KDE For Windows – An Overview

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/kde" title="KDE" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE is turning out to be a fabulous Desktop. The latest version – KDE 4.4.0 aka Caikaku is choke full of features which gives the term &#8221;Desktop <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/usability" title="Usability" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability">usability&#8221; a new meaning all together. What makes KDE all the more appealing is the plethora of well designed <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/application_software" title="Application software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software">applications that come bundled with it.

XDMCP protocol – What and How

Okay, I will talk about XDMCP today. First we will see what is xdmcp protocol.

There is a nice article on what is XDM is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_display_manager" target="_blank">here

In very simple words, this a protocol to get the X Windows login to a remote system. The client sends the request to the server and server completes the requests. For this the server allows the clients to connect to XDMCP port. There are various ways the XDMCP works most common being indirect, direct and query. So basically if you are using a XDMCP clinet you will get the feeling of using the server directly with the GUI and all. (It is very similar to VNC but not same as VNC, see <a href="http://msmvps.com/blogs/rexiology/archive/2006/12/19/windows-x-client-server-to-connect-linux-server-xdmcp-and-vnc-approaches.aspx" target="_blank">here for the differences in ssh, vnc and XDMCP.)

How to Install KDE in Windows]

For over a decade, <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000021de6" title="KDE" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE has supplied Linux and <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000003e17c" title="Unix" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">Unix users with a graphical <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000007eda2" title="Desktop environment" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment">desktop environment and a suite of useful <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000254091" title="Application software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software">applications. It has become one of the most popular desktop environments and is the default on many <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000024e02" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">Linux distributions. With the coming of KDE 4, developers promised native KDE applications running on <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000025fe8" title="Windows" rel="homepage" href="http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS">Windows. While the current release is still not ready for production, as of KDE 4.3.3, it is coming closer and worth trying. What follows is a brief guide to getting KDE running on Windows.

Some bashrc shorcuts for faster and profiecient directory browsing.

Here are some of the funtions that I have in my bashrc to make my life simple. They are not written by me but mostly taken from other places, but modified by me to some extent to suit my needs. If you know the original creator of these, let me know so I can add the attribution for the same.

This one is very useful.

.. (){
local arg=${1:-1};
local dir=&#8221;&#8221;
while [ $arg -gt 0 ]; do
dir=&#8221;../$dir&#8221;
arg=$(($arg – 1));
done
cd $dir >&/dev/null
}

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Build custom KDE ditro online in minutes with your selection of packages

There&#8217;s a new guy in the block and its called NimbleX. From various sources, I have found that this is quite fast. I am downloading this currently. The main advantage is that the distro is of just 200MB with most of the day to day utilities available in the distro by default.

<img title="Custom Nimble" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.com/wp-content/uploads//logos/customNXb1.png" alt="Custom Nimble" width="264" height="67" />

And if you think that this is just not for you as you like some package and its missing from NimbleX, no problem. Just go <a href="http://custom.nimblex.net/ " target="_blank">here, and create your own live distro withing minutes with custom package&#8217;s that can be used as Live CD or can be installed on the HDD/USB. Now that&#8217;s generations ahead of Windows or any other OS. What do you say?

101 Linux hacks – free Linux Ebook

Go and grab your copy of the free <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGeekStuff/~3/KNUpyY4YE9c/" target="_blank">ebook.

Quite nice book with small little hacks but sometimes the details are too much, specially the one on the cd command. I think there was no need for 3-4 examples of the same thing, but then nice collection and nice ebook.

swaks – Swiff army nife for SMTP

If you are having issues with the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/simple_mail_transfer_protocol" title="Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol">SMTP Server, then sometimes you just wish you had a swiss army knife to test the same and then you would not have to spend your precious time on some silly mistake that you may have made. Your wish is now fulfilled.

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/military_of_switzerland" title="Military of Switzerland" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Switzerland">Swiss Army Knife SMTP: A <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/command_line_interface" title="Command-line interface" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface">command line SMTP tester.  Swaks can test various aspects of your SMTP <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/server" title="Server (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_%28computing%29">server, including <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/transport_layer_security" title="Transport Layer Security" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security">TLS and AUTH.

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