durbn.net

It's no secret that I've been using the Linux operating system on my main desktop computer exclusively for that last 2 years. Before that I had the Debian distribution running on numerous servers around the house. When I bought my laptop in the summer of 2006 I made the natural move to the Ubuntu distribution which is based directly off of Debian. More specifically I moved to Kubuntu which is the KDE version of Ubuntu (I have tried it, but I don't really like Gnome personally). Of course I loaded the standard Firefox/Thunderbird/Openoffice/Azureus programs that run on all platforms (windows too if you must) since I've been using those since my windows days. Recently I've been toying with the native KDE applications instead and I've fallen in love with them. Read on to hear all about KDE!

I've switched out Firefox for Konqueror (which Safari is based on you silly mac fanboi's) which is much faster than Firefox. It doesn't support firefox extensions but it does include the adblocker built right in, which was the only extension I really used extensively. With the KDE 3.x series Konqueror is also the file manager which I also use day in and day out. As a file manager coupled with the KIO Slave's I can connect to any remote resource completely transparently. It's a very powerful tool.

I've dropped Thunderbird and Sunbird as my email and calendar apps and replaced them with the Kontact mega-program. Kontact is really a container program that wraps around KMail (email), Korganizer (calendar & todo's), KNotes (memos), KNode (newsgroups), KAddressBook (addresses), and Akregator (rss feeds). The Kontact program makes Outlook look like Notepad to OpenOffice Writer (or Word if you must). Everything is integrated together. Here I can track all my contacts, my email, my appointments, my daily news, and my memos. I'm really impressed with this software. My calendars and contacts are shared between my desktop and my laptop and my Treo smartphone. I get this powerful PIM (personal information manager) and it runs faster than Thunderbird ever did. I really can't explain how amazing this software is. You just gotta try it out for yourself.

Most recently I've started using KTorrent in place of Azureus. Azureus may have a few more features but it requires Java which is a huge memory hog. One thing KTorrent has is a built in torrent search (using embedded konqueror of course). So far I like the light weight of KTorrent.

Another KDE program I've been using all along is Amarok. Amarok blows iTunes out of the water. It manages my massive music archive and provides built in Wikipedia artist info and lyrics. It let's me search and sort my music collection in a very intuitive way. It's got support for iPods and other music players and also handles all my podcasts and streaming radio. I also use it with www.last.fm to suggest new music I might like based off of what I listen to. This is a must-have application.

I've also been using Kopete as my instant messenger. It supports all the chat protocols you can think of, including IRC. It also allows me to group my contacts under meta-contacts. For instance if I have you on my list and you use MSN, ICQ, and Jabber and I can dump all of those under one single entry in my list. Kopete also integrates with the Kontact program so when I'm looking through my contacts I can automatically see who's online. Also when I'm writing or replying to an email it shows if you are online so I can send an instant message instead.

Just in case any of you are wondering I use KDE's Apollon (which is a front end for the giFt server) for all my p2p file sharing needs. It lets me hook into multiple protocols at once.

For my pictures I used to use a KDE program called Gwenview which worked very similar to ACDSee on windows. Then along came Google's Picasa photo manager. Instead of switching to Picasa (which is available under linux) I switched to KDE's DigiKam. It might not be quite as feature rich as Picasa but it's fast and let's me sort all my photos nicely.

Kaffeine is a nice video/dvd player that uses the Xine engine to playback all my movies. With the right codecs installed I can play any video format that I need including quicktime and wmv (ick).

I use KMyMoney to manage my personal finances. It acts as a cheque book so I can track all my income and expenses. It needs some sort of budgeting module because right now I have to dump the figures into a spreadsheet I have created. Maybe someday I'll get ambitious and write my own module.

I also use the KDevelop IDE for all my programming development. It needs a bit of work in a few areas but it does work nicely for my Qt4 development.

I also own a Treo 650 smartphone. I use KPilot to sync my calendar and contacts back and forth to it. It's taken a little bit of tweaking to get exactly right but it works like a charm, both with my USB cable and my bluetooth adapter.

One component I have been purposefully avoiding is the office applications. I still use OpenOffice for spreadsheeting and word processing. I could use the KOffice software but I haven't made that plunge yet. Since both OpenOffice and KOffice read and write to the OpenDocument format there shouldn't be any problems with a transition. Someday I'll get around to moving to KOffice.

There are many other KDE applications and tools that I use everyday but I have not mentioned here. The entire KDE platform is an amazing experience. I strongly encourage you to download a copy of Kubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 (soon to be Feisty Fawn 7.04) and run it right off the live CD. Knoppix would be another good starting point. Or take the ultimate plunge and purge windows/mac from your PC and load up Kubuntu in it's place.

And just when you thought that was it, KDE 4 is under heavy development right now. It's a complete rewrite of KDE 3.x and will contain innumerable improvements. KDE 4 is what Mac OSX Lepoard Windows Vista can only dream about being. If Vista is the new next gen KDE 4 is the next gen's next gen.

www.kde.org - try it today!