[kde-linux] Re: Individual Desktop Settings

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht posted on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:15:44 -0700 as excerpted:

> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Dale <rdalek1967 at gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
> OK, I do understand the point. However, persistence in continuing to
> communicate this preference, and that's all it is, only creates
> confusion. On my Gentoo box I only have systemsettings. I do not have
> kcontrol or Kcontrol or KControl or anything like it, so what's the
> point of living in the past and creating confusion in the future?
> 
> For Gentoo 'users' (at least for 4.4.5) there is only systemsettings.
> You guys should take this up with the devs but until it's changed why
> make confusion here?

Because it's my post, and I refuse to call it an impossibly-generic system-
settings, when it's mostly both kde-specific and user-specific settings, 
and the kde3 name describes the situation far more accurately than the 
kde4 version.  Yes, there are occasional exceptions, but not that many as 
it's shipped from upstream (some distributions add other distribution-
specific modules that make it more so, but those aren't kde, their 
distribution-specific tools that the distribution simply chose to add, 
there).

KDE control panel, kcontrol for short, is, all in all, very accurate, as 
even for the occasional exception that's not user- and kde-specific, 
what's presented is still the /kde/-based tool for viewing and changing 
these settings, not the generic tools (like the CLI-based date command).

Other users can in their posts call it yankee-doodle-dandy, for all I care 
(couldn't be more impossibly googleable than system settings, for sure!), 
as long as they make it clear (as I do in the parenthetical or footnote I 
make it a point to add at my first reference to kcontrol) what they're 
talking about.  Whatever ELSE you say about it, the kde3 term, kcontrol, 
is at LEAST googlable!  System-settings... not so much!  In this day and 
age, googleable counts for a LOT, and this is simply my way of protesting 
the name change.

What are they going to do next, announce that the kde project, already 
renamed kde software collection, is going to be renamed again, to the 
impossibly generic "desktop"?  It'd make about as much sense!  (Wait, I 
hope I didn't just give them the idea!)  At least then they could call 
kcontrol "desktop settings" and actually be accurate... in a sense!

It's a disturbing kde4 trend, with the same problem for "system 
monitor" (there's a kde4 app, ksysguard in kde3, by that name, as well as 
something like half a dozen various system monitor plasmoids by default, 
and many more on kde-look, /which/ "system monitor" is under discussion, 
maybe the gkrelm applets?) and I think a couple others I've noticed.

So yeah, this is just my way of protesting the name change, which I 
consider terribly stupid for a multitude of reasons, every time it happens 
to come up in a post of mine.  I don't expect it to reverse the policy, 
just as I don't expect the below sig to reverse a lot of people's policy 
regarding servantware apps, but it reflects my own opinion of things, 
which is something people get to do in posts they make, as long as they're 
genuinely trying to help the people they reply to solve whatever on-topic 
problems they've encountered (and/or steer them elsewhere when it is or 
wanders too off-topic).

-- 
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