Manas T

Kubuntu Lucid 10.04 was released yesterday and I have already upgraded.

Click on the image to know whats new in this release and to grab your copy now.

The search never ends. Almost all distros use Qtcurve to make GNOME apps look good in a KDE environment. The Qtcurve theme works pretty good at aping, but if you use the default color scheme and the oxygen style in KDE 4, then there is something even better than Qtcurve.

Oxygen Molecule GTK+ theme based on the pixbuf GTK+engine, does a better job at skinning GNOME / GTK apps in KDE. After installing the the theme all GNOME GTK applications look like using the Oxygen style and become a part of your KDE desktop. The theme is available for download on kde-look.org. The download also contains installation instructions for copying and using the theme.

Loving the look of Firefox on KDE now.

If you like KDE and are using Kubuntu Lucid, you are missing out on the new wallpapers which have been chosen for Ubuntu Lucid after a photography contest. Unlike Ubuntu, these wallpapers are not installed on Kubuntu automatically. The wallpapers are great though.

If you want to install them on Kubuntu, fire up Konsole and type the below command:

aptitude install ubuntu-wallpapers

Or if you prefer KPackageKit, then search for ubuntu-wallpapers package and install it.

You can then find the new wallpapers in /usr/share/backgrounds.

Not using Lucid or Linux but want the new wallpapers? You can download all the new Ubuntu Lucid wallpapers in compressed format from here.

Here is a teaser screenshot of my desktop with one of the new wallpapers.

This is not another performance comparison of Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox.

While looking at this post on my own blog, I just couldn’t help noticing the Google Adsense ads that were being displayed there.

On top of the post, there was the Google Chrome ad. Not surprisingly, Google is targeting web pages which have the word Firefox in them.

And below of the post, there was the ad thanking me for using Firefox and asking me to upgrade to Firefox 3.5. Talk about upgrading, I am already using 3.6 ! When Chrome is using so much publicity to improve its market share, I think Mozilla can do with updating its ads.

The latest Firefox 3.7 nightlies now have the first bits of  the Firefox Windows theme refresh that was discussed in detail here.

On Windows 7 particularly Firefox looks great now. Firefox now comes with:

• Support for tab previews in the Win 7 Superbar
• Aero Glass in the toolbar without any extension.
• The Stop and Reload buttons have been merged now.

Here are some screenshots from my Windows 7 machine.

Though there still seem to be issues with the Aero Glass feature (some rendering issues on the page portion just below the tab bar), it looks great. Expect the look to get more refined once the nightlies progress.