Eyes on Karamba 146
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."
Re:KDE Themes (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KDE Themes (Score:1)
Thanks again, Apple
Re:KDE Themes (Score:2)
Re:KDE Themes (Score:1)
Re:KDE Themes (Score:2)
Re:KDE Themes (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KDE Themes (Score:1)
http://www.kde-look.org/
Re:KDE Themes (Score:5, Informative)
What "theme" are you asking about? Icons? Window Decorations? Widgets? Colors?
There's a couple Mac-sh clones for icons, there's a few different ones (and a few of thoses) for the Window Decorations. And there's always Good ol' Mosfet's Liquid for the widgets. And there's a ton of color themes too (Mosfet included one or two in his Widget theme as well).
Just go to KDE-Look [kde-look.org]. You should find everything you need or want.
And depending on your distro, there's brobably RPM's, DEB'd, EBuilds, whatever for most of the stuff there. I personally use Gentoo. There's a LOT of EyeCandy that's made it's way into the Portage tree. If you're on RH... Well... They've never been too KDE friendly, but I'm sure there's some other stuff that will work on the system from rpmfind.net, should you feel that compiling is too great of a task.
Not to be complaining (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not to be complaining (Score:2)
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)
Re:Not to be complaining (Score:1, Informative)
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.
source compilation is easy (Score:1)
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.
Re:Not to be complaining (Score:2)
Um, this may be true, but it's designed to be scriptable in Python.
Re:Not to be complaining (Score:2)
Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Screenshots (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2)
what do you expect... they've just been slashdotted... He has to pay for his bandwidth. You could at least go through paypal and make a donation... or else done the decent thing and mirrored that page instead of just linking to it.
I'll go ahead and say it.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'll go ahead and say it.. (Score:2)
What's worse is that the author was punning with "Eye". This guy couldn't even get the quote, "Ay caramba!" correct. Even I may be off, but I know for certain it's not "Eyecaramba".
(ObOffTopic - How do I do an upside down bang in X? I kñöw móst còmbos.)
--
Evan
Re:I'll go ahead and say it.. (Score:1)
Other X11 systems should have a similar file for translations.
Another example of /. idiocy (Score:5, Informative)
"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."
Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:1, Offtopic)
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)
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)".
Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:1)
Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:1)
Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:2)
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
Re:Another example of /. idiocy (Score:2)
But it is also being used to create icon docks and other things.
Eye Candy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Eye Candy (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Eye Candy (Score:1)
I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:1)
And Active Desktop was a horrible waste of cpu cycles. Why even bother asking us if we wanted to restore active desktop everytime it crashed? Just do it!
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't understand why people want to use their desktops for pretty pictures or, worse, interfaces. Don't they have windows open?
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:1)
ive actually got part of my desktop showing except when emailing/surfing.
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:2)
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:1)
Re:I first saw this news item from Karamba... (Score:1)
Ah, that's tells me everything I needed to know, thanks! (Heh, I should talk. I've got an off/on project that uses MS Agent [talking Clippy] to do the same kind of things. Damned if I'd ever use it, but it's fun to work on.)
Karamba (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Karamba (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
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.
Re:Karamba (Score:1)
As a matter of fact, yes I AM expecting other people to develop content for me. They are the developers. I am the user.
Re:Karamba (Score:1)
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
Heh.. that's pretty much the goal of SuperKaramba. Interactive Karamba sensors.
Re:Karamba (Score:1)
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
What does it DO ? (Score:2)
Re:What does it DO ? (Score:2)
Re:Karamba (Score:4, Funny)
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!
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
You can already pretty much do that with Karamba.
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
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
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
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?
Re:Karamba (Score:2)
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)
Eyes on Karamba? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Eyes on Karamba? (Score:2)
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.
;) and this thing is totally reminding me of the first time I saw E.
That's how my Enlightenment experience went, anyways
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)
Re:Active Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
You can also use different languages (perl and python, from what I gather) to output/input information. Pretty neat stuff.
Re:Active Desktop (Score:1)
But I agree, I love the concept !
Re:Active Desktop (Score:1, Flamebait)
Active Desktop Evolutionary History (Score:1)
Old news... (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Old news... (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:SuperKaramba (Score:1, Insightful)
You didn't include any details.
What does it do and why should I care?
More eyecandy? Or something more useful?
Re:SuperKaramba (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SuperKaramba (Score:2)
Re:SuperKaramba (Score:3, Funny)
what is this "do" you speak of?
Gentoo ebuilds avalible. (Score:1, Informative)
Will Apple ask them to cease and desist? (Score:1, Flamebait)
.:diatonic:.
-1, Tired anti-Apple troll (Score:1)
" "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
Re:-1, Tired anti-Apple troll (Score:2)
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)
Re:konfabulator (Score:1)
Karamba (Score:2)
See??? (Score:1)
This just smacks of "Active Desktop" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:This just smacks of "Active Desktop" (Score:2)
I actualy used active desktop once (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:This just smacks of "Active Desktop" (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Link to mu mu mu my Karamba (Score:1)
Portable apps come to Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Flawed logic (Score:2)
For those interested in the competition... (Score:3, Insightful)
Konfabulator [konfabulator.com]!
I know, the K makes it look KDE... it isn't
My experience with this program! (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:My experience with this program! (Score:1)
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 (Score:1)
Billy Joewel [kdelook.org].
carumba (Score:1)
What does it do behind Eterm or the like? (Score:2)
Anyone know? I haven't been able to find anything (yet)...
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:2)
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:2)
Well, yeah, but since it's a 400mhz iMac I don't fancy building both
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:2)
Hmmm... well, it looks like we killed kde-look. But still, there is a posting of an ebuild for gentoo there from a couple weeks ago. I installed it and it compiled fine.
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:2)
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:1)
Oh... I hadn't realized that. I had manually added it a week or so ago. I guess I should emerge that one so updates will be a lot easier. I do run ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86", but it still wasn't available when I had the time to try it out.
At any rate, thanx, man!
Re:Looks excellent! (Score:2)