Kubuntu Feisty to Gutsy Upgrade

Last week I did a house full of Kubuntu installs as recounted here.
I went back to check up on the tweens and see if they needed anything. Everything seemed to be going fine, although they needed a little help connecting to a USB drive shared over the network from a Vista machine.

Simple enough add network folder. Guess what, they needed write support and that is unsupported in network folders and Dolphin. Alrighty then. Add bookmark to smb://hostname/foldername. Asks for Username and password and all is good.

While setting this up for them I notice a little game one of the girls is playing. A cute little anime style mmorpg The Mana World. Hmm, I bet my daughter would enjoy that.


I finish up my work and spend the rest of the night playing with compiz on another machine. Wow, after you get it working (no small feat), so purty! But that is another story for another time.

When I arrive home, I "sudo apt-get install tmw" on my Debian machine. I call my daughter in and set her down and she is instantly mesmerized off in a land of maggot slaying, egg hunting stat increasing bliss. Good thing it's spring break, she was in here all night. Look for a full review in the OSGGFG coming soon


OK enough, lets go install it on your machine. I often make the mistake of saying things like just open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install tmw" to her. You know to show her how easy linux is. So simple a child could do it.

After 2 spelling errors she comes back with "Package Not Found".

That's strange. I follow her in, type it and you know what she is right. Well maybe it is new, we haven't updated in while, so "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get install tmw" followed by hunh, package not found again.

Hold on a sec. Firefox, the themanaworld.org. Sure enough packages for:

Windows installer 0.0.24

Source code 0.0.24

MacOS X package 0.0.24

Slackware 12.0 package 0.0.24

Debian package

Ubuntu 7.10 package

Gentoo eBuild

Fedora package

Oh man, we have Feisty not Gutsy. She says what does that mean? I'll spare you the details of that conversation save for her insistence that she be able to name the next couple.

Now, our Internet connection is suboptimal. It is technically Broadband but not by any real definition of that word. If you go over 50meg in a half hour they throttle you way down to 30kb a second for 2 or 3 hours. Making the distribution upgrade a less than desirable choice for a tiny little rpg.

Turns out though, short of compiling it ourselves that was the only way. (I didn't try the windows package under wine, which probably would have worked.) Besides, any other workaround would not stop this from happening again. She knows these girls and if they have a game that she likes, it would be a lot easier if they shared the same repositories.

So we bit the bullet. Now there are walkthroughs and howtos for this type of thing. Always doing my best to be educational, I send her off in search of a couple and we settled on this one.

Which is a fine article. Even links to a nice screenshot howto for Kubuntu,Of course it doesn't take into account our dreadful download speeds and therefore says nothing about going to bed in the middle but otherwise is a fairly accurate description of how it should work.

Here are the instructions.

Network upgrade for Kubuntu desktops (recommended)

You can easily upgrade over the network with the following procedure.

Follow the pictures at http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/kubuntu-upgrade

1. Open the Adept Manager by going to KMenu -> System -> Adept Manager (Manage Packages).

2. In Adept -> Manage Repositories enable "Recommended updates", close and reload.

3. If your system is up to date, the upgrade wizard will be offered it via the Version Upgrade button. Otherwise:

   1. Press the Full Upgrade button.

   2. Press the Apply Changes button.

   3. Once the packages are installed, exit the Adept Manager (Adept -> Quit).

   4. Repeat the initial steps (1-3).

Steps 1 and 2 go off without a hitch. Even step 3 eventually reveals the normally hidden Version Upgrade button.

When you click that button a new program is downloaded to a temp directory very quickly gotta watch for it if you wanna know where. Afterwards you are presented with this screen.

Self explanatory right. Click Finish and Adept will close and your newly downloaded Upgrade tool will start. Okeydokey. Click Finish. Window closes Adept stays open and nothing else happens no matter how long we wait.

Well maybe I missed something, I was only monitoring her following the directions after all, lemme in there. I follow the instructions again. I get to the same point and same result. I hear a cute little "HaHa" from over my shoulder.

At this point I have once again shown her how easy this all is. But nevermind I sally forth.
Tell you what, lets open Adept from a terminal instead, that way we can see the output and see where it fails.

Where it fails is some strange looking Python error. Hmmm, further investigation (ie running the script directly from the terminal after running through the above process a few more times to get said script's location.) reveals that it can't connect to the Xserver.

You see the above instructions are assuming that you are running on the root account, using the root's X server. Normally when doing major upgrades of this magnitude this is the preferred method. The fairly simple fix was to type "xhost +" which allows any client to connect to the X server. But she would have NEVER found that. Never.Probably running adept through the run command with kdesu would work as well, but the above instructions were specific. Notice that the newest upgrade instructions for going from Gutsy to Hardy (in Beta currently) are given this way.

After that the upgrade went rather smoothly. Sort of.

At some point there were dpkg errors. Similar to the ones described in the initial Kubuntu upgrade article, with the same fixes run "dpkg -a" and try again. And it happened again. and again.

When all was said and done, we ran adept and were pleased to see the Gutsy indication in the update package listings. clicked tmw and she was happily playing. And it only took 2 days.


As an aside, her copy is a version behind my straight debian copy, meaning her character can't have the same haircut. But that is just plain nitpicking, and I said too bad, go play.

Now I tell this story not to bash Ubuntu, Kubuntu, blahbuntu or any other Linux. Just as a general observation. As far as we've come, we still have a ways to go. Lucky for her, she has me around to figure out these minor inconveniences.

Since the instructions are not in a wiki, it is now recorded here, for anyone stuck.

MrCopilot

Kubuntu Mini Install Fest

Introduction
MrCopilot was asked to assist in a Linux deployment for a home over the weekend. I usually jump at the chance to help bring new users to the fold. This particular request though, came from a person with a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Installation of most distributions is now so easy that surely my learned colleague could handle this task on his own, I encouraged him to do so, and I would help with any problems he encountered.

Well I was wrong. Linux is not Windows. Those of us who use it regularly tend to forget how difficult the learning curve can be. I must give him and Kubuntu credit. He managed to get both machines up and running, wifi working and even a seamless virtual Windows installed with Virtual Box. Using the almighty Google to handle any questions. Unfortunately, adept was hopelessly broken and frustration started to set in. I was called on site.

1 Kubuntu disc, 8 Hours, and 4 PCs later. I offer this Post Mortem.

Users
The clients were 2 wonderful pre-Tween sisters, who up until now had shared a room and a single Windows PC in the "play room." Now they have their own rooms equipped with fairly beefy PCs. Their usage habits include surfing the web, playing online games (Club Penguin and Gaia Online) and a few anime MMOs.


Kubuntu 7.10 was chosen for a couple of reasons, ease of use, maturity, and stability. We have a few Kubuntu machines here and they have posed no major support problems.

Diagnosis
The first PC, (with the virtualized Windows) would not boot. Grub showed up but reported error 15 file not found. I briefly looked over the machine and having only the Kubuntu disc on hand, the decision was to start from scratch. All that was lost was the Virtual Windows install, which he has a ton of experience installing, and can do himself.

Not so Adept
Installation was (as usual) flawless, painless and quick, about 15 minutes.
Enable all repositories and Security updates, added another 10 minutes to get the 163 packages with updates, all handled (sort of) by adept.

Something broke during the security update. If you weren't paying close attention, you wouldn't have even noticed it. I was though, and after I explained that adept is a (couple of) graphical frontend(s) to apt-get and it is itself a frontend for dpkg, the problem was easily fixed.

Open a terminal.

sudo apt-get install

It reports "some packages were left unconfigured and installation cannot continue. Please run dpkg --configure -a"

sudo dpkg --configure -a

then

sudo apt-get install

to finish installation of updates. Viola, adept now works again.

Nvidia
Installing Proprietary nvidia-glx-new driver was also handled by adept. Unfortunately it was unable to update the xorg.conf file automagically. Why, I have no clue. Manually fixed with:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

change from Driver="nv" to Driver = "nvidia" and Save (ctrl-X, Yes)
Restart X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) and tada Nvidia logo.

FireFox
For reasons I do not understand Kubuntu chooses not to put Firefox in the default install, even though Ubuntu does. I love Konqueror but not for browsing. Back to adept, via add remove programs from the menu, to install Firefox with no problems. Flash and friends, using a handy Kubuntu package that includes Flash, Java and a few other proprietary things. No problems, after installation, Youtube, Google Video and Club Penguin and Gaia worked perfectly, and there was much rejoicing. We sat our new Linux user down for some extended Penguin Play.

Meanwhile the other machine was already installed but no updates had been applied for fear of breaking adept again. Now that the solution had been shown, we applied it identically and quickly brought it up to par.

This little one is a bit of a tom boy, she like Trucks, Cars, Tools and camouflage. I installed Trigger, SuperTuxKart, Torcs, TuxPaint and a few other Open Source games for her using adept through the add remove programs menu, and again much rejoicing.

Wait, didn't it say 4 PCs? Yes, it did, glad you are paying attention. Off in the corner was another broken Kubuntu, courtesy of a house guest. He, of course, has a totally different set of needs, Dual Booting. Sharing folders, Best of Both Worlds type. He too was stumped by the adept update bug and had been unsuccessfully banging away at trying to solve it. I showed him the problem, installed nVidia drivers and he was off and running in no time. Happily playing an MP3 in Amarok and rocking away with StreamTuner. Somewhere along the way he lost the ability to see his windows partition from inside Linux and I offered no help other to install ntfs-write in case he finds it again.

Wifi Easy?
While bouncing back and forth between these three machines something strange happened. All are on wifi, and it was reported that one of the Belkin adapters was not working. I moved it over to the guest's machine and tada no problems. He stated "great mine wasn't working anyway" An off brand dongle. I took his over to another machine, tada no problems. Here is the strange part. Kubuntu uses Knetworkmanager to handle configuring, notification and what not. The Belkin wifi adapter would not work on one of the three machines, but fine on the other 2. KNetworkManager, has a menu item marked configure, It consists of 2 radio buttons DHCP, and Manual Configure. On a working Belkin adapter, neither is ticked. If you click either DHCP or Manually Configure, you have now broken that adapter for that machine. Why? I still don't know. Nor do I know where it stores this information to remove it. We had to open a brand new one due to me checking it on 2 of them. I counseled him that thankfully we did not have to go through that whole ndiswrapper install and that is definitely a very good thing. I highly recommend the adapter pictured above for Kubuntu, provided you don't try to manually configure it. ($30 @ Walmart)

Where we failed
Unfortunately, Kubuntu could not do everything. One of the games the kids play is a nogo under Linux. Fly for Fun which uses GameGuard. GameGaurd games do not (and probably will not) run under wine or cedega. His only option (besides dual booting) is running it in Windows with VMware Workstation, which includes 3d acceleration, but at $189 per seat that solution is prohibitively expensive for a single game. Instead I pointed him to a few OpenSource MMOs, the girls chose PlaneShift and we'll see how that goes.

The fourth PC? That is his main machine. We put it off until later, he is working with mission critical apps until next week, at such a time I shall regale you with stories of a Monstrosity of a PC (Brand New AMD proc, Ridiculous Nvidia) running Windows Vista with a virtual Linux, Dual Booting with Linux running a Virtual Windows XP.

Conclusions
I really wanted this install to go super smooth. Quoth the Stones, "You can't always get what you want"

Still, installation was far less painful than the typical Windows install. I left only after setting up new (nonAdmin) user accounts for the girls and pointing him to a few invaluable resources for administering Linux installs.

Overall, he got what he needs.

A Video Tour of Kubuntu Installation Courtesy of Linux.com


MrCopilot

Walmart yanks Linux off the shelf

Having a Linux PC on the shelf at Walmart, had a lot of us convinced that the tides were changing. No such luck.

WalMart has announced that it's Linux experiment is ending. After selling out of gPC from Everex over the holidays, a decision was made to stop stocking it on store shelves.

"This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien.

We'll have to take her word for it since Walmart does not release sales figures. Must have been a more than a few returns. The gPC and Cloudbook from Everex will continue to be offered online at WalMart.com.

Note to WalMart executives: Don't give up on Linux, Next time though, try selling a real Linux PC with a mainstream (Read Intel or AMD) processor and a decent (Read AMD, Nvidia, Intel) video card. No offense to Everex, but the gPC is underpowered and underwhelming as a general purpose Desktop. The Windows version (+$100) of gPC was even less suitable for the general public. I still have high hopes for the Cloudbook as a general purpose lightweight laptop. If you are going to offer a Linux PC it needs to be full featured, all the bells and whistles Compiz, Games, lots of RAM, and a ton of applications in a stylish case. Otherwise you are inviting comparison with the next windows machine. Sure a $200 price point sounds great, but most consumers expect a $500 PC for $200 or less.

MrCopilot

OLPC A Good Idea, Badly Misunderstood

ITWire has a rant disguised as an opinion piece titled OLPC: one bad idea per child by Sam Varghese.

I should let it be known I have written on the OLPC XO before. All of my articles have showered it with praise. My kid wants one, I wouldn't mind tinkering a bit with it myself. So it should come as no surprise how I feel about Sam's article. Although no real point was made, I will do my best to address his comments.

For instance, we have personal computers and poorer denizens of this earth do not. Development agencies are very good at exploiting this sense of guilt - which is fairly common in the West. These agencies have do-good agendas, well-meaning no doubt, but more focused on their own survival than anything else. One thing common to practically all these agencies is that they actually believe that Western technology can alleviate any and all problems in the Third World.

As proven time and again, technology from whatever part of the world can and does alleviate SOME problems in the Third World. Desalination, Purification, Solar Ovens, Solar panels, Cellular Phones, are all great examples.

Similarly, with these agencies, ads of poor children drinking water from a filthy stream are a good way to bring in a stream of donations, which in turn help to keep said agency running. It pays wages for a number of people who can then salve their consciences by convincing themselves that they are doing "good". Helps them to sleep at night, I guess.

Any actual good done, I suppose is irrelevant to your rant, I mean narrative.

And so we come to the One Laptop Per Child project. Not exactly built on the same lines as a project aimed at development in a poorer country, but exploiting many of the same feelings. The initial stated goal was to supply laptops that would cost $US100 to children in underdeveloped countries - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, and Pakistan were those which initially signed up to participate.

An actual fact, Bravo.

Associating the project with the idea of "open source" was a wonderful way to get people involved - Red Hat supplies a customised GNU/Linux distribution for the XO - but that idea has now been diluted to some extent by the intrusion of Microsoft which is developing a version of Windows XP to run on the little laptop.

These are the stated principles of the OLPC project.

XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms.
http://laptop.org/en/laptop/software/

That part of "on their own terms" requires the XO to be able to run whatever software the child prefers and is capable of running. Microsoft is working as hard as it can to get the XO to run a stripped and gutted version of XP on it. The XO will ship with its own software and the purchasing country can choose to install whatever it likes. For OLPC's official stance on free software please refer to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_on_open_source_software

Microsoft knows that catching them young is key to creating a whole new generation of Windows users - people who have no choice but to accept whatever the company dishes out.

That's 2 facts, Kudos.

As the OLPC's Ivan Krstic wrote,"To claim we should prohibit XO customers from running XP in the interest of freedom is to claim everyone should be free to make a choice - as long as it's a choice we agree with."

Yeah, what he said.

I don't know about the robustness - when I asked whether my son could drop the laptop from a height of five feet (it is supposed to be able to withstand such a shock), the man who had the laptop on display said "no" very fast.

It wasn't yours? You expected to be able to throw down the display model (possibly the only one) at a conference? I'm shocked they didn't let you hit it with a hammer. For demonstration of its robustness, see David Pogue with his demo unit. Note what happens at 1:25.

The OLPC appears to be on the defensive when approached by the media. I asked Jim Gettys, the vice-president of software, whether he was willing to spend some time talking about it recently while he was in Melbourne. His answer was "maybe." I gave him a time and place but though he showed up, he told me that he had to speak to a number of other people first. I waited for what I considered a reasonable amount of time and then went about my own business.

What you considered to be a reasonable amount of time. You mean as a blogger who wasn't giving a talk at the conference involved in a worldwide organization who had appointments with actual press and possibly people who would help the cause. In other words he had a job to do, and if he could fit you in he would.

Gettys's talk at the Linux conference in Melbourne in January is one of the few for which video is not available on the web. I wonder why. There are slides - with the standard heart-rending pictures of poor children from various countries who apparently will be the beneficiaries of this munificence.

Actually it is 60 pages with a few pictures of children who did receive the XO laptop and a few pictures showing the environment in which they are used. All but one of the pictures of children show well dress schoolchildren working happily on their laptop. In between those pictures is a wealth of information that you dismiss without a word. You can and should download the presentation , actually read it instead of just looking at the pictures and decide for yourself.

(His talk clashed with one delivered by Dirk Hohndel of Intel and I attended the latter).

I can hardly wait to read the incredible story you will write based on a talk you actually attended.

Not every country which has been approached to join the project has looked favourably on Negroponte's advances. Way back in 2006, India categorically rejected the project. The Times of India quoted the ministry of human resources development as saying it was intrigued that no developed country had been chosen to be part of the project "given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group".

Guess you have not seen this then. http://olpc.tv/2008/02/20/khairat-village-kids-show-off-their-xo-laptops/ The Indian government was under the same false impressions you are. Mainly

Technology can only do so much to eradicate deep-rooted cultural and social problems in developing and under-developed countries. You need political action to solve these problems, a laptop will do nothing to help. It may actually do more damage than good by creating wants which people then seek to satisfy by stealing.

If the village has ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD, who is going to steal them?


Try looking at this in a different way. We are not talking about whether we should be supplying these people with food, clean water, electricity, etc OR a laptop. We are talking about spending money on supplying books which are expensive, heavy and easily damaged or an XO for a child. Which does more good? Which is more utilitarian? Which is a better investment? Better yet which is the child more likely to learn from?

Not for nothing is this called a ground-breaking project. They'll have to break a lot of ground in a great many countries to bury all the waste that is left behind as the project's legacy.

Oh, sorry, I thought you were a reasonable person, I see now I was mistaken. You really think this is all being done for a nefarious profit based motivation don't you? It is easy to believe that OLPC is a selfish organization if you are unfamiliar with empathy and selfless acts of human decency. Shame on you sir.


MrCopilot

Free Software is Good, m'Kay

A few days ago a story was posted to FSDaily with the assuming title of "Can we please stop fighting FUD with FUD?" from Free Software Magazine. The gist of the article is the author's opinion that some, especially new, free software users have a habit of spreading FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) when comparing it to proprietary software.

In some ways he is right. Free Software usually wins on it's merits, if not it's philosophy. But I want to comment on a few of his statements.

If you’re to going run down Microsoft products then you need to be specific. What products suck, why and how do they suck?

Whoa, this may require more space than I really want to devote.

I see a lot of this type of thing that simply shows the proponent has rarely used the product in question. Aside from that, is this really a good argument to make?

It is a great argument, if the ways proprietary software sucks could easily be improved if it was released as free software.

Are we really going to be so arrogant as to imply that free software doesn’t suck at all? By running down the opposition aren’t we implying there are no issues with “our” software?

Excellent point, some free software does suck or has issues or both.
The only problem with this being that when we or someone else complains about how or why free software sucks, someone (the developers, you or anyone else) can come along and address those issues.

The article concludes by throwing down the gauntlet.

I—for one—would like to see more blogs and comments on why free software is good rather than why Microsoft is bad. So let’s start here. Your task is complete the sentence “Free software is good because…” in less than 50 words.

I pick up your gauntlet Mr Cartwright and offer my answer. Ahem...

Free Software is good because it offers you choices unavailable with proprietary software. It also eliminates vendor lock-in, patch dependence, forced upgrades, and per user license policing.

28 Words.

I would like to expound on the word choices above. These Choices or Freedoms give you the ability to :

Study the source code to learn how portions of the software work.

Modify the source code to adapt to your circumstances or fix problems.

Modify the source code to create new works and even compete with the original work.

Distribute the software freely, given that you follow the licensing terms.

Anyone who writes for Free Software Magazine already knows these points, but he felt it necessary to ask for them to be written, rather than write them again. I'm going to join Ryan Cartwright and ask that we all stop the FUD.

I mean really, hasn't Microsoft been through enough?

MrCopilot

Windows Platform Death Revisited

After my KDE article, comments are everywhere complaining about the headline.
OSNews, Linux.com, and even the Dot. One guy even blogged his grief about it.

So here I offer a response.

First off, Get a grip. Articles need good titles. This one was too good to pass up.


Second, according to the company that produces Windows XP, end of life is Jan 2009, 11 months from now. See Microsoft Lifecycle

Third, the article clearly states that my Windows development platform was going unused for months at a time. No more .Net and no more embedded coding. I preferred to use a text editor on the linux box. Kate for embedded, Kdevelop + QT for cross platform apps. In that sense it was dying. Giving me Kate on Windows does a world of good for it's usability.

My only question is, Why don't these people ask these questions here?

Windows is the market leader, it will be for some time. We all know this. However, I bought my last copy long ago. I recommend it to no-one, I support it not at all. OK, I still help my mother out when she calls.

At my home there is one laptop with XP, explicitly for the purpose of maintaining .Net applications, testing cross platform apps and re-programming an embedded processor.

This was the KDE for windows test machine. Since KDE installation, It has been very popular with my pre-Teen daughter, who never even touched it before. She now wants KDE4 on her Kubuntu box. She doesn't even know about all the cool Plasma, KWin compositing stuff, only what KDE for Win shipped with.

In my circle, Windows isn't dying, it's all but dead. Our next Laptop will be a Everex Cloudbook or Asus eeePC. All of our PCs run Linux with KDE for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it works.

Hold on while I check what the end of life is on our distros. Oh yeah, there isn't one. That is no small distinction. Planned obsolescence is not something I intend to support with my money, but to each their own.


MrCopilot

Update 3/24/08: Computer World has a nice explanation on the XP lifecycle titled:

Windows XP: Going, going ... gone?

Covered by Slashdot with the Headline: The Death of Windows XP

I fully expect all you complainers to give them hell just like you did me.

MrCopilot

Can KDE Save a Dying Windows Platform?

I want to start by telling a story. Bare with me.

Once upon a time there was a software engineer. He wrote code, windows code, embedded firmware. He was happy. Then one day a new project is put before him, a project unlike any other he had encountered. It was going to require all new hardware, and the features, wow. Something like this is going to require a full blown Operating System not the usual rinky dink assembly program.

Research leads to the inevitable conclusion, Linux. Further Research leads to a graphical toolkit called Qt (pronounced “Cute”.) A request was made and granted for a new workstation to create a new Linux development environment, after all the windows development machine was far too mission critical to muck about with dual booting and virtual machines.

This engineer had some Linux experience on the desktop, having a PC or two running it on and off for the last couple of years. He picked his favorite distribution and after a bit more research had a fully working development machine up and running a chair swivel away from his usual trusty machine. The choices made for this workstation would have a lasting effect on this engineer. KDE for the desktop, with Kdevelop as the IDE won out over Gnome and Eclipse. It stood to reason that if he was developing with Qt, a desktop made atop the Qt libraries was appropriate. Even with the incomplete KDE cross compiling documentation it was fun to work on.

Fast forward, the product is designed, operating system compiled, drivers tweaked, application software is written, units are built, tested and released to production. During this time a funny thing happened, Windows disappeared from the engineer's home PCs completely. The research requirements were so much that many an evening he could be found at his desk until the wee hours of the morning going over documentation, compiling newer kernels, and generally pushing Linux as hard as he could.

When the morning came he would go back to his office and he noticed he swiveled his chair less and less towards the Windows PC. So much so in fact, he decided he should do something about it, He designated it the email machine. That would ensure he used it more frequently. While using it he missed the simplicity and stability (especially the Stability) of his Linux box. No amount of cygwin or virtual machine tweaking was satisfactory. Every open source application that was cross compatible was deployed, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and the rest, but still it was not enough. Eventually he gave in to dual booting to enable him to use his favorite tools. But the sad truth is, an embedded engineer needs Windows. There are just too many specialized tools for programming devices, analyzing signals, and device drivers that are Windows only and no amount of Wine-ing will do.

His only hope was that he knew Qt was cross compatible with Windows Linux and Mac, and there was talk that someday, KDE was to be ported to Windows. So he waited.

Well, KDE4 was announced and there was much joy. Betas were released and there was much bitching. KDE4.0.0 was released and there again was much joy (and still a little bitching). More importantly an actual honest to goodness Windows port is released.

Here follows that engineer's report.

I could hardly wait. Download the KDE for Windows Installer. (Link is to the Stable version)
(For this review I went with the bleeding edge unstable version 0.8.6 beta4 marked 1/28/08)

Note the disclaimer.

KDE on Windows is mostly in an alpha state, so not suitable for day to day use yet.

My first thought was “1.6 Megabytes, wow that is some port.” Followed by "oh, I see, it's a cygwin-like installer." Hmm, what to install? When in doubt grab it all. Pick a Mirror, I have no preference, I picked a KDE mirror in the US. You have the choice of User or Developer package installation, naturally I chose developer. This gives you all kinds of goodies like Mingw, Qt, Qdesigner, and other development tools.

Ok downloading packages, this may take a while..........

Hours later, Installing Packages this too may take a while, but don't leave because a few packages have installers themselves requiring you to click next, next, next, finish.

All right finished in a blazing 4 hours.

Follow the post install instructions from the KDE guys. Again note the disclaimer:

Disclaimer These are early days for KDE4 on Windows, some programs work better than others and some fail to run altogether.

Never mind all that, lets see what works.

What Works:

Quite a lot actually. See below for Screenshots of included apps that work. Almost all the apps shipped "work". Two are all but useless due to bugs. The rest seem to function perfectly as long as you don't need to refer to Help. Fortunately most apps have an online help while this bug gets ironed out.

What doesn't work?

Sound, at least on my setup there was no sound, any application that tried to make a peep instead produced this error message. Most Apps let you disable sound.

Blinken - Simon unfortunately requires Sound to be playable.

As does KLetres:

MimeTypes for Dolphin and Konqueror.
(I may have missed something and am investigating)

Dolphin is the new Filemanager for KDE and it looks very nice, however It could not run any executables, view any pictures or play and music. It browsed my directories just fine after complaining about not being able to open ~ directory. After setting up my home directory it stopped complaining. But not being able to do anything but browse was disapointing.

Konqueror – KDE's Swiss Army Knife, Web Browser, File Manager, FTP Client, Embedded File Viewer, Etc ... Unfortunately on my Windows box it is reduced to a Web Browser (without Flash support) and a Menu Explorer (without being able to launch anything.)

What is missing?

Besides the things mentioned above. Koffice the KDE Office Suite, Amarok Media Player, Kontact PIM Suite including Kmail, Kopete Instant Messenger. KDEVELOP!!!!!!! These are still being worked on for KDE4, so no real surprise their not ready for Windows yet.

Help Functions on all programs are broken.

So what's the answer?
Can KDE save the dying windows platform?

Not Quite Yet, but they are making a damn fine start of it.
I know I will be pitching in to help them out with new KDE Windows apps and I won't be alone. Qt is already a powerful Windows Toolkit but the KDE family of Applications are a welcome addition. Amarok is coming along nicely, and as soon as KMail, and KDevelop gets up and running, I will have to re-evaluate.

Applications:

Kwrite – Notepad Replacement.

Kate – KDE Advanced Text Editor, the brains behind my favorite IDE Kdevelop. Syntax Highlighting and Code Folding is working perfectly.

Kfind – KDE File Search Tool – I didn't expect this to work but what do you know it does.

Kig- Figure Editor

PixelTool - Zoom tool

Konqueror Web Browser, Nice to see the Konq on XP too bad about the flash and it doesn't seem to support Gmail.

Kworld Clock – It's a Clock for the whole world.

Education:

KAlgebra - Math Education Tool

Kalzium – Periodic Table educational Software

Kbruch – Learn Fractions and Decimal Conversions

Kgeography – World Geography and Capitals

KPercentage - Percentage Study Tool

Kstars – Internet Connected Observtory one click to retrieve gorgeous pics of distant galaxies as well as Wikipedia and Nasa Pages.

Ktuberling – Mr Potato Head for KDE shown here in Space mode

Kturtle – LOGO Educational Programming Environment.

KTouch - KDE Touch Typing Tutor

Parley – Language Phrase Teacher, No files loaded.

Marble – The Earth on your desktop.

KwordQuiz – Flashcard and Q & A Study Tool

Kmplot - Matematical Plotting Tool

Games:

Katomic – Connect Molecules in this Puzzle Game.

Kanagram - Anagram game

Bovo – Tic Tac Toe on Steroids

Kbattleship - KDE sunk my battleship

Kblackbox – I hate this Game and I refuse to describe it.

Kbounce – KDE's Version of Jeezball

KHangman - Hangman for KDE

Klines – Make Lines of 5 or more but don't block your path

KmahJong – KDE Mahjong, The Art Department has been working overtime.

Kmines - KDE MineSweeper

Knetwalk – Get those computers on the Net as fast as you can. This game is like Crack, You have been warned.

Kolf – Minature Golf, This is the fugliest of the KDE games.

Konquest - Galactic Conquest

Kpatience – Several Different Solitaire Card Games

Kreversi – Reversi or Othello finally with fullscreen scaling.

Kshinen – Cross between Tetris and Mahjong

Ksudoku – Sudoku except on your PC

KspaceDuel – Another game I was never very fond of.

Ksquares – You remember that game where you draw a grid of dots and take turns connecting them, this is it without all that drawing and paper.

Lskat – Another Card Game

Kriki – K Yatzee again without the paper.

Kfourlines – Konnect Four was taken I guess.

Kjumping cube – Dice Game, I don't get it.

SameGame - Remove Groups of the same color.

Kgoldrunner - Oh Yeah Lode Runner.

MrCopilot

UPDATE: Some people have taken issue with the Title of this post. Here is my response.