I Switched to the Gnome Desktop

Posted on July 28, 2010 by admin

I’ve been using SuSE or openSUSE since Caldera Open Linux shut down about 10 years ago. I liked the KDE desktop and YAST (Yet Another System Tool.) YAST concentrates all the system tools into a common graphic interface, which makes configuring the system easy.

I’ve since upgraded my hardware many times and now have a dual monitor display. I have a slide show of photographs I’ve taken as the background image spanning both monitors. KDE3 was a very comfortable desktop. It was much more flexible than Gnome. I had a number of icons scattered around the periphery of the desktop so that I could get to frequently used applications with one click. My panel spanned both screens at the bottom.

OpenSUSE 11.1 and 11.2 had early versions of KDE4 which were not ready for prime time. So I stuck with 11.0 and KDE3. I did have Qt4 installed and have converted my programs to run on it. Now openSUSE 11.0 has reached the end of support.

With some trepidation, I installed 11.3 with KDE4. I quickly discovered that configuring it was a real PITA. It does not handle multiple screens well, if at all. It will not allow a background image to span the two monitors. It will not let you move icons from one display to the other. Just getting them on the desktop is frustrating. Panels cannot span both displays. Wobbly windows do not improve productivity.

Over the years, Gnome has improved a lot. I reinstalled openSUSE 11.3 with the Gnome desktop. I still needed some KDE4 libraries to run KMyMoney, the best open source replacement for Quicken.

I do have my pictures in a slide show spanning the two displays and icons scattered around edge of the desktop. It won’t let a panel span the two displays. So, I put a panel at the bottom of each display. Most of the fixed stuff goes on the second screen.

My Roses

Posted on May 8, 2010 by admin

It all started a number of years ago when I went to get a bush to hide the second air conditioner from the street. I had a black thumb. There was a potted umbrella tree in my house that was dropping leaves–and it’s plastic. When I explained this, they showed me a cocoplum bush. On the way to pay for it, I passed some rose bushes. They suggested a Duchess du Brabant rose bush. The Duchess has been flattened by three or four hurricanes and was under the tent along with the cocoplum when I had the house tented for termites. They both are doing fine. The Duchess is blooming its head off most of the year.
Continue reading →

Going Live–Part 1

Posted on August 28, 2009 by bob

We did the patron and loans conversions and went live about a month ago. The staff have all been enthusiastic about Koha. So far, we’ve done two custom modifications: Membership cards and labels and full Gaylord book labels. Continue reading →

Koha Training

Posted on July 5, 2009 by admin

I will post the Koha training manual here in draft until I have time to review it next week with key folks to insure we get the right information posted. Unfortunately, the only Koha documentation available is web based, so I am converting their web documentation to .pdf files, so that they can be customized and printed for our use. Please feel free to post your comments here regarding the training documentation.
Koha Training Draft v1.4.
Chuck Shuttle

The manual is a direct crib from the Koha 3.0 manual put into a PDF form with our Library’s logo on the cover. We really need to revise it soon for 3.2.
Bob

Imager by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Posted on June 18, 2009 by bob

Rhennythyl is the son of a wool merchant and is a journeyman portrait painter when he causes his master’s house to blow up. He discovers that he is an imager, one who can create things by imaging them. He goes off to the Collegium Imago on Imagisle and is trained as a covert imager (read spy).

There are three threads in the story:

His training
5 attempts to assassinate him
His family and his new girl friend ( a Pharsi although she is a 3rd generation local)

Most of the story is about his training. The questions that his teacher makes him think about are fascinating.

Is our government good?
Is it better than the others?
What are the best characteristics of a covert imager?
What is the real purpose of a quorum call?
Why is government necessary?
…

I couldn’t put it down and will have to go back and re-read it to think more about his training.

The assassination attempts provide a bit of action and mystery which will have to be solved in a later book in the series.

His interplay with his family and his girl friend’s family is very well written.