KDE 4: the good, the bad and the broken

[Draciron Smith]

>> 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.

Did you mean IIRC or Kedit?


> 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.

Gimp is installed in it's default location. I install Firefox from
tarballs in /usr/bin since that makes it happy. I get tired of waiting
for distros to put out updates, Fedora is the worst about being a full
number version behind on Firefox releases. So I just rename the old
version's dir, slap the new one in and copy any plugins I'm using.
Grip showed up in the latest sweep by Kappfinder but managed to elude
the previous two despite being in /usr/bin. Krusader showed up after I
restarted KDE but not after being installed. I could not get it to
move to the task bar or appear in the menu until restarting KDE.
Krename had the same problem but apps like Xclips  and several others
just popped right into the menu after installation. No need to restart
KDE. This was on previous KDE versions but I can install something and
see if the behavior continues under 4.4.2

 The installation method I normally use is rpms from Fedora
repositories. If I install something from tarball I expect to have to
go edit the menu manually but am sometimes pleasantly surprised to see
it add itself to the menu.

> 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

/home/draciron/.local/share/applications/:/usr/share/kde-settings/kde-profile/default/share/applications/:/usr/local/share/applications/:/usr/share/applications/

Ah... I see the problem. No /usr/bin anything installed to /usr/bin
which is the default home for a whole lot of stuff isn't in there. My
/usr/share is mostly empty. Not many rpms default there and I rarely
add a tarball's executable there.



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

A program or a location. Those are the two things I get asked about a
whole lot. I don't use it myself. Sambba shares seem especially
popular things people want shortcuts too.


> 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.

Quite possible. I normally download Kbuntu rather than Ubuntu but for
some reason I had too or it was easier to go with Ubuntu and then
install KDE post install. Next time I'm out that way I can try to log
in using KDE. I don't have remote access to the machine so I'll have
to wait till I'm there physically.

>> > 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.

Please explain how to do it. I'd really really like to have different
wallpapers for each of my desktops. I make too many mistakes thinking
I'm on one desktop but I'm actually on another.
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