Hey everyone, I am riding 100 miles (161 km) for Chicago’s 2012 Tour de Cure. My goal this year is to raise $1,500, because last year I was blown out of the water by the generosity of the people at my mom’s work, the KDE community, the cycling community, and a few friends. So, if 300 of you donated the minimum $5, I would make my goal Last year I had a blast doing this ride and completed it in 6.5 hours. My other goal this year is to finish it in under 6 hours.

To donate, you can click on the Support image above, or go to my Tour de Cure page. Scroll down, and on the right hand side you will see “CLICK HERE TO SPONSOR ME”, click it. I appreciate any and all help!

Donate To My Tour de Cure 2012 Ride is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

• World War I and II History
• President Obama
• Microsoft Windows
• Your fancy case for a stupid iPad
• US Politics
• And so much more…

I don’t know what happened this week, but I received serious inquiries about the topics I listed above. I replied to all of you nicely this time, so quit emailing me back asking why. If you are the guest blogger type and actually read through my blog, then this is for you. KICK ROCKS! Go guest blog elsewhere!

No Guest Bloggers Wanted or Needed is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

Kubuntu 12.04 has been released into the wild today. Once again, I had absolutely nothing to do with this release.

The Kubuntu community is proud to announce the release of 12.04 LTS, the Precise Pangolin: the new Long Term Support version of our friendly operating system.

Check out the Release Notes for much more information on this release.

Viva La Kubuntu

I am certain that this release proves that the Kubuntu community is as strong as ever. They showed up for work, and serious work at that, in the face of adversity, with all the negative commentary floating around the interwebs. I am proud of each contributor in the community, and that includes Ubuntu as well. Congratulations everyone on a job well done!

Welcome Blue Systems

With that, I am very excited to see what the new sponsorship by Blue Systems brings. I have witnessed what their sponsorship has provided to Linux Mint, and that excites me even more knowing that Kubuntu will have that same sort of support. Here is to the future of Kubuntu and Blue Systems!

If you aren’t using Kubuntu, I highly recommend you check it out. If you are using Kubuntu and appreciate what you were given, it would be wonderful for you all to say “thank you” and show some love. I think every contributor deserves at least that, and I feel that every user deserves that same amount of gratitude. If it weren’t for the users there would be no need for all of this.

To download Kubuntu, head on over to the Get Kubuntu page. There they offer you the options to buy CDs and/or DVDs, or download Kubuntu the regular way and the BitTorrent way. If you are good at Googling, you can also find local mirrors in which you can download from as well. Here in Chicago, I have a few options that give much faster access to the ISOs as well as the repositories. Check your local universities, government agencies, and telecommunication corporations for a mirror.

Thank you once again to everyone involved with this release. From the developers to the bug reporters, and even to the complainers and naysayers, THANK YOU!

Kubuntu 12.04 Released is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

• Politicians: “We’re not Evil”
• Google: “Neither are we!”
• Emacs: “We’re still a text editor”
• Vim: “So are we!”
• Kubuntu: “We’re not Ubuntu”
• I can do this all day…

Linux: “We’re not GNU” is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.

A question I have been coming across a lot lately has been, “How do I get Dropbox to work with KDE?” Most have probably noticed that when you go to the Dropbox website and go to download it, it is for GNOME and the Nautilus file manager. Unfortunately for us KDE users, we don’t use Nautilus. Or I could say fortunately for us KDE users, but I am sure that will start all kinds of flame wars in the comments. Instead, KDE utilizes Dolphin as its file manager. I will use this post to show you how to quickly get Dropbox installed and up-and-running in KDE, without the use of the terminal or command line.

NOTE: In this tutorial I am using the Rekonq web browser for KDE. At the time of this tutorial, it is the default web browser for Kubuntu.

NOTE: After completing the Download Dropbox selection below, you can scroll down to the bottom of this post to see how to do all of this via the command line. It is actually really simple and much faster. If you are uncomfortable with the command line, then follow this post completely, minus the end where I show you the command line way of course.

Download Dropbox

Here are the links to the latest Dropbox downloads. NOTE: these links will always be the latest version of Dropbox, so if you come here next year, this simple howto will still be valid. If anything changes, I will make sure to update this page:

• 32-bit Dropbox Linux Client
• 64-bit Dropbox Linux Client

Clicking on one of the links above will pop up the Save As dialog. Click the Save As button.

In the Save As dialog, click the Home button and select the Downloads folder to save the file in.

Extract the Dropbox archive

The file that is downloaded for Dropbox is known as a tarball. It is similar to a Zip file if you are coming from the Windows world. To extract this file we will use Ark, KDE’s archiving tool. To open Ark, click on the menu button, select the Applications tab, scroll down to the Utilities section and click it, then once that is open you should see Archiving Tool or Ark depending on how your distribution has it in the menu. Once Ark is open, click on the Open button. Here you will be presented with an Open Dialog where you can select the file that you downloaded. Navigate to your Home/Downloads directory and select the Dropbox file.

Once the file has opened in Ark, the next thing to do is extract it. To do this click the Extract button towards the top. The only option you should have is Extract To…

Select it and you will be presented with the Extract dialog where you can select the location you want to extract it to. Select your username in the folder list, as this is where you want to extract it to.

Configure Dropbox to run at start-up

You will definitely want Dropbox to start every time you log into your computer. To do this is really easy. Open System Settings by going to the KDE menu once again. Most distributions stick the System Settings icon in your Favorites tab, so when you click the menu button, you should see it right away. Click it if you do. If you do not see it, don’t worry. You will need to go to the Applications tab, scroll down to the Settings section, and in there you should see System Settings. Click it to open it. Once it is open at the bottom, in the System Administration section, there should be an icon labeled, Startup and Shutdown. Click it. Once that is open, in the right pane you should see 5 buttons. You want to select the button labeled Add Script…. This will pop up a small dialog for you to select the Dropbox script we want to run at startup.

Click the small folder to the right of the text input box. You should be presented with a System Settings open dialog. In order to see the folder and script that was extracted from the Dropbox download, we need to make sure that Show Hidden Files is selected.

Once all files are showing, click the .dropbox-dist folder and scroll until you see the file named dropboxd.

NOTE: Select dropboxd, not dropbox, as shown in the above image.

Once you have selected it click OK if needed, now you should be back at the small popup dialog. Go ahead and click the OK button. You should be back to the main System Settings window now.

You can close out of System Settings now.

Running Dropbox for the first time

Open Dolphin, the file manager, by going to the KDE menu button and under Applications, System, there should be a menu item labeled either File Manager or Dolphin. Click it. Once Dolphin is open and in your Home folder, we will need to view all hidden files again. To do this, click the View menu item and about half way down is the Show Hidden Files item. Click it. Now you should see all hidden files and folders. You will want to find the folder named .dropbox-dist and click it.

Scroll down until you see the file named dropboxd. Note once again that it is dropboxd that you want.

You will now be presented with the Dropbox application setup dialog. Go through and answer the questions.

That’s it, Dropbox is up and running and will start every time you log into your desktop. If all went well you should see the Dropbox icon in your System Tray.

Install the quick way with the command line

Now that you have the Dropbox file downloaded to your computer, open up your terminal (Konsole is the default in KDE) and type the following commands, or copy & paste the following (you should see 4 lines total):

cd
tar -xf Downloads/dropbox*.gz
ln -s .dropbox-dist/dropboxd .kde/Autostart/dropboxd
.dropbox-dist/dropboxd &

That’s all folks, enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!

Dropbox for KDE is a post from Richard A. Johnson's blog.