Installing KDE 4.2 in Intrepid Ibex

shakir    Information Insemination, Nerd Public Journal?     kde, kubuntu, linux

I've been a KDE user since I started using Mandrake Linux 8.0, which if I remember correctly by that time bundles KDE 2. It was until recently that when Kubuntu 8.10 includes KDE 4 by default rather than KDE 3, I switched to GNOME.

KDE 4 at that time for me was an unfinished product where it's not ready for prime time. The desktop effects were slow, many features of KDE 3 programs were still not ported, bluetooth was not working, and most important of all I can't run it in dual screen.

This has changed recently when KDE team released KDE 4.2. There were so many bugfixes and improvements that I think it's time for me to go back to KDE.

I've published an article on how to install KDE 4.2 in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) at Techrecipes.

Set up dual monitor in Linux

shakir    Information Insemination     kubuntu, linux

I’ve just bought ViewSonic VA2226w from Lowyat, and has been able to use it in dual monitor mode with my XPS M1330 (nvidia based) and Kubuntu. The ViewSonic that I bought is a 22" LCD monitor with resolutions up to 1680×1050 (only just as high as my 15.2" Inspiron 6000’s screen)..

I was using nvidia-config to configure the dual display, and after some trial and error, I come out with this /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" RightOf "Screen1"
    Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath         "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath        "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "LCD"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 75.0
    VertRefresh     60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "ViewSonic VA2226w"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8400M GS"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8400M GS"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP: 1280x800 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

and here’s my work desk at home (after some clean up )

p/s: Hope nobody mind me using the Microsoft keyboard and mouse set

“DeprecationWarning: SessionMiddleware is moving to beaker.middleware in 0.8″ error in (K)Ubuntu

shakir    Information Insemination     kubuntu, pylons, python

I’ve been getting this error when running paster for my Pylons project:

shakir@herugrim ~/Misc/workspace $ paster serve –reload development.ini
Starting subprocess with file monitor
/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/pylons/wsgiapp.py:249: DeprecationWarning: SessionMiddleware is moving to beaker.middleware in 0.8
  app = SessionMiddleware(app, config.global_conf, **config.app_conf)
/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/pylons/wsgiapp.py:254: DeprecationWarning: CacheMiddleware is moving to beaker.middleware in 0.8
  app = CacheMiddleware(app, config.global_conf, **config.app_conf)
Starting server in PID 8550.
serving on 0.0.0.0:5000 view at http://127.0.0.1:5000

On my quest to solving it, I uninstall Pylons (its whole bunch of dependencies);

sudo apt-get remove python-pylons

and install it back again, but this time using easy_install;

sudo easy_install Pylons

Yeay, I’m now good to proceed. Happy coding to me