[lotuseclat79]

Smart tips and tricks to get the best from KDE 4 (5 web pages).

Hidden options that make a real difference to the way you work

-- Tom

[kernelsyncpanic]

thanks

[tomdkat]

KDE 4 is one of the sexiest desktop environments I've seen, next to Enlightenment E17.

I still think KDE is too "Windows-ish" for me but I'm really digging KDE 4's general look and feel. I haven't used KDE much and I've never used KDE 4 but I drool over KDE 4 screenshots frequently.

Peace...

[prunejuice]

Here's my tip for getting the best from KDE 4...

Install the Gnome desktop.




I was a 5 year user of KDE until KDE 4 which I discovered when I upgraded to Kubuntu 8.10.
Horrible. It lasted a week on my system.


Widgets? ~~~shudder~~~

[tomdkat]

GNOME is certainly functional but lacks the "sexiness" of KDE. Of course, I'm talking about "stock" configurations as I know both are configurable.

Peace...

[prunejuice]

I'll take function over form any day.

It's the reason I left Windows.

[tomdkat]

Fair enough.

Peace...

[prunejuice]

Believe me, I wish KDE 4 wasn't such a flaming train wreck...I'd still be using it today.
It's flakiness is well documented on K/Ubuntu message boards. Unfortunately, Canonical treats the Kubuntu team like an ugly step-child.

[lotuseclat79]

Hi tomdkat and prunejuice,

I first used KDE with Fedora Core 3 and was very glad there was a command, switchdesktop that could switch between KDE and Gnome and visa versa which has since been dropped in Fedora 6.

For what it is worth, KDE appears to have tried from the get-go to be like Windows - what with the K-button in the lower left-hand corner - a clear give-away. Whether the desktop is "sexy" or not is not of any use to me, its whether there is "ease of use" or not. Certainly, KDE could take a good lesson from Gnome in this regard. The big loss between having multiple window manager display environments is when there are major differences that drive commands like switchdesktop away, e.g. dependencies on different libraries, etc. otherwise known as "dependency h*ll".

I am at this time attempting to conform my use of the Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD environmet in the Kubuntu Live CD environment. Progress is one small step at a time until I feel it is security-worthy to go on the Internet.

The reason I am doing this is that there is a program called Tork which is a controller for Tor and Privoxy usage. Tork is used in the OS Incognito and its Live CD, but is written totally for the KDE environment in terms of window management and display graphics. It appears to be the best way to use Tor and Privoxy.

One of the neat features of Incognito is that on shutdown, it clears memory to zero. I am going to investigate this further as searching the Internet came up with not very much as far as I have yet determined regarding a "how-to". I plan to go into the shutdown directories of Incognito to figure out what program it is executing and look to see if the sources are available.

When I switch between Kubuntu and Ubuntu or visa versa the previous Desktop background image shows up which is a clear indication that memory bits from the previous bootup are still in memory - I wonder why memory designs do not automatically zero when power is turned off? I suppose its a time issue or something like that.

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

The big loss between having multiple window manager display environments is when there are major differences that drive commands like switchdesktop away, e.g. dependencies on different libraries, etc. otherwise known as "dependency h*ll".

I actually found this to NOT be a problem when I was a Slackware user and didn't use a desktop environment at all. I had twm, Enlightenment, AfterStep, BlackBox, Xfce, and LessTif installed and could switch between them easily and without having to reboot. Of course, back in those days I built just about everything from source so I had no "dependency hell" to deal with since I ended up installing all of the necessary components as part of the source-based install. I think the "hell" arises more with the "package oriented" distros which tend to break up apps into the "user" components and the "developer" components.

I haven't spent a lot of time using KDE but I don't recall it being cumbersome or awkward to use at all. I haven't spent enough time with it to do an adequate comparison to GNOME but I was able to do whatever I wanted or needed as easily I could on any system I had not used much before.

Peace...