211 firmware-intelwimax firmware-ipw2x00 firmware-ivtv
firmware-iwlwifi firmware-libertas firmware-linux firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree
firmware-qlogic firmware-ralink firmware-realtek fontconfig fontconfig-config freespacenotifier fuse
fuse-utils fusesmb g++-4.6 g++-4.7 gcc-4.6 gcc-4.6-base gcc-4.7 gcc-4.7-base gcj-4.7-base gcj-4.7-jre
gcj-4.7-jre-headless gcj-4.7-jre-lib gdb gdbserver geoip-database ghostscript ghostscript-cups
ghostscript-x gimp gimp-data gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gnupg google-chrome-stable gpgv grub-common grub-pc
grub-pc-bin grub2-common gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-tools gvfs gvfs-common gvfs-daemons
gvfs-libs hwdata icedtea-6-plugin icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common icedtea-plugin inkscape
installation-report kde-style-oxygen kde-window-manager kde-workspace kde-workspace-bin kde-workspace-data
kde-workspace-dev kde-workspace-kgreet-plugins kdeartwork kdeartwork-emoticons kdeartwork-style
kdeartwork-theme-window kdepim-runtime kdepimlibs-kio-plugins kdewallpapers kdm keyboard-configuration
kgpg kinfocenter klipper kmenuedit konsole kscreensaver kscreensaver-xsavers ksh ksysguard ksysguardd
ksystemlog kwalletmanager libakonadi-calendar4 libakonadi-contact4 libakonadi-kabc4 libakonadi-kcal4
libakonadi-kde4 libakonadi-kmime4 libakonadiprotocolinternals1 libapt-inst1.5 libapt-pkg4.12 libbind9-80
libblkid1 libboost-filesystem1.49.0 libboost-iostreams1.49.0 libboost-program-options1.49.0
libboost-python1.49.0 libboost-regex1.49.0 libboost-signals1.49.0 libboost-system1.49.0
libboost-thread1.49.0 libbrlapi0.5 libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk0 libcanberra-gtk3-0
libcanberra-gtk3-module libcanberra-pulse libcanberra0 libcroco3 libcups2 libcupscgi1 libcupsdriver1
libcupsimage2 libcupsmime1 libcupsppdc1 libdconf0 libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau1a libdrm-radeon1 libdrm2
libdv4 libegl1-mesa libegl1-mesa-drivers libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev
libfuse2 libgail-3-0 libgbm1 libgc1c2 libgcc1 libgcj13 libgcj13-awt libgfortran3 libgimp2.0
libgl1-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-nvidia-alternatives libgl1-nvidia-glx libglapi-mesa
libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev libglx-nvidia-alternatives libgnutls26 libgomp1 libgpgme++2 libgs9
libgs9-common libgsl0ldbl libgsoap2 libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libgtk-3-0
libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libgtk-3-dev libisccc80 libisccfg82 libitm1 libkabc4 libkcal4 libkcalcore4
libkcalutils4 libkdecorations4 libkephal4abi1 libkholidays4 libkimap4 libkldap4 libkmime4 libkms1
libkontactinterface4 libkpimidentities4 libkpimtextedit4 libkpimutils4 libkresources4 libkscreensaver5
libksgrd4 libksignalplotter4 libkwineffects1abi3 libkwinglutils1 libkworkspace4abi1 liblockfile-bin
liblockfile1 liblsofui4 liblwres80 libmailtransport4 libmicroblog4 libmikmod2 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
libmono-cairo4.0-cil libmono-compilerservices-symbolwriter4.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
libmono-corlib4.0-cil libmono-data-tds2.0-cil libmono-data-tds4.0-cil libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil libmono-i18n4.0-cil libmono-messaging2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
libmono-posix4.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-security4.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
libmono-sharpzip4.84-cil libmono-simd2.0-cil libmono-sqlite2.0-cil libmono-sqlite4.0-cil
libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil libmono-system-core4.0-cil libmono-system-data2.0-cil
libmono-system-data4.0-cil libmono-system-enterpriseservices4.0-cil libmono-system-messaging2.0-cil
libmono-system-security4.0-cil libmono-system-transactions4.0-cil
libmono-system-web-applicationservices4.0-cil libmono-system-xml4.0-cil libmono-system2.0-cil
libmono-system4.0-cil libmount1 libnfnetlink0 libnm-glib-vpn1 libnm-glib4 libnm-util2 libnss-winbind
libnss3 libnss3-1d libokularcore1 libopenvg1-mesa libpam-winbind libparted0debian1 libpci3 libperl5.14
libphonon-dev libphonon4 libplasma-geolocation-interface4 libplasmaclock4abi3 libplasmagenericshell4
libpolkit-agent-1-0 libpolkit-backend-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-1-0 libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler-qt4-3
libpoppler19 libportmidi0 libprocesscore4abi1 libprocessui4a libpython2.6 libpython2.7 libqgpgme1
libqjson0 libqt4-dbg libqt4-dbus libqt4-declarative libqt4-designer libqt4-dev libqt4-dev-bin libqt4-help
libqt4-network libqt4-opengl libqt4-opengl-dev libqt4-qt3support libqt4-script libqt4-scripttools
libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-sql-sqlite libqt4-svg libqt4-test libqt4-xml libqt4-xmlpatterns
libqtcore4 libqtgui4 libquadmath0 libreadline5 libreadline6 librpm3 librpmbuild3 librpmio3 librpmsign1
libservlet2.5-java libsmbclient libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libsolidcontrol4abi2 libsolidcontrolifaces4abi2
libsoprano-dev libsoprano4 libsrtp0 libstdc++6 libstdc++6-4.6-dev libstdc++6-4.7-dev libsyndication4
libsystemd-daemon0 libsystemd-login0 libtaskmanager4abi3 libtiff-tools libtiff4 libtiff5 libupnp6 libuuid1
libvcdinfo0 libvirtodbc0 libwbclient0 libweather-ion6 libwmf-bin libwmf0.2-7 libxapian22 libxml2
libxml2-utils libxnvctrl0 linux-headers-3.2.0-4-486 linux-headers-3.2.0-4-686-pae
linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common linux-image-3.2.0-4-486 linux-image-3.2.0-4-686-pae linux-libc-dev
lockfile-progs manpages manpages-dev mesa-common-dev mono-2.0-gac mono-4.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime mount
mscompress network-manager nvidia-alternative nvidia-detect nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-settings
nvidia-vdpau-driver okular os-prober pciutils perl perl-base perl-modules phonon
plasma-dataengines-workspace plasma-desktop plasma-desktopthemes-artwork plasma-netbook
plasma-scriptengine-python plasma-scriptengine-ruby plasma-widgets-workspace policykit-1 poppler-utils
psmisc python-brlapi python-crypto python-cups python-cupshelpers python-gdata python-glade2 python-gtk2
python-libxml2 python-mako python-parted python-pygame python-xdg python2.6 python2.6-minimal python2.7
python2.7-minimal python3.2 python3.2-minimal qdbus qt4-linguist-tools qt4-qmake readline-common rpm
rpm-common rpm2cpio rsync samba samba-common samba-common-bin soprano-daemon syslinux syslinux-common
syslinux-themes-debian syslinux-themes-debian-squeeze syslinux-themes-debian-wheezy
system-config-printer-kde system-config-printer-udev systemsettings tar tasksel tasksel-data tzdata
tzdata-java unattended-upgrades unzip usb-modeswitch-data user-setup util-linux uuid-runtime vcdimager
virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-qt
virtuoso-minimal virtuoso-opensource-6.1-bin virtuoso-opensource-6.1-common whois winbind xkb-data xnest
xserver-common xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-nvidia
xserver-xorg-video-radeon
468 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 747 MB of archives.
After this operation, 23.5 MB of additional disk space will be used.

The upgrade installation had another pair of config files I had to decide whether to take the new version or keep my existing settings for /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net, and I ended up taking the new versions for both of them. So far I’m loving how well Solydk is working, which is without a hitch. I’ll snag my usual group of screenshots and post them, but the great news is that if you’ve been using LMDE KDE or LMDE Xfce and you want to switch to SolydXK I invite you to come on over. The water’s fine, and as CjTX2 said in his introduction post on the SolydXK Forums, “You are putting the fun back in being at my computer.” I do believe that’s one of the best things anyone can ever say about any operating system, and the fact that it’s said about my new preferred Linux distro just makes it that much better.

Here are two more screenshots I made of my desktop. If anyone wants information on what any of the icons or plasmoids are feel free to ask in the comments.

The mintCast talks about SolydXK

Thursday I wrote an article about the new SolydXK Linux distribution and I was thrilled to be able to (finally) listen to this week’s mintCast podcast where I heard talking about SolydXK for the second news story of the week. They not only knew about it before I did (boy have I been out of touch lately) but they even have a pronunciation of Schoelje’s name, something I’m still not willing to try myself since I know I’ll bork it that badly.

I don’t pay much attention to rumors but a little birdie tells me the good folks over at the ‘Cast will be giving it a bit more attention in this coming week’s show. If you’re online at 8pm ET tomorrow (Monday 4 March) you should go check out the mintCast Live Stream page to hear the show as it’s being recorded, and you can also join in their chatroom on IRC.

Also, if you’re wanting to do audio production on Linux, whether live or just any kind of recorded audio, you’ll want to check out mintCast 150: Podcasting With Jack because Scott and Rob have done a lot of hard work to be able to produce not only their podcast but also do a live stream on a single Linux computer and they’re happy to pass along what they learned.