IT News & Technology update

Free awesome 2.0 / 2.1 RC1

Written by IT News on 9:33 AM

Awesome is a tiling window manager initialy based on a dwm code rewriting. awesome is extremely fast, small, dynamic and awesome.

Windows can be managed in several layouts: tiled and floating. Each layout can be applied on the fly, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

Managing windows in tiled mode assures that no space will be waste on your screen. No gaps, no overlap.

Tiled layout
With tiled layout, windows are managed in a master and a stacking area. The master area contains the windows which currently need most attention, whereas the stacking area contains all other windows. The master area can be splited in several rows and column, as you want.

Floating layout
In floating layout, windows can be resized and moved freely, just like a usual window manager. Dialog windows are always managed floating, regardless of the layout selected.

Tags
Windows are grouped by tags. Each window can be tagged with one or multiple tags. Selecting certain tags displays all windows with those tags. Each tag can have its own layout.
Tags can be compared to virtual desktops, but it's more powerful: you can quickly merge and show several tags at the same time, and go back to only one tag after.

Status bar
awesome contains a small status bar which displays all available tags, the layout, the title of the focused window, and text read from standard input. The selected tags are highlighted with a different color, while the tags of the focused window are highlighted with a small point. awesome draws a small border around windows to indicate their focus state.

Every aspect of awesome is configurable via a configuration file: awesomerc.

Here are some key features:
· Very stable.
· No mouse needed.
· Multihead support (Xinerama or Zaphod mode).
· Some real transparency support (using Composite extension and xcompmgr for now).
· Some XRandR support.
· No Lua integration, no 9P support, no editable tagbars, no remote control, and comes without any additional tools.
· Only a single binary.
· No limit on its source size, awesome have features we want.
· Doesn't distinguish between layers: there is no floating or tiled layer. Whether or not the clients of currently selected tag(s) are in tiled layout, you can rearrange them on the fly. Popup and fixed-size windows are always floating, however.
· Customized through editing a configuration file, which makes it extremely easy to configure. You don't have to learn Lua/sh/ruby or some weird configuration file format (like X resource files), or recompile source code each time you do something:, just edit the configuration file, for god's sake.
· Reads from the standard input to print arbitrary status text (like the date, load, battery charge).

What's New in 2.1 RC1 Development Release:
· This version includes bugfixes, new widgets that are supported for the statusbar, and better EWMH support.

Developer: Julien Danjou
License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
Price: FREE
Last Updated: December 12th, 2007 20:19
Download awesome 2.0 / 2.1 RC1

Share browser tools for KDE

Written by IT News on 2:28 AM

Smb4K is a SMB/CIFS share browser for KDE. It uses the Samba software suite to access the SMB/CIFS shares of the local network neighborhood. Its purpose is to provide a program that's easy to use and has as many features as possible.

Its purpose is to provide a program that's easy to use and has as many features as possible.

key features :

· Scanning for (active) workgroups, hosts, and shares
· Mounting and unmounting of SMB and CIFS shares, including unmounting all shares at once
· Access to the files of a mounted SMB or CIFS share using Konqueror
· Auto-detection of external mounts/unmounts
· Remounting of recently used shares on program start
· Miscellaneous infos about the mounted SMB and CIFS shares
· Network search
· WINS server support
· Preview of shares
· Selectable look-up and search methods
· Default login
· Ability to execute mount and umount SUID root (using super or sudo)
· Special handling of homes shares
· Ability to bookmark favorite shares
· System tray icon
· Support of advanced Samba options
· Support of printer shares

What's New in This Release:

· Fixed smb4k_cat utility program, so that files won't get corrupted anymore.
· Fixed Smb4KPasswordHandler::readDefaultAuth() that returned a pointer that was freed when the function exited.
· Fixed the remounting of shares.
· Fixed mounting and unmounting problems under FreeBSD.

Developer: Alexander Reinholdt
License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
Last Updated: October 16th, 2007 23:35
Download link: download Smb4k 0.8.7 now

KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2

Written by IT News on 12:13 AM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The second release candidate of KDE 4.0 was announced on December 11, 2007 by the KDE Team. It includes many improvements from previous Alpha, Beta and RC versions: "the KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks the last mile on the road to KDE 4.0."

While progress on the quality and completeness of what is to become the KDE 4.0 desktop has been great, the KDE Community decided to have another release candidate before releasing KDE 4.0 on January, 11th. The codebase is now feature-complete. Some work is still being done to put the icing on the KDE 4.0 cake. This includes fixing some major and minor bugs, finishing off artwork and smoothening out the user experience.

The second release candidate incorporates many improvements from the previous Release Candidate, Beta and alpha releases: RC1, Beta 4, Beta 3, Beta 2, Beta 1, Alpha 2 and Alpha 1.

RC 2

With this second release candidate, the KDE developers hope to collect comments and bug reports from the wider KDE community. With their help, we hope to solve the most pressing problems with the current KDE 4 codebase to ensure the final 4.0 release is stable, usable and fun to work with. We would like to encourage anyone who is willing and able to spend some time on testing to find and report problems to the KDE developers. It is recommended to have a current snapshot of the codebase handy. That makes trying things easier, it also helps the process by not having to hunt down bugs that have already been fixed and makes it easier to test patches proposed by developers.

About KDE 4

KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular KDE Desktop Environment which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy to use desktop for UNIX and LINUX workstations. The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining and connecting different components in any way they want.

Until the final release of KDE 4.0, which will be available in January, you can download this second release candidate right now from here and you can also download the KDE LiveCD version 0.8 based on KDE 4.0 RC2, from here.