Moving With KDE

KDE has been my desktop of choice for quite sometime, though for the longest time the method of implementation had been Kubuntu. A few months ago I decided I finally had enough of Kubuntu breaking my installation every time there was an upgrade, so I began looking around for a distribution that made KDE its default desktop. Much to my surprise, almost all of the distros used something else, but then I found Chakra. The Chakra development team weren't quite ready for prime-time, but I decided to jump on the boat anyway. I have to say, that there is a lot to like about the Chakra distro. If you're a KDE fan, then I strongly recommend it. On the same hardware I was running Kubuntu, Chakra seems to run faster and more stably than Kubuntu. Now don't think that that I'm bashing the Kubuntu team. I have absolutely no doubt that they work hard to make sure Kubuntu runs, but they are handicapped by the inclusion of the Gnome libraries that Chakra limits.
I digress though. The purpose of this post is to cover what I did to keep my personal information in KDE when I moved from one installation to another.
In actuality, it boils down to just making sure to copy certain folders over, assuming that in the move you did perform a significant jump in KDE revisions. So, if like me, you make use of mostly KDE apps, then the folders and files are as follows (don't forget to show hidden files, or you won't be able to find these folders).

• .config
  • akonadi (you'll also find other folders here that might interest you, such as chromium)
• .local
  • share
    • akonadi
    • contacts
    • local-mail
• .kde4
  • share
    • apps
      • akonadi
      • akonadi-davgroupware
      • blogilo
      • choqok
      • emailidentities
      • kabc
      • kontact
      • kopete
      • kopete_chatstyles
      • korganizer
      • kwallet

Assuming you grab all of the ones that I list here, you should be able to successfully manage a move from KDE installation to another. Make sure you mind the little things, like ownership and privileges. Also don't forget to install any programs or plugins before attempting to run any specific apps. For instance, if you have Kontact sync with your Google data, then make sure you've installed the Akonadi Google data plugin resource before launching Akonadi.

Chakra and the Missing Multilib

I've transitioned to the Chakra distribution and love their dedication to KDE. The one thing that I kept encountering was I wanted to get Adobe Reader installed.  You may ask "Why?" Well the answer is simple, because when it comes to dealing with PDFs that have embedded javascript forms in them Okular either barfs on itself, or it just plain ignores them. Neither is a very good option when fields that you can't edit are calculated values based upon entries in fields you can edit.

Fortunately, Chakra has the Chakra Community Repository (CCR) where people can add different programs for others to make use of without them having to added to the official Chakra release.  If the CCR doesn't have what you're looking for, then there is also a small command line script you can download to pull apps from the root Arch Linux User Repository (AUR). In this case, someone else had already added acroread (the linux version of Adobe Reader) to the CCR, but everytime I tried to install it, it failed right out of the gate due to a failed dependency to lib32-gtk2. After some searching I found that this was part of the multilib, but for some reason I wasn't pulling it down. Some more searching and I found that my repository list was missing the multilib repository. Pacman (the command line package manager) needed to be told about this repository. To tell pacman about the repository, type the following line in a terminal session.

sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf

Once in, page-down until you come to #[unstable].  At the beginning of the line, tap enter a couple of times to make some room and then add the following lines.

[lib32]

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Then a ctrl-x, y for yes, an enter to save and you're all done.  Now pacman will know where to go for the lib32 dependencies. Once this was done, then installation of acroread from the CCR worked without issue.

I know of no reason for the lib32 omission, I have no idea if anyone else had the issue, but here is the fix that came up with. Good luck.

Change the Default Editor

In some linux distros, the default editor is automatically called when a script you're running decides you need to modify some script it is about to call. The default editor tends to be vi or vim. Which is an exceptionally powerful text editor, but if you don't use frequently it is very easy to completely forget how to do some very basic things, like actually edit the script in question or just plain exit the editor. A different command line editor by the name nano is much easier to use for the infrequent user. To correct this problem, you can easily make a minor modification to one file to use nano instead.

At the command line, enter

nano .bashrc

Make sure you're in your in home directory when you do this by typing:

cd ~

Once the editor is up, look for instances of vim and replace them with nano. The locations will say things like:

export EDITOR=vim

When you're done, do a ctrl-x to exit, say yes to save the updated file, and enter to confirm the save. Then log out of your terminal session and back in. To check that it is working you can type the following to see what comes back.

echo $EDITOR

If it is vim, then you didn't do something right, so you'll need to try again.

If you can't log out of the terminal session for some reason, you can apply the changes immediately. You can either dynamically set the $EDITOR or you can apply your bash resource file. To apply your bash resource file without closing your terminal session, type the following line.

source ~/.bashrc

Now, you're all done. Enjoy your new default editor.