KDE Components: Folder View

Currently, the most talked about and criticized development project is the 4^th major version released by the KDE team – KDE4. It is an ambitious open-source project which focuses on providing a new and unique desktop experience combined with fun.

Though KDE4 omits features of its previous versions; it is much more powerful and has more potential than critics have expressed. After their challenging comments, I felt compelled to scrutinize some aspects of the same. On that note, as part of my blog; I've listed my findings on FolderView component.

· Inability to see long file names (since most songs, videos, C++/C/Python files in my hdd have long names).

· Easy navigation (through key board) to the desired files in the FolderView Widget when number of files goes beyond a single snapshot view.

· Inability to control the opacity of the Widget.

· Expand/Collapse feature to keep the Widget minimized on the Desktop to save space and view them when wanted.

· Having different types of view options (Detailed, List, Icon) would be nicer.

· A built in search to find the files within the Widget when the number of files goes way beyond the view.

· Option to adjust opacity on certain part of the container (I can make it look solid on the Title bar and transparent for the rest so that I don't have to strain my eyes to look the folder name on the title bar through the wallpaper).

Conclusion
Overall; I like the FolderView widget and the idea of Icon-less desktop through sets of plasmoids. Kudos to the KDE development team for the component - a must have widget in the default collection.

This project is evolving and the future looks promising. But as most visions go, this too will take its own course and its evolution will happen eventually. Now that the basic desktop is ready, the developers will be focusing on each part of the DE and iron out the issues in the forth coming releases. My suggestion is to keep patience and support the team for its astonishing and monumental effort.

Please watch the below event web cast to know the vision and the road map of KDE project from its lead developer.

KDE 4.0 Release Event Video - Aaron Seigo
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6642148224800885420

Fixing NTFS Mount Error in GNU/Linux

One of the common problem you might encounter while using a external hard drive (or partition) formatted with NTFS (since you multi boot or you want to use the external device with windows and gnu/linux) is that - it fails to mount occasionally giving the below error.

$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount '/dev/disk/by-uuid/FE5C75355C74E9B3': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use

The reason is because you might have probably unplugged the device directly from windows instead of going through 'Safely Remove Hardware' option and hence the NTFS log is not marked unused.

There is a tool to fix it.

sudo ntfsfix /dev/drive_name

If you receive "ntfsfix: command not found" error message, then probably the ntfs utilities are not installed in your distribution (I have figured out that the utility to manipulate nfts is installed in openSUSE by default, but not in Ubuntu 8.04). In that case, you'll need to issue the following before ntfsfix command.

sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

Which will install the ntfs tools. Once you've installed it, you can issue ntfsfix command. If you are not sure about the drive name, please use the below command to find the drive name.

sudo fdisk -l

If you are using 80Gig external USB Storage, then you will find the below in your command output:

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3347a943

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 9729 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS

which is of course your NTFS USB drive. now you can issue the command as below.

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1

Have a good day.