Kiara 07 Uploaded and Released

Download test in progress. As I always do, I'm downloading the image. I will burn and test a CD, test the CD, and report the results. 2009 11 25 19:39

Looks like I uploaded the wrong image.! It works fine, but it uses art that I rejected at the last minute, as being a little but garish. I'm going to try to find the rightimage and upload it. In the meantime, you can call this the limited edition "Red Velvet" Release!2009 11 26 18:23


New features include the Thunderbird 2 email application. New features specifically for Fluxbox include "Desktop Memo", a simple system for adding text notes to the desktop background by opening it in gimp, a homemade answer to the only KDE4 plasmoid I really love. Most of the pplication already had keybindings in Fluxbox, but the new menu shows the default keybindings on the menu for easy reference.

Kiara 06 This is the one you want!

KDE3.5.10, a turbocharged fluxbox, some awesome setup tools... and free! As in Freedom. As in Beer. As in KDE4 is very nice, but strictly voluntary. As in MicroWHO?

Tech Problems apparently resolved Yadda Yadda Yadda

I had some problems figuring out how mediafire worked, and so I put up a quick blogspot page for downloading. The problem started when I noticed, to my dismay, that more people were downloading the flawed 04 version than the much more solid 05 version. So now http://downloadkiara.blogspot.com is the only download link I'll be giving out, and when people go there, they'll immediately see which kiara is the new kiara.

Release notes on the fly (busy day)

Added (but not necessary tested) from the last release:

nano text editor 2.09

Kiara setup tools A directory on the root desktop, planned as a mixed bag of established desktop tools (e.g. kuser) homemade gui tools, scripts and documentation. Right now, the main object is helping the user get out of that scracthy slax root desktop, and into a nice safe comfortable normal user account.

kmount As part of the Kiara setup tools, My home made gui for manually mounting the hard drive partitions to the mount points I added last week. I know; "Kmount" sounds a lot like an official KDE application. What can I say? I couldn't think of a decent name, and at the last minute, I panicked. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Whatever you call it, it's a great simple tool for manually mounting your hard drive, based on konqueror.
***EDIT: I decided that, in retrospect, I shouldn't put on such airs. This interface isn't "based on" Konqueror; it's Konqueror. It doesn't get a name.

A link to this website from the KDE desktop


A "storage media" link on the root desktop

Other changes:
Fixed the "oscar" setup script by taking out the login prompt.

Removed the "Mount" submenus from the fluxbox menu and added "edit menu" and "edit keybinding"
buttons to a prominent place in the main menu.

IMPORTANT: I removed all instances of Firefox except for the most recent, which runs from the home directory.
In KDE you can run it from the desktop Icon, or you can type "sh firefox/firefox or you can create some kind of link.
In fluxbox, I believe that the whole menu is set up to run the present version of firefox, but you'll need to remember these circumstances if you add your own link.

Cautiously ecstatic about Kiara 05!

The boot screen. I can imagine you asking: Back in the saddle again? What the hell does it mean? I dunno. It just seemed right, and looking at it now, it still seems right. I was thinking of Aerosmith when I wrote it.

I've uploaded, and now I've tested the link by downloading and burning a copy from the download. It looks pretty awesome, with a big caveat being that it's running on the machine it was built on by the guy who built it for thge purposes it was built for. As we all know, Oh how your milage may vary!

Kiara 04 Finally Uploaded!

Download the LIVE CD

Big News in the little World of Kiara GNU/Linux! The new release features a return to KDE3.5.10 as the default desktop, a better organized fluxbox menu, and something that I've always thought a live CD should have... mount points!


Mount Points, You Say?

Kiara's added mount points are nothing more than six empty directories located just inside of / (root) When you mount a hard drive, flash drive, or other device, the data essentially takes plugs into that space. The if I mount my usb hard drive /dev/sda1, to /files, everything in that hard drive is now /files. I like this better than the automatic mounting, which is easy enough, but generates a directory like /mnt/dev/sda1 of /media/dev/sda1. In my opinion, it's worth the extra effort of mounting manually to only have to deal with a url like /files /backup, or even /1.

It's especially helpful if you like to mess around with different distros, and if you like to write scripts that refer to the contents of your external hardrives, and use the same script in different distros. If I create the moun points and manually mount them, the same device that is automatically mounted as /dev/sda1 in a Slackware based distro like Kiara, and is /dev/sdb1 in Kubuntu, can be /files in both of them. This makes writing a script to run on the same hardware with two different distros a lot simpler.

And now I don't have to set the mount points manually every time I boot the Kiara CD. They are a permanent part of the filesystem.

Now, I created a menu addon for mounting the files by clicking for fluxbox. It works nice, but there's a catch. You have to have to be set up to use sudo without any password. Other than that, needs some work.

The special kiara mount points are:



/files /backup /1 /2 /3 /4


Here's a clickable thumbnail of a screenshot from Konqueror. The mount points are indicated with a red astirisk.



The command for mounting a device to the mount points is like this (as root, or with sudo):

mount /dev/sda1 /files


Two versions of Firefox?

Yep! Kiara 04 contains two different versions of the popular Mozilla Firefox Web Browser, and this will no doubt cause some consternation if anyone ever downloads it. Lately, the Firefox upgrades have been relentless. As of Thursday Night, when I was preparing the *.iso, Firefox 3.5.3 was the most recent version of Firefox that was available in English as a Slax module. As far as I can tell, Firefox 3.5.5 was released that same evening, since tht was when I started to get messages telling me to upgrade. It's located in the home directory, and in KDE can be accessed only by clicking on the firefox icon on the Desktop, or manually launched from the command line, for example by typing sh firefox/firefox from a terminal in the ~ (home) directory. The Kiara fluxbox menu was already edited to launch firefox from the home directory, and so fluxbox will probably use the never version for everything.

Technical Problems blah blah blah

Today's release of Kiara 04 is being held up by repeated broken attempts at uploads. I don't know what the problem is, but I'm going to keep plugging away until Kiara is hosted online. This is a pretty exciting release, including a last minute return to KDE 3.5.10 as the defualt desktop. It seems like I've done nothing today except attempt more uploads. Watch this space.