KDE 4: the good, the bad and the broken

[Kevin Krammer]

On Thursday, 2010-04-29, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 29 April 2010 03:32, Draciron Smith <draciron at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On the Good side I'll say features they are working to implement. It
> > sounds like the Plasma thing is the right direction if they ever get
> > it really working. Right now it really is not ready for prime time and
> > switching reduced configuration and functionality. for no gain.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> > On the bad side.
> > Dropping of some beloved apps like kedit.
> 
> I will add Kedit to the list.

IIRC it wasn't dropped as in explicitly removed by decision, but it became 
unmaintained.
For a short period there was a new maintainer who was working on it as a 
project with its own release cycle (e.g. like Amarok), but he eventually moved 
to other things as well.

> > For starters
> > picking up non-KDE apps in the menu. It took 2 updates before Firefox
> > finally showed up in my menu and 3 updates before the add application
> > function actually worked.  Yet I still can't get Gimp added to my menu
> > much less my task bar. Every attempt fails. It looks like I added it
> > but I go to look and it's not in the menu and if it's not in the menu
> > it cannot be added to the task bar. Who knows if this update whether I
> > can actually drag and drop. Sometimes I can drag menu items to the
> > task bar and they actually go there, other updates I can drag all I
> > want but I still cannot add an app to the task bar.
> 
> I have not had this problem. Are you saving the menu after editing it?
> It needs to be saved before the changes take place, and I myself have
> been guilty of closing the menu editor without saving.

Are the .desktop files for these applications installed into the proper 
locations?
While it is quite uncommon today to find packages which either do not install 
or misplace their description files, it could still happen.

Default locations per specification are /usr/sharea/applications and 
/usr/local/share/applications.
Those can be changed and/or extended by environment variables so a good way to 
check the resulting search list is

kde4-config --path xdgdata-apps

> > An easy replacement for shortcuts is needed. One of the many things
> > which once the Plasma desktop is actually working as described will be
> > nice but right now there's no reasonable method to create one.
> 
> Do you meant shortcuts to applications on the desktop? I will mention
> that, it is a common use case. Thanks!

Hmm, short cut as in "link to program" or more precisely as in "right click -> 
new ->link to program"?

> > Better distro support. Last time I tried to install KDE under Ubuntu
> > it was an abysmal failure. I used the Ubutunu repositories and nothing
> > worked. Gnome worked fine on that machine and was the default from the
> > installation. No sound under KDE, menu options gone, the logout log
> > off functions broken, no way to change the graphics resolution but I
> > could under Gnome. I forget half the problems but it was the most
> > botched KDE install I've ever attempted. Since it wasn't my machine I
> > just set the user up with Gnome instead of going thorugh dependency
> > hell trying to install from tarballs.
> 
> That is a Ubuntu issue, not a KDE issue, sorry. But I will tell you
> that Kubuntu works fine, in fact most of my installs are Kubuntu.

Maybe a Kubuntu desktop has something in its package selection that is not 
installed when installing KDE on a Ubuntu setup.
Could be a missing dependency that wasn't detected by the packagers because 
they for example just test with Kubuntu and not a plain Ubuntu.

> > The loss of the ability to use a different image for each desktop.
> > Initially I thought this a minor annoyance but I didn't realize how
> > much I depended on this to keep track of what desktop I was actually
> > on.
> 
> I think that's back in KDE 4.5.

I think was will be back is an easier way to do it. AFAIK it is already 
possible, just not as obvious as it should.

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 190 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde/attachments/20100429/cc30fd15/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.