#linux netrunner

Hello and welcome again to my Linux Life.  So since we last had words I have been playing with a few different new programs.

First I was trying to look at a few updated Distros using Virtualbox.  I do this from time to time as it is interesting to see what is happening in the other distros even if I am not using them.  So I was looking at a few that were KDE Plasma based.

The three distros in question were ArcoLinux D Plasma, Netrunner 19.01 and Mageia 7 Beta 1.  Now it seems Virtualbox has a real issue with KDE Plasma it refuses to start it with the Virtualbox Arch modules.  Apparently if you use the DKMS versions it works fine but that would mean resetting up Virtualbox which is a pain.

So I had to use VMWare Workstation for Linux.  For one I didn’t even know it existed and two didn’t know if it worked with Arch.  Sure enough it is in the AUR so I attempted to install it.

So I installed Mageia 7 and sure enough VMWare works with Arch and will run KDE Plasma fine in its VMs.

By the way Mageia 7 is quite nice if I ever was going to run a system that was not a rolling release it’s not a bad one. Netrunner 19.01 is pretty to look at but I hate the KDE Neon Menu system it’s worse than Gnome 3.  As for ArcoLinux D Plasma I am yet to test it, hopefully ArcoLinux have sorted their repository issues which is why I had to leave it in the first place.

Now VMWare is a proprietary software but it is also owned by Microsoft so it gets much more up to date support.  Now sure you could argue that Virtualbox is owned by Oracle so should be able to keep up to date but it does not seem to.

All this playing with KDE Plasma made me realise how much I really dislike KDE Plasma.  It’s not that its UI is bad it’s quite nice to look at.  It’s the fact that it is a resource hog, it is slow and I don’t like its silly widget based setup which seem to crash at the slightest twitch.

Maybe running it in a VM doesn’t give it, the best platform but even when I have ran it on actual bare metal hardware it really has issues with my Nvidia graphics cards.  

Now I admit I don’t run high end graphics cards because I won’t pay the ludicrous prices for them and as I am not really a major gamer I don’t get any advantage from doing so.

I used to like KDE and earlier versions seemed a lot better I remember using OpenSUSE years ago with KDE 3.0 and it was fine.  It just seems like for all of the alleged improvements it seems to have got worse rather than better.

Mind you as I said in one of my previous episodes I suffered a similar problem when I ran Arcolinux D Cinnamon.  The newest version of Cinnamon (version 4.0) seems a lot less stable and has many bugs which I am sure they will sort in time but presently made it unusable for a daily driver.

Especially as I run an Arch based system I have no issues with regular updates and even have become quite adept at fixing minor issues but sometimes updating the whole system such as KDE and Cinnamon has done it no favours.

Now I am sure there are those out there who will say it’s because I am not running the latest and greatest Nvidia cards and drivers that such issues exist.  Well I would like to believe that would be the case and if I could get my hands on the appropriate hardware I am more than happy to be proved wrong.

Does KDE work better on new graphics cards?  Is my system just too old?  

Speaking of desktops I had a minor issue with MATE recently due to Antergos updating a  file.  The file in question was exempi which is apparently a library file.  I have no problems in updates as I said earlier but it then caused a few issues such as caja would not load or any icons on the desktop.

After trying caja in the terminal I discovered it could not find exempi.so.3.  Luckily it’s an easy fix using the ln -s command and once restored the link and rebooted.

Now this was using a bit of my old knowledge from earlier Linux days when links did not always set themselves up.  However if I was pretty new to Linux this would not have been easily apparent what to do next.

Moving on so one thing I used to use on Windows was Xara Studio and I know many moons ago Xara did attempt a Linux version.  Now before you tell me I know some of its code got transferred into the Inkscape application.  I have used Inkscape.

However I wondered if the Xara Xtreme Linux edition was still available.  Well the answer my friends is it still is in the AUR and okay I had to install two lib32 dependencies to get it to install.

Sure enough I now have it on my current day Antergos desktop.  It will never be updated as Xara have moved back to Windows and are now owned by Magix I think.  Overall it is a bit of nostalgic fun that works and I can play with vector art using it.    

Its good that Xara attempted working with Linux and hopefully if all goes according to news Adobe are thinking about re-looking at whether Linux is seen as viable platform for them.  If they decide yes that will be interesting.

Not having Photoshop for me while not the end of the world is a bit inconvenient I have spent much time using it when I was working on projects and I know how to do several interesting tricks in it.

For as much as I have used GIMP and Krita and they can do certain things well there is still several things I can’t get it them to do.  It’s not because what I do is complicated it’s just I lack the skills in these to do it.  Now I could spend weeks learning this programs and have learned some things in them.

However I just don’t want to dedicate the time relearning something just because I have not got the program.  For all Photoshop is seen as a pariah in the Linux community as it proprietary software it is a fundamental base to the main graphics industry.

Is Photoshop big, unwieldy and unnecessarily complex.  Yes but many people have learned its ways and now doing it any other way seems complicated.

Would having Adobe software benefit Linux?  Well it would definitely help several people decide to adopt it that’s for certain.

Got an issue with it being Adobe and proprietary.  Then don’t use it, don’t install it, simple as that.  

At the moment I don’t really have a need for Adobe software as I am not doing anything that requires major artistic work, unlike when I was writing Amigaville.  So I don’t miss it but at times it would be handy if I could just do so with out waiting forever to wait for Wine to start if I want Photoshop.

I don’t have Photoshop installed on this machine currently which I can get certain versions working in Wine as I have done in the past but not really necessary at this time.

Anyway I think I have flogged a dead horse long enough.  Will Adobe come to Linux? If it does, it does I won’t hold my breath.