F9alpha and KDE4

[Paul Johnson]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 11:57 PM, John Summerfield
<debian at herakles.homelinux.org> wrote:
> I think I'm going to adopt Gnome at last. I've never been a regular
>  Gnome user since 1.x but that might change.
>
>  This system was installed as an F8 beta, and upgraded (with some
>  difficulty) on the weekend to the Development series.
>
>  First, I use KDM and on F8 I'd managed to get rid of the Fedora image,
>  which I do not like, and I had a plain blue background.
>
>  With the upgrade it's a lovely grey moire pattern. At least it largely
>  adopted my settings.
>
>  I login using KDE and find that it's using some of my settings, ignoring
>  others. I use 20 desktops (well, configure 20 desktops but I often use
>  2/3 or more of them). In the pager, until now I've had them displayed in
>  three rows. KDE4 thinks I want two.
>
>  I use Konsole a lot.I have a white background as I find that easier to
>  use. KDE4 thinks I want black so I don't need to bother reading it.
>
>  However trendy a black panel might seem to others, my senior's eyes find
>  it ugly. I can't find a way to configure it.
>
>  I like a plain coloured desktop background. I'm fairly flexible as to
>  colour, on my SL5 box it's a bluish gradientI certainly don't want a
>  grapics images with lots of waves on it, it doesn't look good to me and
>  I'm sure it's not very compatible with VNC: I use remote desktop quite a
>  lot for accessing computers, rather than bother with monitors and such.
>  Right-click, "Configure Desktop" allows me to choose between a single
>  image or a slideshow. I want neither, just a nice blue or green or
>  mustard background. In KDE3 I can configure lots of stuff there.
>
>  In KDE3 I have left-click pop up the applications menu, and middle-click
>  produces a window list. I can't see how to set that in KDE4.
>
>  I generally have taskbar never group, and only display the current
>  desktop. Can't see how to get KDE4 to do that.
>
>  All that's cosmetic.
>  I really do not like the new applications menu. I can't find stuff I
>  want, such as control-centre (so I can fix the settings), Firefox, the
>  office software I think is there and so on. I've spent an hour or two on it.
>
>  I don't want another radically different UI. I regularly switch between
>  Linux (mostly KDE3, but sometimes Gnome), Windows XP and Server, Apple
>  OS X. I don't need another UI to track.
>
>
Well, KDE4 does not share config with old kde, and so you should kill
your home .kde before starting.  That will give you the basic.

Nevertheless, I have tested KDE4 and agree with you. It is just not
ready. It lacks many features for which I had started using KDE in the
first place.  I had given up on Gnome just 8 months ago and adopted
KDE.   It will be some time before those functions you are looking for
are implemented.  I've asked in the KDE mailing lists and they say
many functions will return, eventually.

In your situation, I think the reasonable thing is to re-install KDE3
and use it as long as you can get it. The reaction to KDE4 has been
pretty cold, and if I were betting, I'd bet that KDE3 packages for
Fedora 9 will materialize from somewhere.

The difficult of finding out more specifics on the KDE4 plans led me
to try out the Enlightenment window manager.
http://www.enlightenment.org.  I've tried E over the years, and always
found problems that made me turn back to Gnome.  But E Development
Release 17 is very stable and pleasant to use.  There is a new RPM
repository (Professor Kriehn's repository
http://optics.csufresno.edu/~kriehn/fedora/repository.html ) and i've
found most everything works well (except the battery module).

If you don't like new UIs, then you won't want to mess with E. But
maybe other KDE4 refugees will give it a try.  Inside E, I find it is
useful to run a gnome-panel as well as the E panel because gnome will
help with handling of USB disks and CD roms, and because the battery
module in E is a little off the mark at the moment.


-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas