How is one supposed to use the KDE4 desktop ?

Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan at gmail.com
Fri Jul 18 18:02:27 UTC 2008


On Fri, 2008-07-18 at 17:29 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Friday 18 July 2008 17:11:43 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> >
> > Be careful what you ask for Anne :-) Here are some (using 4.0.98 at the
> > moment):
> >
> > 1) How do I resize the Desktop plasmoid? It has no handles.
> >
> AIUI, that is a 4.1 feature.  I'm pretty certain I've read that that's fixed 
> in 4.1.
> 
> > 2) How do I rearrange stuff in the Panel? There used to be a gawd-awful
> > "start move/end move" thing on the panel menu in 4.0 but at least it
> > worked. Now it's gone.
> >
> I'm not using Fedora at this moment, so I can't check, but it was there last 
> week.  However, I understand that that was a Fedora work-around.  I *think* 
> it's fixed in 4.1.  Meanwhile, the recommended method in 4.0 is to delete 
> icons from the panel and add them again in the order you want them.
> 
> > 3) Why is the Kmix icon in minimized state (i.e. in the panel) different
> > from its normal icon? This last could be my config as I just carried it
> > over from 3.5, but I don't see any way to change it.
> >
> Actually, kmix is reluctant to show at all on mine :-)  Seriously, though, 
> I've wondered about that myself.  The tiny icons that sit in two rows seem to 
> be the things that load at startup, like klipper, wifi-status-indicator, 
> korgac, and so on.  Do you find the same?

There seem to be two kinds: those that are just there "because", such as
Kmix, NM etc., and others that one puts there through the Autostart
dialogue. In my case I only added Ktorrent to this last, nevertheless I
have Kmix, Pidgin, NM, Amarok, Ksensors, Kpowersave (?) and the keyboard
switcher thingy. I'm sure I did add these all at some point in my 3.5
days, but I no longer know where to change them.

> I'll try to find the answer to that one.
> 
> > 4) Why does my desktop always start up as 1024x768 when I have a
> > landscape LCD? 
> 
> ?? 1024x768 is landscape, isn't it?

No, it's 4x3 or a standard "square TV" monitor. Landscape is 16x9.

> > I've set it correctly using the Display dialogue, but it 
> > doesn't remember its state. However as soon as I click on the Display
> > setting it *immediately* corrects itself to 1440x900 without me touching
> > anything else (except that I now have to resize some windows, not to
> > mention the panel which doesn't adjust itself). I reported a version of
> > this to BZ a while back but I need to update it.
> >
> I don't think this is KDE-related at all.  I think it's more concerned with 
> the new way that X is being served - you know, not reading xorg.conf if it 
> can get away without it.  Just my guess, though.

Maybe.

> > I'm sure I can think of more but these are the most annoying. Luckily
> > nothing is a showstopper.
> >
> Yes, there are many small annoyances in 4.0, and there will still be some, 
> though nowhere like as many, in 4.1, but, as you say, they are not 
> show-stoppers.
> 
> I was tempted to revert to the old ways, like using the Classic Menu, but 
> stuck it out so that I could give support.  I'm glad I did, as I find I have 
> adapted my working practices almost without noticing, and I really like some 
> of the changes.
> 
> In passing, it may interest you to know that some of the developments were 
> held up because they depend on Qt4, and Qt4 is still very much in 
> development.  As the boundaries are being pushed new needs are being 
> discovered, and fixed as fast as devs can work.

Thanks Anne.

poc




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