The quest for a pure KDE computer

[claydoh]

Don't let reviews of applications stop you from trying some new stuff, Calligra in particular.At least check the dates/versions mentioned. Calligra has one huge bugaboo in yhat it does NOT export to .doc.etc. I do not quite understand what you mean by cell line sizes in LO specifically so I cannot comment on that. But if you want or need MS compatibility, LO/OOo is the only choice.

Yakuake is nice and transparent here as well

vlc is written in Qt, so it is related to KDE

Kopete is basically unmaintained, though for anything other than facebook and google (which only takes a couple of steps) my yahoo, msn, jabber, icq, and aim accounts all worked last I used it (when I remember the login info on some of 'em,lol)
Telepathy-kde is new, and good replacement, despite not currently as feature rich. Don't let the non-gui gstreamer/gnome libraries fool you.

The quest for DE purity is the never ending battle, and in my opinion one that will never be won, the only question is how far can one go, or is willing to go. I say this as a long time DE purist, going back 12 years. Gimp, Libreoffice, avidemux, Devede, and Gpodder for me simply have no equivalent that works for me well enough. Just as Ktorrent, Amarok, Kontact, Quassel-client/core have no peer (imo) on non-KDE environments. As Kubuntu's choices are made to bring the most features useful to the widest audience using KDE technology, I think we have the best setup around.

Now, having just spent a time using Lubuntu, which uses a mix of Lxde, Gnome, Xfce, and Openbox applications and configuration tools, I found that the differences between them and the "lack" of everything tied together didn't slow me down. The cpu on the old box, however.......

[SteveRiley]

but there are still some times when I have to fall back on VLC which just kind of does its own thing. It doesnt follow the themes I set, it doesnt like the icons I choose, and it looks like crap at all times. If Dragon player advanced just a little more, VLC would be gone.

Give Bangarang a try. It's KDE-native, and looks rather nice.

The only thing that keeps me tied to VLC is the ability to alter playback speed. I listen to/watch a fair number of pod/vodcasts. Most people simply speak too slowly. With a few presses of the right square-bracket key, I can crank VLC's playback speed to 2x, which allows me to get through a lot more material. I can't find any other KDE/Qt media player that does this, which surprises me -- it seems like a rather basic feature.

But if you want or need MS compatibility, LO/OOo is the only choice.

This is why I wish the Calligra folks and the Libre Office folks would collaborate more closely. They already share native document formats. I wish Calligra could incorporate whatever's in LO that does a better job of interoperating with OOXML -- then I could stop carrying around a Windows VM!

[whatthefunk]

Calligra has one huge bugaboo in yhat it does NOT export to .doc.etc.

Thats a deal breaker there.

Kopete is basically unmaintained, though for anything other than facebook and google (which only takes a couple of steps) my yahoo, msn, jabber, icq, and aim accounts all worked last I used it (when I remember the login info on some of 'em,lol)
Telepathy-kde is new, and good replacement, despite not currently as feature rich. Don't let the non-gui gstreamer/gnome libraries fool you.

Last time I tried to connect to MSN using Kopete it told me I had to receive a verification code from Microsoft and tried connecting to the internet to get one. Purge. I tried Telepathy but it takes for ever to connect and keeps insisting that I use the ridiculous kwallet program. Kmess is only for MSN but thats what I normally use so it works for me. Its a nice program. I would love to see it expand and accommodate more IM networks.

[Xplorer4x4]

The quest for DE purity is the never ending battle, and in my opinion one that will never be won, the only question is how far can one go, or is willing to go. I say this as a long time DE purist, going back 12 years. Gimp, Libreoffice, avidemux, Devede, and Gpodder for me simply have no equivalent that works for me well enough. Just as Ktorrent, Amarok, Kontact, Quassel-client/core have no peer (imo) on non-KDE environments. As Kubuntu's choices are made to bring the most features useful to the widest audience using KDE technology, I think we have the best setup around.

Hey claydoh, fyi there is a Qt version of avidemux available. Although in my experience the GTK version integrates just fine with KDE for some reason.

[claydoh]

avidemuxes both have exactly the same layouts etc. The gtk version looks good in kubuntu because of the gtk+ theme engine that gives it a kde look and icon set.

I had forgotten the Qt ui, which was I think done for the Windows version. Last I tried it it was crashy, unstable, and didn't run well , so that choice for my list of apps is not a good one anymore

[Xplorer4x4]

What I was talking about with the GTK version is that it seems to inherit the desktop theme with out gtk+. If gtk+ is installed, it then takes the theme from gtk+. Also the GUI is not exactly the same, pretty similar but slightly different in terms of the buttons on the tool bar. As for stability, last time I used the Qt version it worked just fine, but I haven't used it all that extensively tbh. Either way I was just throwing it out there in case the Qt version was a newer development you weren't aware of.

[SecretCode]

The only thing that keeps me tied to VLC is the ability to alter playback speed. I listen to/watch a fair number of pod/vodcasts. Most people simply speak too slowly. With a few presses of the right square-bracket key, I can crank VLC's playback speed to 2x, which allows me to get through a lot more material. I can't find any other KDE/Qt media player that does this, which surprises me -- it seems like a rather basic feature.

I'm with you on that

[addegsson]

IM - Kde Telepathy is awesome.
Web Browser - Latest Rekonq works fantastic.
Video - Smplayer is my #1 choice. I'm also a fan of Bangarang.
Audio - Clementine/Amarok.
Office - Calligra is a great alternative to LibreOffice, and I actually prefer it to LibreOffice. Clean, fast and has a modern user interface.

[HalationEffect]

The only thing that keeps me tied to VLC is the ability to alter playback speed. I listen to/watch a fair number of pod/vodcasts. Most people simply speak too slowly. With a few presses of the right square-bracket key, I can crank VLC's playback speed to 2x, which allows me to get through a lot more material. I can't find any other KDE/Qt media player that does this, which surprises me -- it seems like a rather basic feature.

http://www.getdeb.net/software/UMPlayer

It's Qt based, uses Mplayer as its backend, and included among its many, many* features is adjustable playback speed ([ and ] to adjust playback speed by -10% / +10%, or { and } to halve or double playback speed)

* Auto subtitles search, auto a/v sync, auto subtitle/audio sync, youtube playback & recording, remembers custom settings for files you've played before, etc, etc, etc.

[SteveRiley]

It's Qt based, uses Mplayer as its backend, and included among its many, many* features is adjustable playback speed

Hm, looks worth checking out, thanks.

I was under the impression that MPlayer is no longer maintained. I guess that's wrong, then?

[Snowhog]

News


2012-06-10, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.1 released
posted by the release team

Seems to be 'alive and well'

[HalationEffect]

I'm glad that MPlayer is still alive; it's nice to have a 3rd option to choose from other than Gstreamer and VLC. To be honest, I still lament the loss of Xine...

[woodsmoke]

For those who have their chops from #! back when it was Debian, Mplayer was THE......music player of choice! just shows how old I am! lol

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Thought I'd chime in with an update.

I've always made it a habit to install the complete libav-tools package, along with their various -extra dependencies for codecs, device handling, postprocessing filters/scalers, demuxers, and utilities. I had not realized that MPlayer -- or the newer fork, MPlayer2 -- was a logical companion to LibAV. Together, these collections appear to offer an extremely complete toolkit for manipulating media files.

All that remains is to find a pretty GUI. Upon HalationEffect's suggestion, I looked at UMPlayer. Even though there's a 12.04 version on GetDeb, the files at UMPlayer's home on SourceForge are older. I was curious to see what other kinds of GUI front-ends might be available.

The facility to control playback speed is actually a feature of MPlayer itself. When watching a video using the command-line tool, the square bracket keys increase and decrease the player speed. Unfortunately, without an extra switch on the command line, the audio frequency isn't scaled, so people's voices start to sound like mice! This is easy to fix:

mplayer [B]-af scaletempo[/B] [i]/path/to/video.ext[/i]

The *buntu repository offers several KDE and/or Qt front ends. KPlayer and KMplayer appeared to be obvious choices. Unfortunately, neither of these front-ends will pass every keyboard shortcut to the underlying MPlayer. The square bracket keys are ignored. Finally I found SMPlayer. It's Qt only (no KDE libraries), is still under active development, and -- most importantly -- passes all keyboard shortcuts to MPlayer. Woo hoo!

See ya, VLC.

[whatthefunk]

Im gradually making the move from Opera to Rekonq. Its come a long way since I last used it. The only major hang up I have with it is that it requires KWallet. Does anybody know if there is a way to export Opera passwords and then import them to kwallet?