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KDE GUI

Eyes on Karamba 146

Posted by Hemos from the bad-puns-ahoy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "dot.kde.org posted an interview with Hans Karlsson, the author of the now pretty popular KDE clone of Samurize, Karamba, which is responsible for the recent craze at kdelook.org. An interesting interview well worth a read which shows that even today most open source programs still start as tiny hobby projects after all."
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Eyes on Karamba More

Eyes on Karamba

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  • Not to be complaining (Score:5, Informative)

    by joeflies ( 529536 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:10AM (#5881967)
    "most open source programs still start as tiny hobby projects after all." but if you've installed Karamba, it still very much feels like a hobby project. It's cool, looks great, and easy to program with PERL, but the installation is still very much a work in progress.
    • In CSS, you wouldn't even get the chance of installing it at such an early stage of development.

      It's just a matter of time until somebody (other than the author as he doesn't want to) writes a nice graphical config-tool for it.

      • Re:Not to be complaining (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I thought your TLA was AFU until I realized you were talking about Closed Source Software, not Cascading Style Sheets.

    • Re:Not to be complaining (Score:1, Informative)

      by prla ( 310556 )
      Actually I found the source compilation process to be pretty easy. I used the latest source (v0.17) and the only problem I had was not having lib-fam0-devel installed. Perhaps it might get to be a little problematic with an older system, with older libs. This here is a Mandrake 9.1 system with some stuff from Cooker.

      There's a link to a quick howto by a Karamba user in the project page here [efd.lth.se] which eases the (supposed) pain of installing this.
      • the thing I'm referring to is that Karamba configuration isn't integrated into the KDE control panel, so each applet needs to be customized by editing the code. So while it's eye candy for KDE, it's not yet integrated into KDE

        In addition, many of the modules rely on other scripts that need to be installed separately, so often you need to install/upgrade multiple components for each window gadget you want.

        but again, it does work well as long as you're reasonably adept at unix-like configuration.

    • and easy to program with PERL

      Um, this may be true, but it's designed to be scriptable in Python.
    • Hmm, did you actually install it? Sure, it didn't tell you beforehand that you needed libfam-devel, but that's fairly obvious from the error messages. Oh, and I admit, the fact that by default the executable was put into /usr/local/kde/bin (on my install anyway) was a little odd, but you can change that during the build process. Perhaps you could give some details as to what happened to you? (I have nothing to go on, since it worked fine on Mandrake 9.1 after I installed libfam-devel and moved the exec

  • Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cee ( 22717 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:14AM (#5882018)
    Link to the Karamba screenshots [kdelook.org]. The site seems to be rather slow, however.

  • I'll go ahead and say it.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nate Fox ( 1271 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:19AM (#5882053)
    <bart>eyekaramba!</bart>

  • Another example of /. idiocy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:22AM (#5882093)
    Would it kill the submitter to mention what the program actually does? Is there no "editor" at /. who knows what an actual news blurb looks like? Christ.

    "Karamba is a KDE program that can display a lot of various information right on your desktop. Karamba uses the same 'fake' transparency effect that e.g., Konsole can use."
    • Worse yet... what is "a lot of various information"? What kind of interfaces does it have, what makes it so cool, etc?

      Sure, the info is available on the various websites, but we all know how well most small time sites hold up under a slashdotting.

    • Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:53AM (#5882373) Homepage
      I went to the Samurize web site [samurize.com] but that's not much help: "The current version of Samurize has expired!" Okay... So I downloaded the zip and looked at the docs.

      Information - What is Samurize?

      Short description:
      Samurize is the successor to the quite popular program CureInfo. It is a system monitoring utility with some pretty awesome configuration power. The configuration program is separated from the client for minimal memory usage. For the moment Samurize is in beta state. This means: Bugs can and does exist, all optimitions have not yet been done.

      The program it self displays almost any kind of information right on your desktop/taskbar and homepage (server/taskbar version is in production).

      So, I guess it displays stuff. *sigh* I doubt I'll dig further as the video requirement is probably out of my range "Geforce 1 or better (needed to for hardware supported per pixel alpha blending)".

      • I hate when bugs does exist.. >:-( !! hehe
      • The Geforce1 requirement seems a little off. I've been running it for a little while on my Win2k box that has a PIII 500MHz, 576MB of RAM, and a TNT2 card. I don't play games, espcially not on this machine. It's my apache on winders test box and I use Samurize to tail my access.log and error.log on the screen.

        I dunno, I've consistently been about 3-5 years behind in terms of graphics cards, but my machines tend to run faster and more stable than gamer friends I know with their suped up (and super expens
    • It's an eye candy thing, displays CPU, Mem, Web news etc...

      But it is also being used to create icon docks and other things.

  • Eye Candy (Score:3, Funny)

    by geders ( 206556 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:23AM (#5882101)
    Ah, everyone's constant search for better eye candy to fill their desktops...

  • I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by srichter ( 120728 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:26AM (#5882138) Homepage
    I just installed Super-Karamba this morning and I am fiddeling right now around with the Slashdot theme to make it nicer looking on my screen.

    Karamba is really cool! I downloaded SuperKaramba due to its Python support and I plan to write some plugins for receiving automatically Mailing list notifications. Should be trivial as far as I can tell.

    I think something like this was overdue for a long time and it rivals the Active Desktop from MS Windows.

  • Karamba (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Necrotica ( 241109 ) <cspencer@nosPAM.lanlord.ca> on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:29AM (#5882170)
    I compiled Karamba once and....quickly uninstalled it. Sure it looks nice but I never found it particularly useful. It takes up a lot of desktop space and really is nothing more than a very beautiful way to waste your system resources.

    For example, one of its features is the ability to read headlines from news sources such as Slashdot. While its nice to see the headlines right on your desktop, how useful is it? If you want to read the whole story you have to fire up a browser anyways to read it. So whats the point?

    Sidebars such as Karamba need to be more useful than just show information. There needs to be a way for a user to interact with the information presented to them. Until that happens they will remain pretty much useless (and off my desktop).

    • Re:Karamba (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about going straight to the story you like? This is VERY flexible in its final form.

    • Re:Karamba (Score:2, Insightful)

      by advocate_one ( 662832 )

      Sidebars such as Karamba need to be more useful than just show information. There needs to be a way for a user to interact with the information presented to them. Until that happens they will remain pretty much useless (and off my desktop).

      so you're expecting other people to develop your content then??? the whole point of Karamba and Super karamba is that you are given the tools to do it your way. Use other peoples themes as a base, but you have the basis to customise it exactly as you want. Don't dis w

      • Just blame yourself if you can't find a use for it.

        If someone doesn't have a use for a program, I don't see the need to blame themselves for it. All to often there are solutions looking for problems. I'm not saying this is one of them, but I agree with some of the points the guy was making.
      • so you're expecting other people to develop your content then??? the whole point of Karamba and Super karamba is that you are given the tools to do it your way. Use other peoples themes as a base, but you have the basis to customise it exactly as you want. Don't dis what has been done so far, it gives excellent examples for others to use. Just blame yourself if you can't find a use for it.

        As a matter of fact, yes I AM expecting other people to develop content for me. They are the developers. I am the user.
    • Well I suppose if it can display headlines from Slashdot, it could be useful for jumping in with that FP. :^)
    • > Sidebars such as Karamba need to be more useful than just show information. There needs to be a way for a user to interact with the information presented to them. Until that happens they will remain pretty much useless (and off my desktop).

      Heh.. that's pretty much the goal of SuperKaramba. Interactive Karamba sensors.
      • The topic is Karamba, not SuperKaramba. As I have never used SuperKaramba I cannot comment on it. But my previous comment regarding Karamba still stands. Although it is nice to look at its effectively useless for me.
        • But SuperKaramba is Karamba, not something completely different. It is simply Karamba... plus a python-based API in top of it.
    • Necrotica's comment is the first thing I've seen that says what Karamba actually DOES, and even it's only kind of suggesting.
      • "It's like FOO and BAR" doesn't help - they're also apparently new projects, and neither of them clearly say what they do on the first page of their websites.
      • "Summarize information" is a vague hint - what kind of information about what? Necrotoca's article provides some example, which helps.
      • is the canonical useless Slashdot description of something - I want to know what the s

    • Re:Karamba (Score:4, Funny)

      by JoeWalsh ( 32530 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @12:51PM (#5882918)

      For example, one of its features is the ability to read headlines from news sources such as Slashdot. While its nice to see the headlines right on your desktop, how useful is it? If you want to read the whole story you have to fire up a browser anyways to read it. So whats the point?

      I agree with you. I've never found a use for headline display programs. As you pointed out, you still have to fire up your browser if you want to read any of the articles.

      What we really need is a service that downloads whole articles to the desktop. Something that, when run, would go out to Slashdot and download all the articles from the front page. Maybe with some checkboxes on which additional categories you wanted stuff downloaded from (Apple, YRO, etc.)

      And then, it could be expanded to download stories from other sites, like cnn.com and nytimes.com and so on. That would be cool.

      I should go start a Sourceforge project for this thing. But what to call it? Let's see . . . it sort of turns the web into a broadcast experience, so maybe "Broadcast?" No, that's not quite right.

      Oh, I know! It's like broadcasting, but it's point-to-point, so why not call it "Pointcast!" Yeah! What a cool name!

      Welp, I'm off to start my pointcast.sourceforge.net project. I sure hope no one beats me to this great idea, though!

    • For example, one of its features is the ability to read headlines from news sources such as Slashdot. While its nice to see the headlines right on your desktop, how useful is it? If you want to read the whole story you have to fire up a browser anyways to read it. So whats the point?

      The point is that, instead of reloading the Slashdot home page all day, you only have to fire up your browser when you see a headline that piques your interest.

      I've never used Karamba, but I find RSS news aggregators (for e

    • While its nice to see the headlines right on your desktop, how useful is it? If you want to read the whole story you have to fire up a browser anyways to read it.

      There needs to be a way for a user to interact with the information presented to them.

      You mean like clicking the headline to jump to the article?

    • Erm, how about as a "preview" of what's happening around you? I use it to display FoxNews.com headlines, weather images, syslogs, slashdot, etc... When I see something that intrigues me I fire up the browser, or Eterm or whatever. It's much more functional than just some silly backround picture of your kids.

      Granted, you still have to load the browser, but rather than doing it "just to see what's on slashdot", you can decide if there's anything interesting before doing so - As such, I think your arguemen

  • Misread (Score:2, Funny)

    by schnits0r ( 633893 )
    Did anyone else misread it to say "Eyes on Karma"?

  • Eyes on Karamba? (Score:3, Funny)

    by JHromadka ( 88188 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:40AM (#5882266) Homepage
    Is that a Cinco de Mayo joke? :D

    • Is that a Cinco de Mayo joke? :D

      No, it's Cinco de Mayo Ware (tm). You only download it on the fifth of May, install it and have aliens and toasters and other assorted weirdnesses jumping around your desktop until midnight. Then you uninstall it and never speak of it again.

      That's how my Enlightenment experience went, anyways ;) and this thing is totally reminding me of the first time I saw E.

      Seriously guys WAY over the top on the eye candy there. It's almost as bad as the new slashdot games section.

  • Active Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:40AM (#5882269)
    I can't reach that link right now but from my recollection, isn't this program very much like the Microsoft "Active Desktop" feature from years back which pretty much bombed among the users?

  • Old news... (Score:5, Informative)

    by NetMasta10bt ( 468001 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @11:59AM (#5882437)
    Check out SuperKaramba [sourceforge.net]

    Description: SuperKaramba, based on Karamba, is a tool that allows anyone to create and run simple interactive applets on the KDE desktop. The applets, which are defined in a simple text file, can optionally be augmented with Python code to make them interactive. Current widgets vary from simple news headline displays to complete custom replacements for the KDE panel (Kicker).
    • Thank you for mentioning SuperKaramba, I was about to do so myself. Karamba is old news. I quote from here [gentoo.org]:

      I had a talk with the author of super-Karamba about this..

      The original karamba is dead.. the author did all he wanted to do with it. All new development will be done in SuperKaramba.. Next major version (0.18) will have taskbar support :)


      SuperKaramba really moves Karamba beyond just displaying info on your desktop. Here's a snippet from the front page:

      Here are just some examples of the things

  • SuperKaramba (Score:5, Informative)

    by ageitgey ( 216346 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @12:01PM (#5882463) Homepage
    For those of you who don't know the details:

    Karamba is a semi-clone of Samurize. SuperKaramba is a version of Karamba I'm working on that adds python scripting and lots of other enhancements. Most of the cool (in my opinion) themes require SuperKaramba. But I wish the Karamba guys the best of luck and hope we can work together to accomplish our goals for both programs.

    The website for it is http://netdragon.sourceforge.net

  • Gentoo ebuilds avalible. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (super)Karamba is avalible in gentoo as a (masked) ebuild. Find it in x11-misc.
  • Apple's legal team is notorious for sending cease and desist [infoworld.com] letters any time someone copies the look of the aqua interface.

    .:diatonic:.
    • It's not the look, it's the Apple logo. Maybe you should read the article you link to next time...

      " "Apple clamped down on these hard -- again, rightfully so. But Apple has never blocked the creation of entirely original themes that did not contain any Apple trademark images. In the past two years since the release of these banned Aqua themes, dozens of original themes have been released by artists without any letters from Apple," Coyle says." -TFA

      Look at any themes site. There are hundreds of OSX rip-of
      • Perhaps you should read the paragraph after the one you quoted...

        As Coyle details in an editorial on his site (www.resexcellence.com/hack_html_01/04-23-01.shtm l [resexcellence.com]), this policy changed in April. Shortly after ResExcellence added its first theme for the Mac OS X, Coyle received a letter from Apple lawyers. Ultimately, Apple was placated by a few modifications ResExcellence made that were unrelated to the Mac OS X theme, but others did not get off so easily. In particular, Apple came down hard on MacThemes,

  • konfabulator (Score:1, Redundant)

    by iomud ( 241310 )
    This looks very much like konfabulator [konfabulator.com] for os x.
  • "most open source programs still start as tiny hobby projects after all" Of course they do. Ask Linus! BTW, Karamba is a fun little addon as well. :-)
  • This goes to show you that software development [slashdot.org] is alive and well!

  • This just smacks of "Active Desktop" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @12:46PM (#5882862) Homepage
    The only major difference being that one actually has the choice of what to put on their desktop, not some mega corporation that only wants to "push" a bunch of silly adds down our throat...

    Does anyone else remember "Active Desktop"? The premise is almost exactly what Karamba is. It gives the user the ability to display disparate information that is streamed to the computer over a network connection directly on the desktop, underneath applications.

    • And ActiveDesktop was MS's answer to Pointcast

    • I actualy used active desktop once (Score:4, Informative)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @01:12PM (#5883114) Homepage Journal
      No, you actually are the one controlling what's on the screen with AD, not MS. I actually used AD for a while on my laptop to keep a personal simple task list as an HTML page. It actually worked pretty well, but I stopped using last summer and never started back up, and last semester I switched to an old PDA. (this semester, I did nothing :P)

      AD could have been cool, but for some ungodly reason MS set things up so that if you use it, it made the desktop an actual IE window, so it refreshed slow as fuck (and therefore made the system seem amazingly slow when trying to move around windows) And it also made any scaled background images quite ugly by using nearest neighbor interpolation rather then bilinear filtering like the 'standard' background display.

      It was quite stupid.

    • C'mon, it's just a web page, you can put anything you want on your desktop using Active Desktop, it you can't find it you can always write your own stuff.

      • Want the latest slashdot headlines? Use ECMAScript and MSXML do pull down any RSS feed and render it (I've been doing this for 2 years).
      • Want useless stats about your computer (diskspace, cpu usage, memory) use scripting (FileSystemObject etc) or use COM to read from Perfmon, using COM in script is insanely easy.
      • Wanna check your POP/IMAP mail? Again use
  • Link [thelostolive.net] I installed it after seeing it @ KDE look site. Kinda cool and installed without an issue in RH8. There is a PIC of my desktop in the above link.

  • Portable apps come to Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alext ( 29323 ) on Monday May 05, 2003 @01:13PM (#5883124)
    Ah, Linux, dontcha luv it?

    How bizarre would it be if this means that developers finally find a reason to settle on a Linux VM (that's Python) as part of creating kewl desktop themes?

    Who needs a strategic plan anyway? And would Dotnet be enjoying more success if it offered semi-transparent weather reports?
  • How can one software project show that "most open source programs still start as tiny hobby projects"?
  • And for those who want to foster more cross pollination (in either direction), I present...

    Konfabulator [konfabulator.com]!

    I know, the K makes it look KDE... it isn't :)
  • Not trying to be a troll here or anything. But this program is really just something that looks nice in the screenshot, but is not really useful.

    I actually installed KDE last week, then Karaba and fiddled with both of them. The interesting thing was that I found that I could attach menu entries directly to the panel, like the "drawers" in CDE. But all they really were is just "links" to the regular menu items.

    Anyway here's what I really liked about KDE:
    1. Konqueror: its damn fast!
    2. graphics: KDE is ov
    • 1. No way to put a system monitor in the panel

      1. If you only want cpu usage + memory usage + swap usage, try adding an applet called "System Monitor" (panel menu | add | applet). If you need any other info try KSysGuard applet, this one can display from CPU temperature to network data... anything you want. Both come with the standard KDE distrib, one is in kde-addons the other mmm dunno... kde-admin maybe?

  • Billy Joewel [kdelook.org].

    ...Now if only it could verify the spelling of your Kazaa downloads.
  • aye carumba!
  • Here's a quick question I haven't been able to find an answer to: What happens is I run an Eterm session on top of this? If the background continues to update, and do it's thing behind my text session, I'm going to have to change my shorts.

    Anyone know? I haven't been able to find anything (yet)...

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