Some of my Kubuntu-Hoary tweaks

[Derek Broughton]

On Thursday 14 April 2005 19:01, Abdullah Ramazanoglu wrote:
>
> I hope this proves useful to others as well, and I hope the
> positive/negative community response to this and other user preferences
> (please post yours too) becomes a useful feedback to Kubuntu devs as to
> what defaults/settings to adopt in future releases.

These are good as examples of what works for you.  I'm pretty leery of 
suggesting most of this as "defaults/settings to adopt in future releases".
>
> 1. Good old "ll":
> sudo echo "alias ll='ls -l'" >> /etc/bash.bashrc

Absolutely not.  It's a nice alias, but if you start adding everybody's 
favorite alias to bash, where do you stop?
>
> 2. Statically (non-DDC) setting for small or big fonts.

I've only half-followed the discussion on font settings, but I'm not convinced 
this is a good idea for most users - DDC should do the job. If you have 
problems with DDC, then definitely :-)

> 3. Disable Konqueror (file manager) preview: It is bogging down Konqueror's
> snappiness. Also, "one at a time" (on mouse over) preview is already
> satisfying most needs, and "all at once" preview can be enabled anytime in
> exceptional conditions, anyway.

Well, _I'd_ always disable previews.  I hate them.  I'm not sure if that would 
be a general preference, though.

> 4. Konqueror: "New Tab" (maybe also "Clone Tab") button at main toolbar:
> Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure toolbar : Select main toolbar and carry
> New Tab icon from availables (left) frame into actives (right) frame.

Probably not, for the sane reason as #1.  ctrl-shift-N is easier, anyway.

> 5. Use kprinter (KDE's regular print dialog) for OpenOffice:
> sudo /usr/lib/openoffice/spadmin
>     Generic Printer -> Features
>         Command = lpr   --- CHANGE TO ---> Command = kprinter

That's a must have.  I can't imagine why anything is still shipping with lpr 
as a default.

> 6. A new "root" command (instead of "sudo -i") to switch to a permanent
> root session:
> echo "alias root='sudo -i'" >> ~/.bashrc

???  You mean 'su'?  I don't _have_ a pure kubuntu install (yet - just 
downloading it) but a hoary kubuntu-desktop on top of Debian sid, so perhaps 
'su' is missing from pure kubuntu, but I'd be very surprised.

> 7. Boost Konqueror web browsing speed:
> sudo echo "KDE_NO_IPV6=true" >> /etc/environment

That might perhaps be reasonably automated in the installer - it should be 
possible to tell if you have an ipv6 connection.
 
> 8. Tune /etc/apt/sources.list into what a casual user would be interested
> in:
> i) deb-src causes extra traffic while package list updates, and it's not
> used by most users. The ones who have an interest in deb-src would already
> know how to handle it. 

I completely agree.  I don't think there's any place for the deb-src lines in 
a default install.  I keep them in the sources.list, but I comment them out 
unless I really need some source (and I've been doing this since at least 
Debian slink).

> ii) Almost everyone[*] enables universe and multiverse (if not also
> marillat or backports) the first thing after installation.

Probably - I missed out on multiverse, at first, because it _wasn't_ there and 
commented, but I think it a bad idea to have them enabled by default.  I 
really think only the ubuntu supported packages should be enabled by default, 
but make it easy to get the rest, by having commented lines for both universe 
and multiverse.

> 9. FWIW: Just tested libflash-mozplugin on Kubuntu-Hoary (it was flakey on
> PV & RC) and it works very good as a flash plugin for Konq. It also works
> on amd64 and -probably- ppc arch too. Instead of using the closed source
> one, I suggest installing libflash-mozplugin and then:
> Konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Plugins : Press the "Scan
> New Plugins" button.

Nice.  I haven't had flash working on any debian install since it broke on me 
a couple of years back :-)

They're good suggestions - I'm just not sure that many of them should be 
defaults :-)
-- 
derek