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KDE: Right Click, Extract Here

I’ve been hunting for a post on how to have KDE “extract here” like Foresight Gnome edition does (it’s really handy to one click extract archives). Post after post found via Google did nothing at all to help me out. Most tried to have you read how to do this manually by creating your own service menu and they would use xterm to extract. I wanted to use ark…mainly because it’s there and it’s a gui.

Then I decided to search KDE-Apps.org and viola! I found it. A handy little tool that allows you to right click on any archive and “extract here” with Ark. Here’s how to install it.

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A New User Guide to Linux Communities

Featured image credit: Leonardo Leporte

Are you a new Linux user? Fantastic! Welcome to the world of freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom from vendor lockin. You’ve made an excellent choice. Now that you’ve chosen, installed, and are using Linux there are a few things you should keep in mind as you learn the ropes of your new system.

1. Not all Communities are the Same

Each Linux distribution has its own distinct community with their own ideas. Think of owning a vehicle or a certain brand of appliance…along with the ownership of this comes the lifestyle that is reflected by users/owners of the product. The same is true with Linux. Each community will have a different idea on what is important. What is important to you may not be even on the radar of those users and developers of that community. Find one that suits you.

Keeping this in mind, be patient. Ask questions the smart way. Be explicit and tactful. Be precise and direct. Provide more information than you think is necessary…no one will become upset if you provide too much information but they may not answer your question if you have too little.

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Print Readable Man Pages

Ever wonder how you can get a man page in into a format you can read and print? There’s many methods of doing it (copy and paste is one) but one the easiest I’ve found is:

man command | col -x -b  > command.txt

Where command is the Linux command man page you want to print/view. From there, open up command.txt in your favorite gui text editor (gedit, kate) and you have a readable format that could be printed quite easily for reference.

Zimbra or Google Calendar with Thunderbird and Lightning

The title sounds a bit Mythological eh? I originally published this entry on my work blog but felt that some people might be able to get some use out of this tip. To use it, you’ll need Zimbra or Google Calendar. I’ll cover Zimbra mostly and then give a link on how to setup Google Calendar at the end. For those interested, my work blog is here.

If you don’t have Zimbra, they have a free Open Source Community Edition available. It’s feature rich and quite configurable for your email. It can even be used to retrieve multiple email sources and bring them all into one place…it also has identity management so you can send from multiple accounts. Very nice stuff.

“I use Thunderbird for my email client. It’s quite speedy and nice. Coming from various places of employment that used Outlook and Exchange, I miss being able to schedule appointments via my email client (of course, with Zimbra, I’m able to do this via the web interface..but I like using Thunderbird for its ability to sort and
handle my email).

Enter Lightning, the sunbird-like extension for Thunderbird. So how does one integratelightning with say, Zimbra? It was rather simple and easy to do so. I’m posting what I did to get this up and running so that others won’t fumble through the Zimbra forums trying to piece various posts together finally arriving at a solution after banging heads against the wall repeatedly. Note that I’m assuming you use Zimbra/Thunderbird with IMAP.

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Convert Audio with Ease in KDE

I ripped a couple of CD’s for my son this evening. In the process, I decided to setup Kalarm and Korganizer on his computer so that he could set alarms to remind him to do various chores around the house. While doing all of this, I needed a .wav file so that he could use a song for his alarm. Of course, he wanted one of the songs I had just ripped from his CD. Since I had ripped his songs to .ogg format, I had to investigate which program could convert from .ogg to .wav this the easiest in KDE.

I’ve not used many of the whiz bang functions of KDE and desktop Linux…I’ve been more of a browser, mail, and RSS type of guy for many years. Now that I’ve been using Linux at work and at home, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to figure out how to do things that I’ve never done before. In this case, convert audio to .wav, .ogg, or .mp3 with ease. There is a tool called audiokonverter available in PCLinuxOS 2007 repositories that makes this a snap.

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I can’t get MySQL to work!!! Something about mysql.sock…

So you’ve got problems getting MySQL to start? You’re not alone. There are a couple of things you can do to get things rolling. Linux comes with a database that tells it how to add MySQL users and MySQL tables. However, MySQL is not started by default…and if it is, it requires that default table to be created before it can run without incident. Here are the commands you can issue to get things going:

cd /usr/bin

su mysql

mysql_install_db

Lastly, issue the command:

mysqld_safe &

What you’ve just done is logged into you Linux box as user mysql, then installed the default database…and then with the mysqld_safe & command you initiated the mysql daemon to run in the background. So, things should be good to go now. MySQL is running and you’ll be able to press on with things by adding users and databases.

A bit more info for you…creating databases and users can get tedious via the linux prompt. You can use phpmyadmin or webmin to automate this process and save yourself time and effort.