If your ssh key has a passphrase (which it should), it becomes annoying to keep typing the passphrase every time you use the key. Fortunately it is possible with the use of ssh-agent, ksshaskpass and the KDE wallet to only have to type one password on log on.

ssh-agent should have been installed as part of openssh, so make sure that kde wallet is installed (it probably is), and then install ksshaskpass.

Now create three scripts as follows:

~/.kde4/env/ssh-agent.sh
eval `ssh-agent`

~/.kde4/shutdown/ssh-agent.sh
ssh-agent -k

Dell XPS 15 I've just bought a Dell XPS 15 l502x laptop, with a full HD (1920x1080) 15.6" screen, Sandybridge i7-2670QM CPU (quad core 2.20 GHz, up to 3.1 GHz turbo boost) with a larger 9 cell battery and cool backlit keyboard. Initial indications are good, it is quick, the screen is great and the sound (2.1 - yes, it has a mini sub in it!) from JBL is amazing for a laptop. It also has a 2 GB nvidia GT540M GPU, which is set up using optimus switching technology with the integrated intel HD3000 GPU. This should be interesting to get running with linux, as nvidia don't support optimus with their linux driver. It comes running Windows 7 Home Premium, and while I don't mind Windows 7 (it is certainly much better than earlier efforts), the aim is of course to run linux on it - so let's see how it goes.

I'll be trying to get my distro of choice running on it, Arch Linux, with KDE (4.7.3).

Conky

Conky is a very powerful system monitor for linux, that allows you to show all sorts of different information on the desktop, from cpu usage to rss feeds. It supports transparency, but has trouble with KDE due to how both it and KDE work, necessitating a few settings tweaks. A screen shot of the section of my desktop with Conky running is to the left, and the config file is below.

The important sections as far as getting it to work nicely with KDE is concerned are all the bits starting "own_window".

I've been suffering from an extremely irritating problem for a while - within XBMC as soon as I eject the DVD drive (by remote control, by pressing the button on the drive, by the button within XBMC, ...) it opens then immediately closes again. This makes it very hard to get disks in and out, although through practice I have got very quick on the draw. It is doubly odd, as if I boot to runlevel 3 (not 5), then the drive stays open with no problems.

To batch scale images in linux, install image magick and then:

mogrify -scale 50% *.jpg

Done and done.