Immediate Fix for Slow Open and Save Dialogs in Ubuntu OpenOffice

I'm using KDE and I think it's somehow related to that. Anyway, you need to execute the following command to fix it:

echo -e 127.0.0.1 \\t $HOSTNAME localhost $HOSTNAME.'(none)' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Hope this helps. Found in the Ubuntu Forums here.

More about → Immediate Fix for Slow Open and Save Dialogs in Ubuntu OpenOffice

Quick Fix for Your Multimedia Keys

If your multimedia keys give this warning in dmesg:

atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xf7 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e077 ' to make it known.

then you need to look up the right number in include/linux/input.h e.g.here. E.g.

#define KEY_BRIGHTNESSDOWN 224
#define KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP 225

And use that number with setkeycodes, e.g. for my system:

setkeycodes e077 224 # brightness down
setkeycodes e078 225 # brightness up
setkeycodes 0xee 212 # webcam
setkeycodes 0xe4 240 # touchpad -> unknown
setkeycodes e076 238 # wifi + bluetooth

And now your system (e.g. KDE or Gnome) should immediately recognize the keys. Post the information to your distribution and it should be included in future releases. Just write the commands (without sudo) into /etc/rc.local to make them permanent for now.

If you get stuck, here's a good guide.

More about → Quick Fix for Your Multimedia Keys

Fixing Mplayer's Terminal Abuse, esp. for KDE and Windows

Mplayer updates the information about the amounts of frames it displayed, the played time, the remaining time, etc. every single time it displays a *frame*. This is not only completely unnecessary, it can unnecessarily hog several percent of your CPU in many terminal implementations, especially in current KDE 4 and Windows. The higher the frame rate, the more wasted CPU power.

On my netbook, the difference is 10% CPUand more with a 25 frames per second video - that's as much and more than mplayer uses for a simple Xvid video. And it could easily make the difference between a well playing file and one that's glitchy. (The CPU time is occupied by konsole 4.3.2 though, not by mplayer itself.)

The only way out would be -quiet. But then you wouldn't know what's going on anymore at all. That's why I had written and submitted roughly the following patch to fix this behavior. Unfortunately even after I made all the requested corrections, it was never applied without any reasons provided, or were there?. So I decided to publish it here so people at least know about it. But it also means unless I can convince someone here, you will have to compile mplayer and apply the patch yourself.

There are many guides how to compile mplayer. Before you start the compilation process, just copy this following block into a file quiet.patch and then apply it inside the svn directory with "patch -p0 < quiet.patch", then compile mplayer normally. You can now use the parameter -quiet-time. A value of 1 means a status message no more often than every 100 milliseconds (0,1 seconds). I think a good value is 5. You will notice that e.g. konsole uses less CPU during playback now. Enjoy the power of open source and let me know how it works for you!

Index: DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1
===================================================================
--- DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1 (Revision 29324)
+++ DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1 (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -732,6 +732,12 @@
handle carriage return (i.e.\& \\r).
.
.TP
+.B "\-quiet-time \ "
+Reduce console output updates to n per tenth of a second.
+Values of 5 or more work around slow terminals.
+See \-quiet for more.
+.
+.TP
.B \-priority (Windows and OS/2 only)
Set process priority for MPlayer according to the predefined
priorities available under Windows and OS/2.
Index: mplayer.c
===================================================================
--- mplayer.c (Revision 29324)
+++ mplayer.c (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -81,6 +81,7 @@
int slave_mode=0;
int player_idle_mode=0;
int quiet=0;
+int quiet_time=0;
int enable_mouse_movements=0;
float start_volume = -1;

@@ -1936,6 +1937,11 @@

static void adjust_sync_and_print_status(int between_frames, float timing_error)
{
+ static unsigned last_status_update=0;
+ unsigned now=GetTimerMS();
+ if (quiet_time && now >= (last_status_update + quiet_time * 100))
+ last_status_update=now;
+
current_module="av_sync";

if(mpctx->sh_audio){
@@ -1987,6 +1993,7 @@
c_total+=x;
}
if(!quiet)
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
print_status(a_pts - audio_delay, AV_delay, c_total);
}

@@ -1994,6 +2001,7 @@
// No audio:

if (!quiet)
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
print_status(0, 0, 0);
}
}
Index: cfg-common-opts.h
===================================================================
--- cfg-common-opts.h (Revision 29324)
+++ cfg-common-opts.h (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
// ------------------------- common options --------------------
{"quiet", &quiet, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL, 0, 1, NULL},
{"noquiet", &quiet, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL, 1, 0, NULL},
+ {"quiet-time", &quiet_time, CONF_TYPE_INT, CONF_RANGE, 0, 65536, NULL},
{"really-quiet", &verbose, CONF_TYPE_FLAG, CONF_GLOBAL|CONF_PRE_PARSE, 0, -10, NULL},
{"v", cfg_inc_verbose, CONF_TYPE_FUNC, CONF_GLOBAL|CONF_NOSAVE, 0, 0, NULL},
{"msglevel", msgl_config, CONF_TYPE_SUBCONFIG, CONF_GLOBAL, 0, 0, NULL},
Index: mencoder.c
===================================================================
--- mencoder.c (Revision 29324)
+++ mencoder.c (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -131,6 +131,7 @@
//void resync_audio_stream(sh_audio_t *sh_audio){}

int quiet=0;
+int quiet_time=0;
double video_time_usage=0;
double vout_time_usage=0;
double max_video_time_usage=0;
@@ -1420,8 +1421,14 @@
(int)demuxer->filepos,
(int)demuxer->movi_end);
#else
+ static unsigned last_status_update=0;
+ unsigned now=GetTimerMS();
+ if (quiet_time && now >= (last_status_update + quiet_time * 100))
+ last_status_update=now;
+
if(!quiet) {
if( mp_msg_test(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_V) ) {
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
mp_msg(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_STATUS,"Pos:%6.1fs %6df (%2d%%) %3dfps Trem:%4dmin %3dmb A-V:%5.3f [%d:%d] A/Vms %d/%d D/B/S %d/%d/%d \r",
mux_v->timer, decoded_frameno, (int)(p*100),
(t>1) ? (int)(decoded_frameno/t+0.5) : 0,
@@ -1434,6 +1441,7 @@
duplicatedframes, badframes, skippedframes
);
} else
+ if (!quiet_time || (last_status_update == now))
mp_msg(MSGT_STATUSLINE,MSGL_STATUS,"Pos:%6.1fs %6df (%2d%%) %5.2ffps Trem:%4dmin %3dmb A-V:%5.3f [%d:%d]\r",
mux_v->timer, decoded_frameno, (int)(p*100),
(t>1) ? (float)(decoded_frameno/t) : 0,

More about → Fixing Mplayer's Terminal Abuse, esp. for KDE and Windows

Lessons not Learned - Continuing Latency Issues in Linux

We still have wonderful fsync offenders. Look at Kopete for example, or at Chrome. You don't want to be running that on battery or in a low latency environment:

Process kopete (1868)            Total: 19098.1 msec

fsync() on a file        6008.6 msec    99.8 %

Scheduler: waiting for cpu   19.4 msec  0.2 %

Or Iron (a privacy-enhanced Chrome/Chromium browser)

Process iron (5822)  Total: 13753.6 msec
fsync() on a file           5090.9 msec   70.3 %
Writing a page to disk 1412.8 msec 10.3 %
synchronous write         524.5 msec  3.8 %

If you use ext4, you can add some of these mount options to decrease the latency impact. But this decreases data security:
noatime,nodiratime,nobh,barrier=0,commit=100,data=writeback

More about → Lessons not Learned - Continuing Latency Issues in Linux

Fixing XRANDR Caused High Latency with KDE4 - Display Flickering - Freezing Videos

If you're using KDE4 you might be disappointed by a bug that causes high latencies and or a flickering (second) display. Here's a really easy explanation how to permanently fix that right now.

Go to System Settings, Advanced, System Services.


Then in the bottom uncheck "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes", then press Stop on the bottom right. The problem disappears immediately now.

You may read more about the bug here and here. Thanks to Electricroo for the fix. By the way, you know you have this bug, if DDC EDID probes ("(II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines, (II) intel(0): EDID vendor") keep showing up in tail -f /var/log/Xorg.0.log and you know it's fixed once they disappear. If you don't have that message in your X log, your most likely don't have this issue.

Note that this will stop KDE from automatically detecting when you plug in an external monitor. But as the configuration doesn't yet work well anyway I think there's no detriment. And of course there will be other causes for latency, but this one was the only real problem for me.

Update:
Unfortunately it seems like the fix does not (currently) work for KDE 4.2. If you don't find the service in the list in KDE 4.1.x, this might be a good sign and show that it's already disabled. If you still find the messages in Xorg.0.log, the please post a comment and let's try to find a way around it. If there's no way to disable it, all you can do is file a bug for your distribution and refer to the here mentioned information.

The bug has already been reported for KDE 4.1 at the kde bugzilla. Please participate there if you see this problem in KDE 4.2. You might also help to get a fix by voting for it. Until that time you can probably use my previously posted dirty hack that works around the kde session management service (ksmserver) by starting the KDE4 environment manually - please let me know if this works for KDE 4.2 as well.

You can also try to manually disable all outputs you don't need in Xorg, but the instructions vary significantly between different graphics cards, setups, distributions etc. And of course that won't help you if you're using a dual screen setup. If you find instructions on how to do that, please let me know in the comments.

Update2:
For KDE 4.2, check your config file:

grep polling ~/.local/screen-configurations.xml

If it says polling false and after upgrading KDE to 4.2 you suddenly get the messages described above in Xorg.log, especially if the fix above worked for you before, then there's a bug somewhere in KDE. If you get polling true, you can try to reconfigure KDE to make it stop polling. (You can just edit the file and change true to false.)

Related: Automatically switch to connected External Display on Boot with XRandR shows you how to automatically set up your displays without just a single screen, so that you can disable xrandr.

More about → Fixing XRANDR Caused High Latency with KDE4 - Display Flickering - Freezing Videos

KDE 4.2 - Fresh, Hot, Pretty, Efficient - A Release to Enjoy

I've seen quite few real reviews of KDE 4.2 so far. Let me show you a screen shot and begin with my summary: It's a great release.

Plasmoids
The core, no actually every part of the KDE4 desktop consists of plasmoids, little applets comprising parts of the desktop: The menu, the panel, the clock, desktop applets such as wheather and disk space, network and CPU usage displays, news overviews and many more are already included.


After some problems with achieving the high goals of a flexible interface the developers have by now achieved much. You can put the plamoids anywhere on your screens. I have two displays and really enjoy being able to setup each display with its corresponding plasmoids. I really enjoy the prettier new taskbar and the new style. You can now move plasmoids from the panel to the desktop and back, but that's not easy yet.

Platforms
I don't know about the OS X port, but my girl friend is already enjoying the Windows port of KDE including great applications such as Parley in a native Windows build. And they work more or less flawlessly. I think the sounds support was not perfect, but everything else works nicely and the installer is pretty simple to handle while remaining flexible. (It's not easy enough yet that she could install it herself, though.)

Stability
As it's a .0 release, you will definitely be able to crash plasma. Probably during the tryouts for setting up your plasmoids. I recommend quitting and restarting plasma after you've got your basic configuration done with kquitapp plasma && plasma &. Then continue with the fine tuning.

Upgrade
KDE used 4.2 my previous(4.1.4) configuration successfully. Even my applets were still there at the same place. That's a nice thing and I think between 4.0 and 4.1 it didn't work well for me.

Bugs
The screen flickering problem disappeared for me. In KDE 4.1 my second screen kept going blank for about 1,5 seconds about every 10 seconds. I had to work around that bug by starting kde manually. That's solved now. I get one flicker during that startup of KDE but that's it.

Polish
There will of course be some polish in the 4.2.x releases. Some plasmoids are still buggy and can crash plasma. The weather applet crashed plasma if it didn't find the city I was searching for e.g. Sometimes removing an applet can crash plasma. But there are more practical plasmoids and they work better than in 4.1. The rss reader lets you scroll through with your mouse wheel, a memory usage applet is still missing.

Efficiency
You can see how efficient the plasma approach and implementation is when suspending your computer and then resuming it. The clock will take up to a minute to be set to the current time. That's because it gets the time only once a minute - when a new minute starts. That saves CPU usage in between and shows how much thought the programmers put into an efficient implementation. Even my desktop full of plasmoids uses only very little resources of my system. It doesn't slow you down. It even works nicely over NX (remote desktop). When idling, plasma creates about 1 wake per second in powertop on my system.

More about → KDE 4.2 - Fresh, Hot, Pretty, Efficient - A Release to Enjoy

Hotkeys in KDE4.1 are broken

If you wondered why it doesn't work for you... it doesn't work for anyone. ;-)
They hope to have it fixed in KDE 4.2, says someone in a forum.

If you need a fix, try out installing xbindkeys-config and save the settings to the default config file and press apply for immediate changes. Works nicely for me.

More about → Hotkeys in KDE4.1 are broken

Customized Linux Message Notification, I Wish I Had

After writing an alias that shows me what's currently going on in my system (tail -f /var/log/..., ~/.xsession-errors, ...) I've wondered:

A. Why the information is not all going through syslog (almost is, but not e.g. the users errors).

B. And more importantly: Why isn't there a nice interface to syslog that shows me what I want to know, e.g. as a plasma applet for kde4, configurable but with low resource consumption nice&pretty on my wallpaper?

That'd be nice, wouldn' it? Maybe I'll write that myself one day...

More about → Customized Linux Message Notification, I Wish I Had

Workaround for Screen Flickering in Kubuntu 8.10

Okay, I've got a dirty hack for now to work around the flicker problem in Kubuntu 8.10. You can edit /usr/bin/startkde and comment out the line starting ksmserver (kwrapper4 ksmserver).

Then instead write

kwrapper4 krunner &
kwrapper4 plasma &
kwrapper4 kwin

There will be no session management, but also not flickering. I'll let you know when I find a better fix.

Update: Eventually I did find a much better fix. But it doesn't work for KDE 4.2 (yet).

More about → Workaround for Screen Flickering in Kubuntu 8.10

The Knotify4 Wake-Up Problem

Martin Kretz released an alternative backend for phonon that fixes the knotify4 high wake-up problem.

More about → The Knotify4 Wake-Up Problem

KDE 4.1 with Multi-Head

Just a short note: If you plan to use KDE 4.1 with Multi-Head, make sure you do *not* do it using xrandr, otherwise KDE gets confused and messes up your screen. So set up your xorg.conf statically.

Intel put up a short howto, but it shouldn't be that different for other drivers. The important part goes like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "intel"
Option "FramebufferCompression" "off" # on for battery, off for multi-display
Option "monitor-LVDS" "internal"
Option "monitor-VGA" "external"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "internal"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "external"
Option "RightOf" "internal" #the left display is the primary one
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "internal"
Device "Configured Video Device"
SubSection "Display"
Virtual 2560 1024
# this should be as large as both displays next to each other
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
# Option "Xinerama" "true" # crashes
Option "AIGLX" "false" # crashes multi-head
EndSection

After doing that, (instead of crashes and frustration) you're rewarded with very nice customization options in KDE 4.1.2: You can set the wallpaper for each screen, put different plasma applets at different locations, etc.

If you're using the intel driver I can also recommend disabling AIGLX in the ServerFlags Section of your xorg.conf to make the setup more stable. After supend/resume I regularly have to set reconfigure the screen setup with xrandr and then switch back and forth between X and the console to turn my external monitor back on.

I wonder how the new X server version in Kubuntu 8.10 will be.

More about → KDE 4.1 with Multi-Head

KDE Webkit

I just found out there is a webkit KDE port, called webkitkde, with Ubuntu (372kb) packages:

Webkit is what Apple uses for Safari and Google used for Chrome.

Update: This does not work cleanly if you use the kde 4.1.1 packages for hardy from the motu developers. Or to make it short: webkitkde works only in intrepid, because of wrong paths. If I have a workaround at the end.

Update2: Google Mail works with a bit of tweaking now. (I had to set Konqueror to identify as Safari 2.0 and reload the page mail.google.com.)

Update3: It's really beta software, you're not likely to have a lot of fun with it... :(. Gmail does not really work after all.

Update4: Even compiled from svn-trunk it's not really fun. There's some problem with the page loading, the fonts are too small I think. And just using khtml is much faster and more fun.

Just put this into your (Ubuntu hardy) shell:

sudo su -c "echo 'deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/intrepid.list"
apt-get update
apt-get install webkitkde
sudo su -c "echo > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/intrepid.list"
apt-get update

# workarounf for hardy
cd /usr/lib/kde4/share/kde4/services/
sudo ln -s /usr/share/kde4/services/webkitpart.desktop .
cd /usr/lib/kde4/lib/kde4/
sudo ln -s ../../webkitkdepart.so
# now the fine-tuning
cd /usr/lib/kde4/share/kde4/apps/ && sudo ln -s /usr/share/kde4/apps/webkitpart
cd /usr/lib/kde4/share/icons/hicolor/ && for i in 16x16 32x32 48x48 64x64 128x128; do cd $i/apps; sudo ln -s /usr/share/icons/hicolor/"$i"/apps/webkit.png; cd ../..; done;

kbuildsycoca4

And to uninstall:

sudo rm /usr/lib/kde4/share/kde4/services/webkitpart.desktop /usr/lib/kde4/lib/kde4/webkitkdepart.so /usr/lib/kde4/share/kde4/apps/webkitpart
cd /usr/lib/kde4/share/icons/hicolor/ && for i in 16x16 32x32 48x48 64x64 128x128; do cd $i/apps; sudo rm webkit.png; cd ../..; done;
sudo apt-get purge webkitkde

The README tells us:
You can switch between the different rendering engines:
View -> View Mode -> {KHTML, WebKit} (Website needs to be opened)
If WebKit does not show up in Konqueror, run 'kbuildsycoca4'.

If you want to set the WebKit part as default, run:
'keditfiletype text/html'
and move "WebKit (webkitpart)" in the "Embedding" tab to the top.

For more information about this project please see also:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/WebKit

More about → KDE Webkit

Don't try Multi Head Configurations with KDE 4.1

There are several issues up to KDE 4.1 in multiple display configurations, so I can not recommend using KDE 4 for that purpose (yet).

See these bugs for more:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163057
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162623
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158850

More about → Don't try Multi Head Configurations with KDE 4.1

Memory Usage - Pidgin vs. Kopete

The GTalk outage gave me some time to run another test of pidgin vs. kopete in memory consumption. Pidgin used to always win this competition, which is - next to the then better working file transfers - why I use pidgin.

I tested it again today and this time the Kopete coming with KDE 4.1.1 in Kubuntu won!

• Kopete used about 18 MB ram
• Pidgin used 23 MB ram

These results and the differences were reproducible. They were tested with "free" in the console. I started one program, then the other and in between ran free in the shell - several times.

Of course these results apply only if you're running a KDE 4.1.1 desktop. If you're a gnome user, pidgin is very likely to use less memory for you.

Also reproducible was that Kopete ate a lot of memory when opening the - currently very slow - configuration dialogue.

There seems to be a bug somewhere, as this memory is not freed until after you restart kopete. So after configuring something in Kopete 0.60.1 make sure you quit and restart it.

Feel free to test it yourself and post your results. Make sure to include what distribution, program versions and desktop environment you use and that you have the same amout of accounts active in each program.

More about → Memory Usage - Pidgin vs. Kopete

Interesting KDE Feature Requests

• 60037: JJ: "duplex printing wizard" for simplex printer
• 86787: Merge & Split PDF documents
• 37838: first key eaten by screen lock
• 22540: Creating/Editing Symlinks
• 79721: collaborative editing over a network (kate)
• 87758: Supporting http 1.1 pipelining
• 34362 support for additional mouse buttons
• 165368 DPMS does not work with automatically started screensaver
• 107302 Associate any virtual desktop with any xinerama screen
• 37067 Per-virtual-desktop containments*
• 91809 kpdf cant fill in formulars*
• 125952: calendar synchronization with Google Calendar (korganizer)
• 158556: Plasma Panel cannot be hidden*
• 104464: Different styles for KMenu*
• 59859: Major Improvements for the "What's this?" Item
• 81272: Use more than one line per mail in message list
• 50255 can I send mail later?
• 102284: Support for Greasemonkey / User Javascript
• 112027: adding smileys received from other people (kopete)
• 87600: limit download bandwidth (kget)
• 33839: add suspend / hibernate logout button (kdm)

(Wow I love the auto-save feature of Blogger. And Opera really still has issues in Linux.)

• 92238: New sound theme for KDE
• 64763: Support for UltraVNC file transfers

Open the webpage http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=x to find out more about the bug, x being the bug number.

So there's a lot of things you can do if you're interested in KDE development. Of course you should first contact the developers of the part you want to fix to make sure there's not already someone working on it etc.

Also check out the complete list.

* Update: A lot of this stuff has already been fixed! Wow... nice.

More about → Interesting KDE Feature Requests

KDE's Most Popular Feature Requests

KDE's Most Popular Feature Requests are...

• Volume normalization for amaroK
• Support fingerprint reader login in kdm
• OSCAR filetransfer, direct connections, IM images, etc.

http://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&long_desc_type=allwordssubstr&long_desc=&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=wishlist&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=100&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&changedin=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&newqueryname=&order=bugs.votes,bugs.priority%2C%20bugs.bug_severity%2C%20bugs.bug_status%2C%20bugs.bug_id%20desc

Somehow I doubt these bugs are very representative, though. And some of them are not up to date anymore. It is also disconcerting how many of these have existed for years without being fixed.

More about → KDE's Most Popular Feature Requests

Kool Feature: Multiple Displays as Multiple Virtual Desktops

As most Linux Desktops already have Virtual Desktops, I've always wondered why multiple displays aren't mappable to a virtual desktop each. And it seems like wasn't the only one: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107302. Unfortunately noone seems to be at it even in times of KDE 4.1.

Also check out http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64268 to go along with it.

More about → Kool Feature: Multiple Displays as Multiple Virtual Desktops

Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"

If you get this error

Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"

while trying to use cmake, it usually means that

find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)

is missing from the CMakeLists.txt file. Try adding it to the CMakeLists.txt file somewhere before kde4_add_ui_files is first called.

An example
project(plasma-network)

set(network_SRCS
network.cpp)

kde4_add_ui_files(network_SRCS config.ui )

becomes:
project(plasma-network)

set(network_SRCS
network.cpp)

find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)

kde4_add_ui_files(network_SRCS config.ui )

See here for more information: http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/CMake:How_To_Build_KDE4_Software#Where_to_find_more_information .g

By the way, the same line helps for problems with "macro_optional_find_package" and most other KDE compilation problems.

More about → Unknown CMake command "kde4_add_ui_files"

Standby/Suspend to Ram with Dbus and HAL in KDE 4/GNOME/XFCE

I was trying to work out how to issue the standby command over dbus so that I can send my computer to standby with just a single click from a desktop icon. It turns out at least ksmserver can't receive such a command as there isn't even a type for it in kworkspace:

http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdebase-workspace-apidocs/libs/kworkspace/html/kworkspace_8h-source.html

00049 enum ShutdownType {
00053 ShutdownTypeDefault = -1,
00057 ShutdownTypeNone = 0,
00061 ShutdownTypeReboot = 1,
00065 ShutdownTypeHalt = 2
00066 };

So the best I could come up with was this to shut down the system(If anyone has seen suspend anywhere in KDE dbus, please comment!):

dbus-send --session --dest=org.kde.ksmserver --type=method_call \
--print-reply /KSMServer org.kde.KSMServerInterface.logout int32:-1 int32:2 int32:2

But then I found out you can use hal directly and finally I had my script working for immediate suspend:

dbus-send --system --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal --type=method_call \
--print-reply /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer \ org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Suspend int32:0

This should work in any desktop environment. You can replace the 0 after "int32:" with the number of seconds to delay the Suspend. And you can also use it for hibernation:

dbus-send --system --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal --type=method_call \
--print-reply /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer \ org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Hibernate

Now we can enjoy suspend with a single click. Just put it into a shell script and link that to your desktop.

More about → Standby/Suspend to Ram with Dbus and HAL in KDE 4/GNOME/XFCE

KDE 4.1 in Windows XP SP3

I had a little problem when I tried to install KDE 4.1b1 under Windows XP SP3, but was eventually able to fix it by installing the Microsoft Virtual C++ 2005 SP1 redistributable instead of the MSVC++ 2005 one that came with KDE 4.

After that it was amazing to see the KDE applications work pretty well natively under windows. And some KDE software is just really, really good and better than anything else you can get to run on windows.

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