My Download Manager Is Smarter Than I Am

Published on August 7, 2006 By MasonM In Misc

I started a rather large DVD iso download a couple of hours ago. The download manager I am using, KGet (a KDE DE Linux app), was minimized in the system tray.

While working, I decided to log out of the KDE environment and log into the XFCE4 window manager. No real reason for it other than XFCE4 uses fewer system resources than KDE. Fluxbox is really my favorite as it uses the fewest resources. I use Fluxbox when I want to work with resource intensive apps as they run faster. Anyway, I digress.

After working in XFCE4 for a while I suddenly remembered I had started that huge download. "Oh crap, you idiot!" I thought to myself, thinking that I had killed the download when I logged out of KDE. Damn!

I quickly logged out of XFCE4 and back into KDE and pulled up the download manager. Well, whaddaya know, it had kept running and downloading the whole time. I guess you learn something new every day. Most KDE apps are killed when you log out of KDE. It seems the KGet developers are smart enough to know some of us are that stupid and they wrote the app so that as long as the machine is running the app keeps doing it's job.

I love it when developers prove to be smarter than I am. Well, maybe that's the wrong way to put it. I love it when developers are smarter than I am stupid.

Comments

BlueDev

on Aug 07, 2006

I tell you, I wish I had a computer that I could just turn into a dedicated Linux box. My old desktop sort of was, but it was old enough that it still ran slow. I would love to play around with Linux more.

MasonM

on Aug 07, 2006

#1 by BlueDev
Mon, August 07, 2006 8:12 PM

[BlueDev]
I tell you, I wish I had a computer that I could just turn into a dedicated Linux box. My old desktop sort of was, but it was old enough that it still ran slow. I would love to play around with Linux more.

I really enjoy it. It's an almost unlimited number of choices. I really like the fact that I can have multiple desktops going at once, each with different apps on them, and everything runs smooth as silk. I laso love the fact that there are so many choices of Desktop Environments and window managers available. I can pretty much make my desktop look and act any way I want.

You can always repartition your hdd and run a dual boot setup.

BlueDev

on Aug 07, 2006

You can always repartition your hdd and run a dual boot setup.

The last time I tried that I screwed up the Windows Boot Manager, couldn't boot into Windows. I know (now) there are ways to fix that, but I have to admit, I am a bit skittish to try again.

MasonM

on Aug 07, 2006

#3 by BlueDev
Mon, August 07, 2006 8:35 PM

[BlueDev]
You can always repartition your hdd and run a dual boot setup.

The last time I tried that I screwed up the Windows Boot Manager, couldn't boot into Windows. I know (now) there are ways to fix that, but I have to admit, I am a bit skittish to try again.

These days Linux installers do a great job of that. Very rare to have a problem there. While I'm a die hard Slackware user I've played around with just about every distro out there and pretty much all of them do a good job of setting up a dual boot situation now.

Of course there are a lot of LiveCD distros out now where you can play with Linux without installing to your hdd at all. They run slow for obvious reasons but it's something.

Among the best Linux newbie distros out there right now that do a great job of setting up a boot loader are: SimplyMepis, Ubuntu, and SuSE. They don't run quite as snappy as I like but they're newbie friendly.

If ya really want to learn Linux and get your hands dirty you can't go wrong with Slackware.

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