KDE 4.0 the holy grail of Desktops ?

A couple of weeks back, I was greeted by the news of a very interesting project having been moved to KDE base. The project in question is a file manager named Dolphin. What is unique about this file manager is that it is light weight, is simple to navigate without overwhelming the Computer neophytes but at the same time does not sacrifice much functionality.

In fact, I installed Dolphin on my machine which has only one window manager namely Xfce. I do not have KDE on this machine. And normally, my experience is that while running KDE applications in non-KDE window managers, the applications suffer some latency at the time of start up. But I was surprised to see that Dolphin started as quickly as any other application. I would so much as say it was even quicker to start up than its equivalent Gnome file manager Nautilus in Gnome. I do not want to start anything by comparing one file manager with another. But let me say this, Dolphin is as easy and simple to use as the Gnome file manager.

Fig: Dolphin file manager with three different file views including split panes.

On concerns shared by the power users who have grown to love the present default file manager in KDE namely Konquorer, this is what Aaron.J.Seigo - the lead developer of KDE project had to say - and I quote :

So, what is the point of dolphin? First, I think it's obvious to everyone that konqueror kicks some pretty serious ass. The downside is that it's really tuned for a particular category of power users. Our plan is therefore to introduce a file manager that is aimed at the rest of the masses and tuned specifically for file management. Where does this leave konqueror? As a power user's app and generally useful multi-function tool. i expect we will continue to ship konqueror in its current form, modulo kde4 improvements to the ui and guts.

From the above statement, I have inferred two things namely :

1. The KDE users who have the mind set of Linus Torvalds need not worry as the new KDE (4.0) will still have all the features that make it the favorite of power users. And more importantly ...
2. The KDE team is making a pitched effort to rein in rest of the people which includes the grandmas and grandpas of this world by providing them an alternate file manager which doesn't overwhelm them.
   

I am sure you will agree with me that a file manager forms one of the most frequently used application in any desktop. You can't think of a OS or desktop devoid of a file manager. And by integrating the light weight file manager Dolphin into the KDE base, the KDE team is sending out a strong signal that it aims to be a Desktop fit for all kinds of people namely the power users and the grandma kinds alike.

Indeed if this trend is duplicated across other KDE applications, KDE 4.0 could very well end up as the holy grail of Desktops.

A sneak preview of the expected features in KDE 4.0

Ever wonder what KDE 4.0 is going to look like when it is finally released some time this year ? As far as end users should be concerned, it is going to be much more beautiful, responsive and usable than KDE 3.5.

Some of the features that it will have are as follows:

KDE 4.0 is perceived to make extensive use of SVG (SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics) for images instead of non scalable pixmap that is used now. For example, in KDE 3.5.x, games artwork are in pixmap and are at best lackluster. But we can see some great artwork in games in KDE 4.0 which will be using SVG.

Fig: Kreversi game in KDE 3.x and 4.0 respectively

Fig: KMajhong game in KDE 3.x and 4.0

Fig: Ksysguard in KDE 3.x and 4.0

The start menu is going to be redesigned. The sneak preview released indicates that it will have inner tabs and the applications will be grouped dynamically taking into consideration the usage of the person. Update (09-Jan-2007): A number of people have written to point out that the menu for KDE 4.0 while it just might incorporate some of the features of the kickoff menu shown below, has not been finalized yet, rather work is going on and it is developed implementing the Qt 4.2 libraries. The new menu is known by the name Raptor (More details here).

Fig: Sneak preview of the start menu in KDE 4.0

KDE 4.0 will replace the present DCOP inter process communication (IPC) system with a more advanced version built from grounds up known as D-Bus. IPC is a system which lets different applications communicate with each other.

KDE 4.0 will feature an API layer called Solid which will interact with projects like the hardware abstraction layer to let hardware connect smoothly with KDE.

KDE 4.0 will feature better multimedia experience through a project called Phonon which will collaborate with Solid. So no more need to choose multimedia backends as the Phonon API will take care of it.

Plasma will provide the next generation desktop experience in KDE 4.0. It is planned to integrate three separate applications namely the Kicker (Panel), KDesktop and Super Karamba (Widgets) into a single application. And the surprise of all things is that it will be possible to run the beautiful Dashboard widgets of Mac OSX in KDE 4.0.

KDE 4.0 will sport a brand new icon set created by the Oxygen project.

The KDE developers are working to provide a better communication experience through the project named Decibel. Through this project, it will be possible to provide integrated chat and phone communication including with networks such as MSN, Jabber and Skype.

And lastly, the Akonadi project intends to design a extensible cross-desktop storage service for PIM data and media-data to communicate with KDE, Gnome, POP, and IMAP through the same storage protocol. And this will be available in KDE 4.0.

But the biggest change is going to be inside the hood so to speak. KDE 4.0 will be using Qt 4.2 library which brings with it its own extensive set of improvements. For instance, Qt 4 is designed to save lots of memory and will perform faster. Besides the speed improvement, Qt 4 has a lot of other features and some things are simplified. So programmers need less time to develop applications which run in KDE 4.0.

And since Qt 4 library has been released under GPL, one can look forward to KDE 4.0 being ported to Windows and Mac OSX. Earlier versions of Qt is available under GPL only on unix/X11 and is released under a commercial license for development in Windows and Mac OSX . So KDE 3.x and earlier which uses Qt 3.x found it difficult to be ported to these platforms.

Various ways of detecting rootkits in GNU/Linux

Consider this scenario... Your machine running GNU/Linux has been penetrated by a hacker without your knowledge and he has swapped the passwd program which you use to change the user password with one of his own. His passwd program has the same name as the real passwd program and works flawlessly in all respects except for the fact that it will also gather data residing on your machine such as the user details each time it is run and transmit it to a remote location or it will open a back door for outsiders by providing easy root access and all the time, you will not be aware of its true intention. This is an example of your machine getting rooted - another way of saying your machine is compromised. And the passwd program which the hacker introduced into your machine is a trojaned rootkit.

A rootkit is a collection of tools a hacker installs on a victim computer after gaining initial access. It generally consists of network sniffers, log-cleaning scripts, and trojaned replacements of core system utilities such as ps, netstat, ifconfig, and killall.

Hackers are not the only ones who are found to introduce rootkits in your machine. Recently Sony - a multi billion dollar company, was found guilty of surreptitiously installing a rootkit when a user played one of their music CDs on Windows platform.This was designed *supposedly* to stop copyright infringement. And leading to a furore world wide, they withdrew the CD from the market.

Detecting rootkits on your machine running GNU/Linux
I know of two programs which aid in detecting whether a rootkit has been installed on your machine. They are Rootkit Hunter and Chkrootkit.

Rootkit Hunter

This script will check for and detect around 58 known rootkits and a couple of sniffers and backdoors and make sure that your machine is not infected with these. It does this by running a series of tests which check for default files used by rootkits, wrong file permissions for binaries, checking the kernel modules and so on. Rootkit Hunter is developed by Michael Boelen and has been released under a GPL licence.

Installing Rootkit Hunter is easy and involves downloading and unpacking the archive from its website and then running the installer.sh script logged in as root user.

Fig: Rootkit Hunter checking for rootkits on a Linux machine.

Once installed, you can run rootkit hunter to check for any rootkits infecting your computer using the following command:

# rkhunter -c

The binary rkhunter is installed in the /usr/local/bin directory and one needs to be logged in as root to run this program. Once the program is executed, it conducts a series of tests as follows :

• MD5 tests to check for any changes
• Checks the binaries and system tools for any rootkits
• Checks for trojan specific characteristics
• Checks for any suspicious file properties of most commonly used programs
• Carries out a couple of OS dependent tests - this is because rootkit hunter supports multiple OSes.
• Scans for any promiscuous interfaces and checks frequently used backdoor ports.
• Checks all the configuration files such as those in the /etc/rc.d directory, the history files, any suspicious hidden files and so on. For example, in my system, it gave a warning to check the files /dev/.udev and /etc/.pwd.lock .
• Does a version scan of applications which listen on any ports such as the apache web server, procmail and so on.
  

After all this, it outputs the results of the scan and lists the possible infected files, incorrect MD5 checksums and vulnerable applications if any.

Fig: Another screenshot of rootkit hunter conducting a series of tests.

On my machine, the scanning took 175 seconds. By default, rkhunter conducts a known good check of the system. But you can also insist on a known bad check by passing the '--scan-knownbad-files' option as follows :

# rkhunter -c --scan-knownbad-files 

As rkhunter relies on a database of rootkit names to detect the vulnerability of the system, it is important to check for updates of the database. This is also achieved from the command line as follows:

# rkhunter --update

Ideally, it would be better to run the above command as a cron job so that once you set it up, you can forget all about checking for the updates as the cron will do the task for you. For example, I entered the following line in my crontab file as root user.

59 23 1 * * echo "Rkhunter update check in progress";/usr/local/bin/rkhunter --update

The above line will check for updates first of every month at exactly 11:59 PM. And I will get a mail of the result in my root account.

Chkrootkit

This is another very useful program created by Nelson Murilo and Klaus Steding Jessen which aids in finding out any rootkits on your machine. Unlike Rootkit hunter program, chrootkit does not come with an installer, rather you just unpack the archive and execute the program by name chrootkit. And it conducts a series of tests on a number of binary files. Just like the previous program, this also checks all the important binary files, searches for telltale signs of log files left behind by an intruder and many other tests. In fact, if you pass the option -l to this command, it will list out all the tests it will conduct on your system.

# chkrootkit -l

And if you really want to see some interesting stuff scroll across your terminal, execute the chkrootkit tool with the following option:

# chkrootkit -x 

... which will run this tool in expert mode.

Rootkit Hunter and Chkrootkit together form a nice combination of tools in ones forte to detect rootkits in a machine running Linux.

Update: One reader has kindly pointed out that Michael Boelen has handed over the Rootkit Hunter project to a group of 8 like minded developers. And the new site is located at rkhunter.sourceforge.net

Is Free Software the future of India? Steve Ballmer CEO of Microsoft answers...

The solemn occasion was the talk show hosted by NDTV 24x7 - a premier cable television news channel in India. And the discussion centered on the topic - "Bridging the digital divide between the urban rich and rural poor in India". The panel composed of distinguished personalities including Steve Ballmer - the CEO of Microsoft, N.R. Narayana Murthy - Chairman of Infosys Technologies, Ashok Jhunjunwala professor of Electrical Engineering from IIT Chennai and Malvinder Mohan Singh - the chief executive and MD of Ranbaxy Laboratories. And the talk was hosted by NDTV's Prannoy Roy. The very first question that was asked off Steve Ballmer was the following: Is Free Software the future of India?

Taking care not to use the word(s) "Free software", Mr Ballmer conceded that a number of revenue streams including those by selling hardware, internet connectivity and software are important. He went on to say, "As rich and good be bridging the digital divide, software companies should look forward to three or four sources of income. Many revenues for software companies will come from not any one thing but will include subscription fees, lower cost hardware, advertising and of course traditional transaction (read proprietary software)". He does agree that "prices must come down" though it was plain to see him take care not to use the word "FREE" in his answer.

Another question that was posed to him was "Is bridging the rural divide all about money ?". Mr Ballmer answered by saying "It is not not about money but also not about short term profits". In short Microsoft is looking for long term profits.

And when asked , "American government spearheads democracy. Are the American businesses in tune with that?". He answered as follows: "Any multi-national should behave appropriately and lawfully in any country in which it does business. But our primary aim is to have a generally more helpful participation in world economy". He went on to say, "You can do three things ... you can stay in and do nothing, stay in and have a point of view or stay out".

Watching the talk show, I could not help thinking that Microsoft is more or less resigned to the fact that Open Source and Free Software is here to stay. And what ever one might do, you cannot easily wish it away. If you can't beat them, join them is the new mantra at Microsoft. The recent news of Microsoft's acquisition (sic) of (Um... partnership with) Novell being a case to the point. But I was left with the feeling that Microsoft needs to be honest and more outright in acknowledging the very important part that Free Software and Linux plays in the over all big picture in IT. Steve Ballmer was on a three day visit to India, his itinerary included calling on the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to discuss Microsoft's future plans for India.

Mind Map of Linux - Version 2

A few days back, I had posted a mind map of Linux distributions on this blog. And I received a flood of suggestions, criticisms and ideas. And guess what ? I have included (almost) all the ideas and suggestions made and have seriously taken into consideration the criticisms as well. The end result is this updated mind map of GNU/Linux with even more Linux distributions included and some color coding thrown in as well. But the challenge was in making the mind map retain its clarity even after all these changes. At the same time, I also wanted to restrict the size of the resultant image. And I think I have succeeded to a certain extent in this endeavor.

Fig: Mind Map of GNU/Linux distributions (Ver 2). Click on the image.

Suggestions and Ideas I have incorporated ...

• More Linux distributions added
• A separate section for multi-lingual Linux distributions
• Color coding included on a small scale
• Rectified some mistakes pointed out earlier.
• The map now has a pure white background. So is much more clear.
  

And those I have not included ...

• I have left out a couple of Linux distributions, especially those which are historically significant but which are not under active development like SLS, erstwhile Red Hat, Yggdrasil and so on. This is because I felt the mind map should mirror the state of current Linux distributions rather than be a historical time line of them.
• Secondly, including these will also make the map more complex and I wanted to retain the simplicity of the mind map. And excluding such historically significant but redundant distributions helped in achieving this.
  

Hopefully, I will be able to add more Linux distributions as and when I get more inputs and ideas.
The credit for this updated mind map goes to all the readers of this blog who took the time to give suggestions, ideas and point out the mistakes on the previous map. Kudos to you all :) .

Update: You may download the high resolution PNG format of the mind map file here (File size: 206 KB).

Related Reads:
A complete concise history of GNU/Linux
My indomitable thoughts on GNU, Linux, Open Source, Java and free cats and dogs