We interrupt your regularly scheduled kde dev updates with the following important applications.
As an enthusiast, early adopter, bleeding edge techno-wizard Linux greybeard, you'll find that you have developed preferences over time. On the one hand there is a lessening of the insatiable need to know about EveryNewThing. You have gathered enough data to make an informed choice and the matter is resolved.
You settle back into primarily learning about any new thing out of necessity. Those begin to happen less and less frequently. Until they become either annoyances or novelty.
Or you make it a necessity...
& so I shall.
One of this greybeard's preferences decided long ago was the choice of linux desktop. I gathered much data, but ultimately and consistently choose KDE. #YMMV
Keeping up with updates, news and generally lurking about. I had less and less to say as more and more of my needs were met. Apps have been chosen for tasks that have not changed & continue to work.
But now is no longer then.
The tech landscape of ideological young coders turned increasingly into 5 guys my age burning down the world to free themselves of having to pay for human labor.
Some preferred choices need critical re-evaluation.
As I am in the middle of re-acquainting myself with developing with KDE and the newerish bits of QT, might as well toss a few apps on the lab bench and cross some wires, see if anything sparks.
First up, a chat up.
or
No one can be told what the Matrix protocol is.
It takes the average website visitor about .098 seconds on a kde app page to be invited to ask questions in a private room chat.
That is not at all creepy.
Setting aside the clearly obvious utility of having all of your support & developer answers in a nebulous unsearchable cloud of disjointed chat bubbles...
The KDE Network team offer NeoChat a cross platform matrix client.
In appearance, like every kde app, NeoChat follows my preferred chosen theme and has per app appropriate light/dark settings.
Setup & login was fairly straightforward and basically involves following an invite link that offers an array of Matrix clients for your operating system/platform. All the features you expect are here and so far, for me, function as designed.
There is some irony, not lost on me, that while I am digging into the guts of one decentralized distributed communication internet chat app, I am immediately encourage to communicate with the developers using another.
This is the way of things now.
But for NeoChat itself, I have *no complaints as of yet.
* (OK one, the android app fails the login cycle from app to auth page on this ancient kindle fire and there is no alternative login flow ie #Tokodon copy hash method but I suspect the odd Amazon Spork of Android 9 is at fault, and well, it was a nightly build I'll check back tomorrow. )
Via Matrix (Unlinkable)
<Checks dev notes> "distracted by
Falkon"
Every once and a while, you can feel the platforms we all use shift and rumble.
Remember when Microsoft packaged a web browser for the first time? Or that first time you used Konqueror to browse the web, ftp, and local drives in tabs? Or when bitTorrent launched, or when Mozilla released Firefox? Or when Google unveiled Chrome.
I do, and it felt alot like browsing with Falkon feels now.
Out of the box with adblockers speed dial, vertical tabs if you want em, lightning quick and fairly light on the cpu, Falkon is impressive. So far has not choked on anything I've thrown at it.
I have found a few bugs in extensions and a hardware acceleration checkbox that required me to edit an ini file to launch again without command line args. I am not sure the spell checking is working properly despite following the oddly manual "dl and copy" instructions it appears to recognize the dict and is enabled, but I can't mangle a word bad enough to trigger it or find its check now box.
As I generally raw dog the internet to better gauge the content providers by their actual content & that includes the scroll after scroll of garbage article-like ads, I may now be biased by how nice & quick the open web looks & feels without tinkering and installing extensions at all.
Falkon has proven incredibly productive running along side my other older well informed preferences. It appears to be sticking around.
And thats's Falkon, Its a browser, its quick, sleek, and cares about keeping your data yours and it appears to do all that pretty well.
It defaults to DuckDuckGo for Search & URL bar but are selectable back to your comfort food search engine or set it up to just use as dedicated Wikipedia browser.
Although I never have need for it, there is a one-click setting to dispose of all data & history after app is closed. There is a ton going on under the hood of this thing and I look forward to see it evolve as I browse.
Again, it reminds me of the
early days of Chrome in all the best possile ways & its built on QT tech.
KDE-Connect is magic of which we are not worthy.
Install client on device & device can see every other installed client on the network, sprinke some DBus fairy dust and a little VNC and your world shifts radically.
After pairing, each client has available actions, multimedia controls and seamless file sharing available to every other paired client. Device goes to sleep or drops off network it becomes invisible. the client allows access controls, pretty painless pairing, and a host of features you may never even use.
For instance, you may install a VNC/remote destop veiwer on the rather large tablet that sits on your desk unused most days. Through the magic of virtual frame buffers, kfrb & krdf vnc, and dbus, Bippity Boppity Boink, you just added a second/third touchscreen monitor to your workspace, and even its inputs are usable. this is not restricted to tablets side by side pcs and laptops also work great. Keep having to stop myself from building a video wall out of tablets and old phones.
If you are not that adventurous, you can just use your computer keyboard to type that long text reply on your phone.
Turning something down or up or pausing music or video from any device that happens to be handy is the feature I am wearing out though.
None of these features make interesting screenshots, as a matter of fact KDE-Connect seem completely unconcerned with anything but functionality, and I find that refreshingly useful.
But here we'll take one or two for consistency
Once Accepted It appears in your KDE Connect status icon.
And whatever protocols are supported are a click or drag & drop away.
The list above contains
Kindle Fire 8 surviving on FreeDroid
Bazzite Desktop PC
SteamDeck
10 inch Android Lenovo tablet
Notifications & SMS from paired mobile devices appear on paired desktop.
SMB:// can burn in hell, FTP, USB sneakernet, #GTFO the file is already there,
<Checks development notes again which are located on the Kindle Fire.>
Click Browse this device and the dir made permissively available on the device, opens on the Desktop's Dolphin file browser where you may edit with your favorite Desktop tool of choice.
Here is that file in Kate.
Fixed a bunch of typos, but I'm not screenshotting it again.
Having just a common share interface between the family phones, steamdeck, tablets, reader androidtvs and desktop pcs is indeed the world as it should be. Thank you KDE.
There are of course a ton more
KDE apps both new and old that might be worth taking a peek at to enhance your life.
Back to the grind.
-MrCopilot
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