[kde-linux] Re: Individual Desktop Settings

[Dale]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Alex Schuster<wonko at wonkology.org>  wrote:
> <SNIP>
>    
>>> What am I not understanding about your point?
>>>        
>> I think Duncan is just calling the application by its true and correct name,
>> and not the misleading name the developers actually gave it.
>>      
> So my true name is Joe and not the name my parents gave me? ;-)
>
> For people newer to KDE (me, about 1 year) what should the name
> 'kcontrol' mean to me?
>
> It makes no sense to me that we should start calling KDE apps by
> anything other than
>
> 1) What I run in a terminal to execute the app.
> 2) What I see in the KDE menus to execute the app.
>
> Of course, that's just my opinion.
>
> - Mark
>    

The reason is this, kcontrol lets a person know it is a KDE thing and 
not a system thing.  For most long term Linux users, system means that 
it is global.  As a example, if I make a change in xorg.conf, it is a 
system wide change.  Any change there will affect ALL users.  Same could 
be said for lots of other files.  That just happened to be a GUI one.

If you use systemsetting, AKA Kcontrol, to change a setting, it only 
affects the one user and has nothing to do with others or the system 
itself.  The only exception to that I can think of would be the section 
concerning the login and splash screen but that is actually a kdm 
setting and you have to be root to change it.  When you have to type in 
root to get access, it is usually a system setting of some sort.

The point Duncan and Alex is making is that the name is misleading.  It 
really doesn't change any "system" settings at all, just user settings.

I have to agree with Duncan and Alex.  It is confusing and I really 
don't see any reason why it should have been changed to begin with.  The 
old name worked fine and was more accurate.  That said, it's not like 
KDE hasn't made bad decisions before   Don't get us started on the 
dropping KDE3 before KDE4 was ready, some would argue KDE4 still isn't 
ready.  Anyway, I better stop there before we get this ball rolling again.

On the other hand, I wish it was something besides a K in the front 
sometimes.  There are a lot of kernel processes that start with k as 
well.  I guess because kernel starts with a k.  :/

Dale

:-)  :-)