For a pretty long time I’m running a XFCE desktop. It works like a charm and I’m really satisfied by it, but there is one little thing that is really annoying (and I guess all you GNOME users know that too): style breaking KDE applications.

Luckily there is a simple solution to this problem: QGTKStyle. If you are on Ubuntu or one of it’s derivates you can use the repository by Khashayar Naderehvandi, who provides packages for Hardy, Intrepid and Jaunty.

Here is a small step-by-step guide. Please note that you will need root privileges, obtained either by sudo (recommended) or su/login as root.

Step 1: Create a new repository entry for QGTKStyle:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/khashayar/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qgtkstyle.list

Step 2: Fetch the GPG public key:

wget -q http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/175461/khashayar_ppa.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Step 3: Update and install QGTKStyle

apt-get update && apt-get install qgtkstyle

Step 4: Get GTK look on KDE applications
In XFCE go to Applications >> Settings >> QT 4 Settings and change the GUI Style to ‘GTK’.

That’s it.

A while ago I wondered why I cannot find the samba support in the midnight commander package of Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex‘ 8.10 anymore. A quick check on the net revealed, that Ubuntu removed the support. So far, I accepted that and used a common mount on the shell, but for some unknown reason, I hit upon that issue again today; willing to solve it via a re-packaging of the mc package. As I crawled through mc’s launchpad page for some information, I found the following remarkable line:

* Removed samba support, since it was based on a statically linked lib,
which is shipped within the sourcecode. This lib was over 10 years untouched.

That’s definitely a fucking good reason to get rid of it, but replacing it with a dynamically shared lib, would have been less radical in my opinion.

Embedded DIVX video content can be really a pain in the ass — especially when you are running on linux. Well, for those of you, who are already frustrated with installing non-working plugins, here’s the pretty simple 5 step solution.

Step 1: Downloading
Download the MPlayer Plugin pack and store it somewhere, where you will find it again.

Step 2: Extracting
Just extract the tar.gz archive via

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cd /path/to/the/plugin/file
tar xzvf plugins.tar.gz

Step 3: Copying the plugins
Copy the plugins — with root priviledges — to your firefox plugin directory (usually /usr/lib/firefox/plugins)

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sudo cp plugins/* /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

Step 4: Mozilla MPlayer
Although the packed plugins are already the mplayer plugins, you will have to install the mozilla mplayer plugins (dunno if this step is really necessary on non-ubuntu systems).

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sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

Step 5: Enjoy
Lean back and enjoy your embedded divx videos. If you should experience any problems: restart your firefox (closing all instances and re-open. DO NOT restart your computer).

Kudos the PC LINUX OS Community for the plugins.

For all you twitter-fanatics out there, here’s a pretty well sorted list of clients, not only for the ubuntu desktop.

Ubuntu packages are available on http://www.getdeb.net/app/Pidgin.

Pidgin 2.5.0 has been released today. At time of writing you can get it only on the sourceforge project page (the links on the actual pidgin.im aren’t linked yet amd points to v2.4.3). You will find there Linux (RPM, SRC-RPM) and Windows binaries and of course the source package itself.

Debian/Ubuntu users need to compile themselves. Ubuntu users can also wait till it’s available on getdeb.net — i guess this will be just a matter of a few hours (I would recommend to wait, as compiling pidgin yourself is a pain in the ass).

Many thanks to Wei-Yee Chan, who pointed my attention to Banshee again. Somehow, the development of Banshee got completely out of my sight. As far as I remember the last version I’ve been testing was 0.3 and this induced me to stay with Listen, but it seems that there’s an change in the near future.

Play your music and videos. Stay entertained and up to date with podcasts and video podcasts. Discover new music with Last.fm radio. Sync your iPod and other devices. We think you’ll love the new Banshee!

Packages for Ubuntu can be found on getdeb.net of course.

If you haven’t got the time or don’t want to compile by yourself, you can use the Pidgin packages provided by Tobias Stegmann. In this repositories are the 2.4.3 packages.

Fucking crazy? A couple of week ago, there already have been some trouble with Pidgin and the ICQ protocol (this did not exclusively affect Pidgin). After a quite uneventfully day yesterday, my Pidgin showed me the following message this morning: “The client version you are using is too old. Please upgrade at http://pidgin.im/”. WTF? ICQ excludes alleged clients from their network again.
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