Category: Technology

KDE, Kontact, MS Exchange

Here are some more tips on using KDE Kontact with MS Exchange server:

First of all, when using Kontact with Exchange webdav (covers Calendar, Contacts, …) you need to be logged in into Exchange web-mail with konqueror, because Exchange gives only NTLM authentication for webdav. This is a bit uncomfortable but still… For instance I start konqueror, login to Exchange webmail, then minimize the konqueror, move is in some far corner and use Kontact.

Here comes one more problem – authentication times out in a while (possibly 15 minutes) and you have to go back to konqueror to relogin. I was tired of this and finally I have found an auto-reload plugin which does the job. So after I login to Exchange webmail, in Konqueror main menu go to \”Settings->Configure Extensions\”, Select \”Tools\” tab in the popup and enable the \”Auto Refresh Plugin\”. Then in Konqueror \”Tools\” menu, at the bottom, select \”Auto Refresh\” with the reasonable time interval.

I know this is kinda long and complicated way, but unfortunately I can not see any other better way of using Kontact with Exchange. Hopefully KDE team will make better integration some time later.

Another tip is how to use \”Common Contacts\” from Exchange in Kontact in addition to personal Exchange Contacts. The same way as you set up personal contacts, while adding a resource to contacts module of Kontact, give this webdav address: webdav[s]:///public/Common Contacts/

The only thing is in my case it makes Kontact a bit slower since this address contains around 10000 contacts in a row and parsing them is not so easy task :)

X Composite and KDE 3.5.1

I\’ve been playing around the Composite extension for X and KDE 3.5.1 today and I found great improvements over the last time I when I touched this issues. Now the transparency is much faster and shadows work very fast. I have made some snapshots to demonstrate the nice look (the images are quite big, around 1MB each):
snapshot1.jpg – inactive window
snapshot2.jpg – inactive and active window
snapshot3.jpg – two inactive windows one overlays the other.

All of these effects are rendered fast (with no lags and almost invisible delays when it comes to transparency) on my hardware:

3.2GHz Intel Pentium with 512RAM and Intel i915 integrated video chipset.

No more Gentoo, Fedora Core 5!

I was fed up with the installation process of Gentoo and dropped it. It take too long and I hate it. Instead, I downloaded Fedora Core 5 (test 2) and installed it. This is what I like and here is why:

1. Installation is very nice, strait forward. This time it is modified to be even more comfortable.

a. Packages chooser is better. Applications are now organized in a way that you do not need to check huge lists of packages. It is very nice this time

b. Timezone chooser is fancier :)

c. Firewall and SELinux parts of install are moved to firstboot – less stuff installation :)

2. It is complete, I do not need to tweak a lot. Right after install I get a full functional desktop which is quite fast on my IBM ThinkPad 390X (450MHz, 192RAM) even when running KDE.

I don\’t know, maybe someone likes spending hours (or even days) on setting one bloody PC, but it is definitely not for me.

Gentoo

I have decided to check the Gentoo distro these days. I want to try it on the laptop. From the first look (of universal LiveCD): fancy, fast, small.

I decided to install it and this is what I really not used to anymore – a sequence of lots of commands and operations for the installation. I need to format the disk (with fdisk) then extract lots of archives here and there and then even compile the kernel by hands (although there is some genkernel utility, the manual recommends doing it manually!). Too much stuff to do and the only thing that keeps me continuing the installation process is a very good documentation (just read the steps and do exactly what you are told to) and the hope that after all these customized compilations the system will be faster and more comfortable – will see :)

On the bad end I will get some experience with Gentoo myself and put Fedora Core 4 back :)