Kalternatives

I found this cool package today:

sudo apt-get install kalternatives

From the package info:

Kalternatives offers a GUI to configure the alternative systems (a
system that allows you to select one alternative file for many in the
filesystem).
Kalternatives is available as KDE configuration module, integrated by default
into KDE's System Settings.

This is an advanced GUI of the update-alternatives program shipped with dpkg.

Some of the options I wanted to customise:

desktop-splash
usplash-artwork (usplash-theme)
x-terminal-emulator
x-window-manager
x-www-browser

Amarok 1.4 for me on Kubuntu Jaunty

After playing a little with the new shiny Amarok 2 in Kubuntu 9.04,
I decided to go back to 1.4 for now.
I have been using Amarok to subscribe to podcast rss feeds
to download the latest episodes, and then to transcode
it to my ipod (it was a gift which I wasn't going to look in the mouth ok). This functionality did not seem to be in the shipped Amarok2 so I needed to go back.

Its quite easy to go back, just add the following source to your sources.list, update and install amarok14:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

For more info see:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~bogdanb/+archive/ppa

kubuntu intrepid automount external harddrive

The new intrepid kubuntu comes with a nice plasmoid where mountable partitions show up wehen you plug in USB flash disks and external hard drives.
The problem is, they don't get mounted automatically, which is what I want (to streamline my backup process). Fortunitely I found this thread which gave me a hint:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3098289.0

I first tried to download and build devicenotifier_automount from sources, but then after downloading a ton of -dev packages etc. and still not getting it to build, it dawned on me to look for a PPA. I found one:
https://launchpad.net/~samrog131/+archive
I've installed it successfully but haven't restarted X & tested yet.
Edit: so it seems you don't need to restart X, just use the `New Device Notifier Automount` plasmoid. Works great so far (2 minutes of testing:)

kdirstat

I recently went over to Kubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid), and I'm trying to get used to dolphin now. But it doesnt have the super cool "file size view" which I used to love in konqueror.
The soloution is to install kdirstat, which pretty much has the same functionality.
(Found it on http://sathyasays.com/2008/03/19/find-out-how-much-space-each-file-is-occupying/)

http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/

knetstats

I found this gem of an app a while ago, for monitoring the current network usage.
After installing intrepid, I had to look for it again, so here's the link
http://knetstats.sourceforge.net