Manas T

Browsing through kde-look.org, I found a lot of plasmoids that I wanted to install but they were not available in the Fedora repositories. So I had to compile the plasmoids from source.

After a bit of googling on the errors I was getting during compiling those plasmoids, I think the below command should do the job of pulling in all packages you need to compile almost any plasmoid on Fedora KDE.

yum install make automake gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel kdelibs-devel kdebase-workspace-devel kdebase-devel

Note 1 – This command will also pull in some more packages which are dependencies.

Google Chrome has so far released only a Beta version of Google Chrome for Linux. But what if you want to use the Dev version but are using a RPM distro like Fedora or Opensuse.

If you head to the Chrome release channels page, you will see that the Dev version is available only in Debian format. The page says:

Requirements: Intel Pentium 4 / Athlon 64 or later CPU; 32- or 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 or later, or 32-bit Debian 5. Support for other Linux distributions is planned; unpacking the .deb files by hand may work.

But Google Chrome has a Dev version for RPM distros as well . To install the Dev version:

1. First get the Beta version of Google Chrome from here.

2. Install by double-clicking on it. This will install Google Chrome beta and add Google’s repo for future updates.

3. Now open you software management tool (PackageKit for Fedora) and search for google-chrome. You will see that google-chrome-unstable is also present in Google’s repo. So you can now uninstall google-chrome-beta and then install google-chrome-unstable.

For Fedora command line, the commands will be ‘yum erase google-chrome-beta’ and then ‘yum install google-chrome-unstable’.

It is time Google updates the Chrome early access channels page.

If you want to use KDE 4.4 on Fedora but do not want to upgrade to Rawhide (it is not even Alpha yet), here is an easy way to upgrade your KDE version to 4.4 while on Fedora 12.

The KDE packaging project is providing 4.4 packages for Fedora users. You just need to add their repository to your Software Sources in PackageKit. Here is how:

1. Go to the site and get the repo file under yum section. It is present on the home page if you scroll down.

2. Place the repo file you downloaded in /etc/yum.repos.d directory.

3. Go to KPackageKit –> Settings and enable the kde and kde-testing repositories. KDE 4.4 is present in the testing repository.

4. Open Konsole, and type: su -c ‘yum groupupdate kde-desktop’

After updating, restart to see shiny new KDE 4.4.

Development is rapidly progressing on the Linux version of the Chrome browser from Google. The latest build (4.0.202.2) on Linux now has experimental Plugins Support (read Flash) and even inherits your GNOME theme and Icons.

You can easily install Google Chrome browser on your Ubuntu Linux. Follow the below steps to install Google Chrome browser on Ubuntu Linux.

1. Go to this page and download the 32 bit or 64 bit deb of Google Chrome for Linux. These are the Dev channel builds for Chrome, so you always get the latest updates.

2. Open Terminal and type the below command to install Google Chrome:

If you have downloaded the 32 bit version:

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

If you have downloaded the 64 bit version:

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_amd64.deb

This will automatically add Google’s repo to your Software Sources. So you receive all future updates from Google automatically.

If you are using Adobe Flash on your Ubuntu, here is how to enable Flash on Google Chrome. Type the below commands in Terminal:

sudo cd /opt/google/chrome/

sudo mkdir plugins
sudo cd plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --enable-plugins %U

Now open Google Chrome. A faster internet browser with Flash.

It seems the way to get rid of icons in buttons in GNOME 2.26 has changed.

The line ‘gtk-button-images = 0′ in GTK themes does not work in GNOME 2.26 anymore.

There is now a new key in GNOME Configurator Editor. Below are the steps to disable buttons on icons in GNOME 2.26 and above.

• Press Alt + F2
• Type gconf-editor and hit Enter.
• Go to Desktop –> GNOME –> Interface
• Uncheck the key buttons_have_icons

The change will be immediate and there will no icons on buttons anymore.

This change will affect all GTK themes. Somehow this is more convenient as I need not edit GTK themes everytime.