KDE 4 notes for setup

[techAdmin]

Well, here's KDE 4, and you're wondering: ok, this sucks, where is everything, how do I do x or y, where is feature r or s?

Short list follows (most of this information is from zulu9 from sidux, and various other people, related on #smxi):

1. First and foremost, the too many clicks to get anywhere in kmenu: Solution, right click on 'k' icon, and select 'classic menu'. Now it's all usable again.
   
2. Then, we need to get the virtual desktops to show only the windows open on the active one. Right click on task bar, select: 'Task Manager Settings', then select 'General' tab, and check: Only show tasks from current desktop
   
3. Getting useful widgets/applets, especially for example: show desktop.
   Install (in Debian) these two packages: plasma-widgets-addons plasma-widgets-workspace
   These will give you a bunch of actually useful desktop and taskbar widgets. For example, if you're missing kmoon (moonphase), there it is, called 'luna' now.
   
4. More widgets: plasma-widget-weather is a nicer weather widget than the default; plasma-widget-ktorrent only makes sense with ktorrent; plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets to enable support for google gadgets; plasma-widget-networkmanagement (check if available yet)
   
5. Be sure to get that device notification widget (Device Notifier) somewhere. It show usb stuff, cds and so on. It let's you mount them (or perfomr other actions), and most important, I use it for safe-removing mounted devices. There is a little eject-icon for each device and a ok check mark replaces the icon in the panel for a some seconds that tells you it is unmounted safely.
   
6. To close popup (if this bug doesn't get fixed soon), click on the icon you used to open it. This is a bug, not a feature, and was not present in kde 4.2.1
   
7. All the desktop stuff I think is now configured "in place". Each widget provides its own settings.
   
8. Some things you'll see has a 'wrench' icon on it. Click that to see what tools are available. For example, try: alt + F2 and you'll see the run command box (runtask), with the wrench, click it, and see what options you can add.
   
9. Looking again at the krunner dialogue box, note next to the wrench is a small icon with a wavy line, click that rectangle, and a task manager like system services box comes up, which you can use to kill services etc. Very... cough cough, much like Windows Task Manager. Note however that KDE 4 Task Manager is NOT like Windows Task Manager, it's to manage how the desktop handles tasks. This is the same tool as in KDE 3.x, also reachable directly by using ctrl+esc key combination.
   
10. The new system-notification thing is kinda nice but (that pops up when you copy stuff, get a message in kopete etc etc) but it will auto-hide after a few seconds, which usually is nice, it leaves a small (i) icon in the systray then which if clicked shows the ongoing things. But if you copy stuff and something pops up and goes away guess what joe user thinks but the copying did not finish yet. This can cause real damage, take mom with mom's usb-hdd.
    
11. If you use shutdown on cli with a time-setting the notification will take up the message broadcasts from root, but it shows them a dozen times and makes a sound for each one. So: good idea but still buggy. There is a way to disable it but I did not bother to learn it yet.
    
12. The kickoff-menu becomes a lot more useable once you added your most used apps to favourites, as that is what will show on one click. After that most apps are two clicks away.
    
13. Also make sure to install qt4-qtconfig (qt4-config tool) to make non-QT apps (like Firefox/Iceweasel) look like native KDE 4 apps.
    
14. To add an application launcher to a taskbar, drag the application from the program menu to the task bar. Not elegant, and clearly incomplete, missing various other methods found in KDE 3.x to do that same thing. No way to select icon sizes etc either from what I can see.
    
    NOTE: if you use the non-classic menu, the default menu that is, you can add startup shortcuts to panel or desktop using the standard right click on icon option of the app in the menu. This features does NOT work in the classic menu as of kde 4.2.
    

And here's some of the unfixable so far, very unfortunate cases:

1. No kpager at all. This is bad, because kpager lets you see at a click what is open in every virtual desktop using a convenient drop down menu, which then also lets you click on any app and have it be focused after you get switched to its virtual desktop. You can put the desktop-switcher widget on the panel and resize it. it is then on the desktop and dashboard, ie: just drag the desktop-switcher widget to the desktop, hover over it click and old the little rectangle to resize. Dashboard is ctrl+f12 (if I did not change the defaults on that. not sure). There is also a "show dashboard" widget.
   
2. To move a panel: Click the cashew, you will see a screen edge button. Click and hold that and drag it where you want it.
   
3. In dolphin, hitting the F4 key opens a terminal window.
   

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[GoinEasy9]

Adding xadras's systemservices for sidux module seems to be a good idea. Show's up at system setting --> advanced -->system services.

sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-15519.html

Also xadras's netcardconfig for sidux.

sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-15256.html
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[GoinEasy9]

Plasma-widget-weather is not capturing graphic at the moment. So it's of no use on taskbar. I'm using default on desktop, and, while it's not pretty, it'll do for now.
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[techAdmin]

More tips to how to try to use kde4.4

I still dislike this desktop and view it as a barely half completed, very poor usability replacement for kde 3.5. Ie, simple things are still very hard, or unintuitive, to do.

1. Dual panels, taskbars, or multiple. Problem: adding start icon for a program to one that doesn't have kmenu icon on it.

select: panel settings on the active panel you want to add a start up icon to. Add kmenu widget to the taskbar/panel.

close panel settings, then pick your application using the kmenu icon to open the menu, right click on the application, and send it to the panel. It will be on top probably. Or to one side. Again, pick panel settings, and, without moving your mouse from the space of the panel, move the icon to where you want it. Once you're done adding icons to that taskbar/panel, remove the kmenu icon. Talk about crude, barely working cludges.....

Update: I found the new way, an extra step, again, of course, is required.

first, add widget 'quicklauncher' to taskbar/panel. Then once it's added, you can right click on it and select a launcher, which opens the app selector. One cludge ontop of another.

this won't do exactly what you want, namely simply add a program start icon, but you can do it that way. In other words, here's two ways to not quite achieve a trivially simple functionality that shouldn't even be a question, ie, drag an icon to the task bar to create a shortcut. Any taskbar, as well. Oh well...
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