Ernies Tech Thoughts

For many years now I have been a very happy KDE user when it came to a Linux desktop. Not that I have anything against Gnome, but KDE just felt right. So for a while now I have been looking forward to KDE4 as a big jump to even better functionality, ease of use etc. The KDE developers have been very open that KDE4 is still rough around the edges, but the best way to get the most users and widest use is to take away beta from the title and let it go. Now KDE 3.5 is serving me fine, but with the release of Kubuntu 8.04, this way the chance to give the new KDE a real go. (more…)

Back in the dark ages when i did all my dev work on a Windows machine, my FTP client of choice was FileZilla. It was one thing I missed in the Linux world. gFTP was ok, but sometimes flakey, and Konqueror did the job, but the layout was not as good as FileZilla.

So now the great news. Filezilla 3 is in beta not just for Windows, but also Linux. I am running 3.0.0-beta7, available in the Kubuntu Universe repository. So far smooth and reliable.

They promised April 19th and they have delivered. Kubuntu 7.04 has been released. Right now it is downloading (700Mb takes a while even on broadband). I have been looking forward to this with upgraded and new apps, especially K3b and the possibility to try out snapshots of KDE4.

I have a number of different mail accounts which I read using Mozilla Thunderbird. Each time a new account is added it appears at the bottom of the mail list. One new account I wanted to move near the top, but Thunderbird does not give an option to reorder accounts. The answer is to edit prefs.js file. On Linux systems ~/.thunderbird/<your profile>/prefs.js, and for Windows C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<your profile>\pref.js

Look for a line like: user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account3,account2,account5,account4,account1");
This is the line you will need to modify.

So what does account3 mean and which email account does it match?
In the lines above you will find something like: user_pref("mail.account.account3.identities", "id2");. If the id was 2, search in the prefs.js file for user_pref("mail.identity.id2.useremail". This will give you the matching email address.

One little extra if you wish to make a certain email address at the top. It needs to be made the default. See the line starting with: user_pref("mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount"

Remember, only edit this file while Thunderbird is closed.

Don’t forget software freedom day this Saturday the 16th. Plenty going on in Sydney, and the rest of Australia. Unfortunately all this weekend I locked up in small business course so will miss the talks and events. But if you some spare time on Staurday, find out what is going on in your local area, and drop in.