Mandriva ROSA Launcher for Kubuntu

Gone are the days of press to start pop-up or pop-down menu launchers for operating systems and desktop environments. Ubuntu have its very own Unity launcher with various lenses, Gnome 3 have Activities hot corner, Apple introduced Launchpad in OSX Lion to go with the trend and even Microsoft is planning to ditch the legendary "Start" menu in Windows 8. But in KDE we still have the same boring Press to start pop-up menu launcher.

Mandriva Linux might be a sinking ship for now but with their latest release in 2011, they have introduced an innovative and eye candy Menu Launcher called ROSA Launcher from Rosa Labs in Russia.

Rosa Launcher have 3 tabs just like the unity lenses, first one is a simple Welcome tab which shows recent applications, places and documents, the second tab has the Applications listed in categories, such as Internet, Office, Multimedia etc., and the third tab is more like the Zeitgeist Journal extension in Gnome 3 which shows the time line for documents and applications, you need to keep the Nepomuk file indexing enabled to use this feature.

Installation:

Now we will learn how to install the eye candy menu launcher from Rosa Labs in your Kubuntu installation.
You first need to download the deb file for the rosa-launcher, you can download the deb file from here.

Open the terminal, change to the download location and install the deb file as given in the commands below.

• $ cd Downloads

• $ sudo dpkg -i rosa-launcher_0.30.12-2_i386.deb

For me Rosa Launcher installed without any dependency problem in Kubuntu 11.10, if you face any dependency problem, then install the required packages from Ubuntu/Kubuntu apt repositories.

After the installation of Rosa Launcher, you need to install the plasmoid widget for the launcher to use it as an alternate to classic KDE launcher.

Download the zipped plasmoid widget file from here.

Installing the plasmoid widget:

Change to the Download directory, and install the plasmoid widget using the following command.

• $ plasmapkg -i  rosastarter.zip

After the successful installation of the Rosa Launcher plasmoid, the Rosa Launcher is ready to use from the add widget menu. Drag the widget to your desktop or taskbar and enjoy the eye candy launcher for KDE.

Troubleshooting:


Error: Installation of rosastarter.zip failed.
Solution: enable more verbose output from plasmapkg. Run kdebugdialog:

• kdebugdialog --fullmode

and enable the outputs for 1209 libplasma.

Error: Could not create a python scriptengine for "Rosa Launcher"
Solution: Install "plasma-scriptengine-python"

• $ sudo apt-get install plasma-scriptengine-python

You may additionally need to install "python-dev" package in case the error persist.

•  $ sudo apt-get install python-dev

Note: If the download links for the Rosa Launcher deb file and Rosa plasmoid widget do not work, you can download the files from the launchpad website as given below.

https://launchpad.net/mandriva-rosa/mandriva-rosa-launcher/mandriva-rosa

Enjoy!

0 comments

» read more....

Mandriva a sinking ship?

My very first tryst with Linux started with RedHat version 8, the time when RedHat was a free operating system like any-other Linux distro and there was no Ubuntu. But RedHat never worked the way I wanted my desktop to be, and I tried as many Linux distro as I could find. A distro which stood apart and worked beautifully for me was Mandriva (known as Mandrake Linux that time).


 

In one sentence, Mandrake Linux was like the Ubuntu of this era in terms of usability and ease. Mandrake Linux provided the easiest way to the Internet and software availability in its infamous discovery and power pack flavors packed with both open source and proprietary software.

Down the year 2012 the old shine and luster is all lost and the company behind the Magical Linux is on the verge of disappearance from the legendary wall of fame of Linux distributions.

But what made this transition from being a legend to a forgotten tale ?

Brian Proffitt argued in his article  “The diminishing of the operating system” that not keeping up with the trends of time is the reason for the decline of French Linux distributor, the other OS vendors are no longer selling Operating System as a standalone solution, rather they offer services such as virtualization and cloud computing along with the OS, training and support (which is no longer a minting machine for Open Source companies).

Brian could be correct in his deduction as far as RedHat and SUSE are concerned since these companies no longer rely on the sale of their brand of operating system and offer a basket full of innovative services and solutions for the enterprise and server space. But it is not the case with Ubuntu, the move towards Smart TV , Mobile and Tablet platform are only the plans for the future and do not create funds for canonical right now.

One should also take the community factor into the consideration when talking about FOSS. One cannot deny that the main source for the new innovations in open source space for RedHat & Novell stems from their community offerings namely Fedora and OpenSUSE which are among the most active free and open source communities along with Cannonical for Ubuntu.

In my opinion the lack of contributions from an active community is also a reason behind this deadly jerk for Mandriva. Mageia Linux which forked out from the Mandriva in 2010 is not a supported community initiative from Mandriva, but an effort from the bunch of dissatisfied developers from the French Linux company.

So even if the Mandriva will recover from the financial crunch (as they had done in 2010) the community effort from the Mageia will carry the legacy of the Magical Linux Desktop forward in the coming years.

0 comments

» read more....