[kde-linux] Dolphin config

[Duncan]

Alain Mouette posted on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:45:42 -0300 as excerpted:

> The problem is that after TWO days trying (that for the last time
> alone), I could not make Plasma work in any relyable way. So I gave up.
> tha was on a brand new Lenovo Notebook, no OpenGL at the time.

I can sympathize!  While I do have plasma working well for me now, it 
took quite some time to get to that state, and plasma was the biggest 
reason I (one among many) didn't consider kde4 ready for ordinary use 
until 4.5 or so.

Unfortunately it's still causing problems for a lot of people, tho many 
others have like me, learned to live and work "the plasma way" when 
necessary to avoid problems, and thus don't see the problem any more, in 
part because they (subconsciously in large part) simply learned not to do 
the things that plasma doesn't like.

> BUT KDE4 programs are very good, It dosn't look like being made by the
> same team!!! Dolphin is the best navigator in existence today!
> 
> I am using Dolphim, Konsole, Kwrite, Kate on Gnome+Debian6 and it runs
> really great.

While I haven't switched to gnome, I HAVE definitely curtailed my 
previous use of kde.  Also, I'm on gentoo and thus have (and took) the 
option to build kde without semantic desktop support (simply turning it 
off at runtime doesn't get the same result), so what's left is far faster 
and more stable.  Of course that meant switching away from kde solutions 
for anything kdepim related, kmail and akregator here, to something else, 
claws-mail, here, since they now depend on akonadi which is intertwined 
with semantic desktop, but it was well worth it!

> What I want to do is just What I had on old KDE3:
> *) When I open a program (dolphin/kate/konsole) as root, the backgroud
> is red *) when I open a remote server the background is in distinct
> colors, like green, yellow, blue, etc..
> 
> That practice did save my ass many times avoing *mistakes* (yes I do
> that sometimes...)
> 
> On KDE3 I had a combination of profiles and setups to that purpose!!!
> 
> Is there a way to achieve that? I have seen a feature request on
> background and it is labeled a preposterous WONT...

AFAIK it's possible to set that up on kde4[1], but the process does 
involve jumping thru a few hoops, as they say.

First, let's reviewing and expanding the territory already covered up-
thread, now that I know you're running kde apps on a non-kde desktop.

KDE's dependencies are setup such that even if you're not running a kde 
desktop, you still should have the basic (formerly and more accurately 
known as) "kcontrol" functionality.  Under kde4, however, it's no longer 
called "kcontrol", but instead, the horribly inaccurate "systemsettings", 
despite the settings (with a few exceptions) not being "system-wide" at 
all, but specific to a particular user's kde config.

So whatever desktop you run, unless your distro screwed with the actual 
name of the executable itself (I couldn't blame them in this case, given 
the impossibly general and horribly inaccurate default name), you SHOULD 
still have access to kde settings by running "systemsettings" from the 
run dialog of whatever desktop you happen to be running.

Of course, that will get you your standard user settings.

To get the root user settings, you have several options which may or may 
not all work on your distro and installation, but they all boil down to 
running "systemsettings" as the root user, instead of your normal user.  
Note that depending on how your distro is setup, your user may need to be 
in a particular group (admin or wheel are common) to be allowed to run 
something as root, and/or there may be polkit policies configured to 
allow/deny various as-root actions from your user and/or from X.  But if 
you can run dolphin, etc, as root at all, obviously you're configured to 
allow at least SOME of this, and you may have to run systemsettings using 
a similar mechanism.

* If your desktop environment provides a native way to run an app as 
root, you can use it.

* If it doesn't, or if you prefer, "kdesu" or "kdesudo" might be 
available to you.  (AFAIK kdesu is the kde default, but kdesudo is an 
alternative that's shipped by some distros as their preferred default.)  
You can prepend them to the command you wish to run as root, in this case 
systemsettings, and assuming they're configured appropriately for your 
distro, that should popup a dialog asking for password (would be roots 
for kdesu, yours for kdesudo), etc, before running the appended program 
as root.

* I've not actually tried this since I run kde as my desktop, but since 
krunner, the kde run dialog, is its own separate app, in theory, you 
should be able to run it from a non-kde desktop as well.  If that works, 
you can use krunner's options to "run as a different user", entering root 
and the password (your user's or root's depending on how your distro is 
configured) there.

* If your distro is configured with a root login account at all (in 
general meaning, it has password set for root, some distros ship with 
this off by default but you can of course set your own root password and 
otherwise change the config to allow it if necessary), you should be able 
to actually login and run an X desktop session as root, and run 
systemsettings from there.


However you run it, you'd simply set the same color settings as root that 
you would as a normal user, but would of course choose your desired red 
background, etc, instead of the normal colors you'd use.


Meanwhile, it's worth noting that the "kde desktop" isn't monolithic.  
It's comprised of a number of component apps.  As such, it's quite 
possible both to run individual kde desktop components (kwin, krunner, 
plasma-desktop or plasma-netbook, etc) in an otherwise non-kde desktop, 
AND to substitute non-kde components for the kde defaults on an otherwise 
kde desktop.

In fact, back when I first switched to kde4 from kde3, this is exactly 
what I had to do.  The kde4 desktop (this was 4.2 era, and things were 
buggy as an active anthill!) was all but unworkable in its original 
config, but by switching to and configuring a single kde4 component at a 
time on my originally kde3 desktop, I was able to isolate each 
component's behavior and configure it to something acceptable, before 
going onto the next.  After I got each one configured and working as 
desired, I'd start using it in place of the kde3 version, so what started 
as a kde3 desktop gradually turned into a kde4 desktop, as I ran more and 
more kde4 components and less and less kde3 components.

What I'm getting at is this:  It's QUITE possible to replace plasma with 
some other desktop shell, but otherwise run a kde environment (I'd call 
it a "kde desktop", but without plasma... "desktop" doesn't quite fit any 
more, so "kde environment" it is!).


I've never used it myself, but I've seen some rather decent reviews of 
the still qt4-based "razor desktop", sometimes seen as "qt-razor 
desktop".  This was started by someone who quite like you, was fedup with 
plasma, and wanted something that would actually WORK on his hardware, 
unlike plasma, which he found way too buggy and bloated, to the point of 
being unusable.

>From what I've read, razor is designed as a much lighter desktop 
alternative, fully independent from kde.  Run as such, it'd be the qt4 
version of xfce or lxde (which are gtk based).  But the default desktop 
looks very much like a very simple and bare plasma desktop, and being qt4 
based, it should blend in very well with an otherwise kde4 environment, 
and I've a rather strong feeling that's how a lot of folks run it, as a 
desktop-shell replacement for plasma, mixing and matching kde apps/
components and razor apps/components as desired.  If I'd read about it 
about two years earlier, before I got plasma working reasonably well for 
me, I'd have *VERY* likely done exactly that myself, running razor-
desktop as a replacement for plasma-desktop, but with an otherwise 
generally kde desktop environment.  But by the time I DID read about it, 
plasma was working quite well for me and I was enjoying the use of 
various plasmoids I'd downloaded from kde-look, etc, so I stayed with 
plasma.

But I'd definitely recommend that you look into razor, as it might very 
well be the qt-based and kde compatible replacement for plasma, that 
you're looking for!
---
[1] I say "AFAIK", because I basically don't run anything kde as root at 
all; I do all my sysadmin activity from the command line or a semi-gui 
like mc in the text console, either konsole or a full text VC. FWIW mc, 
aka midnight commander, is an EXCELLENT "sysadmin mode" file manager in 
the long tradition of text-based dual-pane "commander style semi-gui file 
manager", that I'd have a rather difficult time doing without!  Thus, I 
basically don't run anything X based as root at all, so it's "AFAIK", not 
based on first-hand personal experience.

Here's the google I just did on it.  Looks like it's razor-qt, not
qt-razor, but anyway... The desktop homepage appears to be the first 
link, but there's links to reviews, youtube videos, its qt-apps.org 
page...

(qt-apps.org is part of the same opendesktop.org family as kde-look.org, 
kde-apps.org, gnome-look.org, etc.  If you're familiar with one, you'll 
likely instantly recognize the same style on all the others and may well 
already know how useful they can be for finding extensions, utilities, 
themes, etc, to fill out a desktop both appearance and utility-wise.  And 
of course kde4 has heavily integrated kde-look into kde itself, with the 
"get new X" feature found in many kde4 apps.  That razor-qt is featured 
there just raised it yet another notch on my respect index! =:^)

http://www.google.com/search?q=razor+desktop+qt4

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman