[kde-linux] Desktop widget like Windows Vista sidebar/clock thing?

[Duncan]

Thierry de Coulon posted on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:16:58 +0200 as excerpted:

> On a less important level, it would be nice to be again able to have
> different backgrouds on different workspaces, it made easier to know
> where you are

You're talking different desktops, not different workspaces, right?  
Because different plasma workspaces have had the ability to set different 
wallpapers since at least 4.2.4, when I decided to try (once again) to 
migrate, and this time succeeded, even if it did take me over a hundred 
hours to discover and script workarounds to the various missing 
functionality, etc.

FWIW, that's available in 4.3.1, now.  I've not installed 4.3.2 yet so 
don't know if they've tweaked for it, tho I know they're planning to make 
the option a bit more accessible with 4.4 if not earlier.  But with 4.3.1 
(and I think 4.3.0 tho IDR for sure), it involves zooming out the 
workspace, then choosing the option from the menu available from the 
zoomed out workspace, for a different workspace (and thus a different 
wallpaper with it) on each desktop.  Then zooming back in...

That's admittedly a bit difficult to discover, and they're already 
reworking it into the desktop settings dialog (I believe is where it'll 
be), and that's already in trunk according to the stuff I read on 
kdeplanet, but I suspect it won't make it into the 4.3 series and will 
have to wait for 4.4, with 4.4.0 due in February.

But regardless, you're right, there's waaaayyy to many bugs still for 
this to be properly called beyond beta, at this point.  They're fixing 
stuff at a pretty fast pace, and as a user accustomed to running beta 
software and having to work around problems, I do find it usable at that 
level, but there's no way I could in good conscience recommend it for 
ordinary use, as the kde folks have been doing since 4.2, despite having 
all those known bugs, and not just on some narrowly defined hardware 
either, but entirely missing or broken functionality in many cases.  It 
wouldn't be a big deal if they were calling it for what it was, but they 
aren't, unfortunately, and on the actually working kde3, bugs are being 
closed as unsupported... and there's no guarantee of even security bug 
fixes any longer.  <shrug>

-- 
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