[kde-linux] KDE 3.5.4 questions

[James Richard Tyrer]

Jim Philips wrote:
> I downloaded Slackware packages for KDE 3.5.4. The release notes tout support 
> for HAL (with no real mention of how you would actually make use of this 
> feature). Anyway, I opened kcontrol and went to Peripherals-->Storage Media. 
> That seems to be the right place to set it up. But when I click on the 
> Advanced tab, it claims HAL was not found on the system and the button to 
> enable it is grayed out. I do have HAL installed on this system. So, what 
> might make KDE believe it's there?
> 
> Also, does anybody know of a way to undo what was done to the menus in this 
> version? I used to have nice, compact menus in Kmenu. Now each category 
> sprawls all over the screen. I would really like to disable this "feature" if 
> at all possible.
> 
> I've been a loyal KDE user since 2.0, and I don't like to carp. But if you're 
> bragging about a feature in a release announcement, you might at least 
> provide a link to explain how it's supposed to work.

Objective criticism isn't carping.

I managed to get Hal and Dbus running but things didn't work well.

I don't know how Slackware's start up scripts work so I can't be too 
specific.

You need to have UDEV installed for HAL to work.

Your start up scripts need to start DBus and Hal.  DBus must be started 
first.  Then you also need a user DBus running.  With KDM, you can add 
this file if you need to:

/etc/xprofile
------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------
## test for an existing bus daemon, just to be safe
if test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ; then
   ## if not found, launch a new one
   eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`
   echo "D-BUS per-session daemon address is: $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"
fi

------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------

or if you already have this file, add this to the end of it.

The above will be sourced by Xsession when KDM starts an X session.

-- 
JRT