Why KDE4 is called KDE?

Tue Dec 8 01:56:02 GMT 2009

On Monday, 2009-12-07, Istvan Gabor wrote:

> 1. I would like to set my panel size to 46 points. In this panel I would
>  like to set my clock as follows: time is shown as HH:MM:SS in boldface
>  Sans Serif (ie Arial on my system) 17 points. Below this I would like the
>  date to be shown as YYYY-MM-DD in normal Sans Serif 12 points size. How
>  can I do this?

I know that there is a bug regarding the date format, because I like the same 
format you do.
The panel seems to be freely resizable when I last did so, though my two 
panels are both less than that in height.
My digital clock is currently in a very narrow panel so I have date besides 
time (time then date from left to right), but I originally had it in two lines 
just like you discribe (time over date, date smaller).

> 2. I would like removable media icons (such as USB flash disk, CD-ROM, DVD,
>  digital camera) to be placed onto the desktop when plugged in. I would
>  like to be able to mount and unmount them manually, and remove them safely
>  (ie eject, safely remove options in KDE3.5).

Just tried to add the the device notified to the desktop (additionally to 
having it on my lower panel) and it seems to have the same options.
Mounting seems to be implicit though (when clicking and choosing "open in file 
manager"), unmounting/safely remove worked by clicking the respective icon.

I remember vaguely that there have been some changes to devices actions in the 
upcoming release, so maybe mounting can then be done explicitly, like the 
removal does now.

> 3. I would like in certain cases to hide the panel manually. Autohide is
>  not what I want.
> 
> 4. I would like to set panel transparency, background image. I could not
>  find out how. I would like to use classical appearance, where I can see
>  the borders of the tasks and widgets on the panel. How?
> 
> 5. I don't want to see those large bubbles when I move the mouse over a
>  widget. How can I disable them? I would like to see normal, thin tooltips.
> 
> 6. I would like to see borders between system tray, taskbar, and other
>  widgets. (In KDE3 they were called apllet handles.)
> 
> 7. I could not find out how to set theme/lookout so that it would look like
>  my openSUSE KDE3.5 theme.

Sounds to me like you want a different panel application. Should work with the 
Plasma Desktop if it doesn't have any panels or with a different desktop/root-
window application.

Hmm, might be interesting to see if somebody could come up with a Plasma panel 
with such features. Theoretically it should be possible to achieve such 
visualizations, i.e. Qt GraphicsView items have full painter API at their 
disposal and I think I read they can even embed standard widgets.

> As for your remark about FUD: my message is not FUD. Everything I wrote in
>  it is based on my personal experience. I have a system with a 2.4 GHz CPU
>  and ~700 MB of RAM. I guess many people has computers with weaker
>  resources. KDE3 runs pretty smooth on this computer. KDE4 is noticeably
>  slower.

I have 1.8 GHz with a bit more RAM (1GB) and I don't seem to be effected by 
any major performance hits.
Maybe because I've deactivated desktop effects?

If I come to think about it the main slowdowns are always caused by hard disk 
activity, usually some system updating/checking tool like update.db to 
debsums.

> And you even has not tried to answer my question. I try to explain my
>  opinion from another point of view: What makes KDE4 more similar to old
>  KDE than to GNOME, XFCE, LXDE etc?

Well, aside from the obvious things like being created by the same people, I'd 
say the usual things like well designed infrastruture, nice development 
framework, good application interoperability, integration of network resources 
(I think there are now even more applications using "GetHotNewStuff") and the 
well known suite of applications like KMail, Kate, Konqueror, Akregator, 
Konsole, Kopete, Amarok, Konversation (just to name those I have running right 
now).

>  and eg. GNOME. On the base of KDE3 knowledge it is easier to use even
>  GNOME, XFCE, LXDE, whatever, than KDE4.

Hmm, strange.
I know there have been some changes, e.g. searching in text now using an 
embedded search field instead of a dialog, more options for styling the 
message list in KMail and  a different way how to send input done in one 
Konsole session to others, but most of the things including keyboard shortcuts 
work the same.

Ah, the control center is organized differently, though I think there is a 
tree structure based one either already available or to be released with the 
upcoming 4.4

Akregator seems to have better focus handling, no longer scrolling the article 
list when I expect it to scroll the article.

Konversation seems to be totally the same.

I am not sure about Kopete. I had been primarily using Licq but I gave up on 
ICQ only very shortly before moving to KDE 4.2 so I probably had only 
discovered the basic features of Kopete's older version.

Maybe I am just using a set of applications that incidentally did not change 
while all others did?
Or is it that I didn't know about the features that have changed?

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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