KDE SC 4: The good, the bad, and the broken

[Anne Wilson]

On Tuesday 25 May 2010 09:05:14 Dennis wrote:
> Hi Anne,
> 
> > You have been able to have links to applications on the desktop for ages
> > - I think 4.2 brought that.  You should set your desktop type
> > (right-click on the desktop, Desktop Activity Settings - or similar,
> > since not all distros use the same wording) to Folderview, after which
> > most behaviour is the same as KDE 3.5.
> 
> Thanks for this info - I will try this as soon as I can (right now, no KDE
> 4 system under my hands). Although this shows clearly one question that
> will certainly come up: "If there is a possibility to switch back to old
> behaviour, why is then introduced the new one?". Yep, this is a question
> with many aspects, but think of it from the following point of view: I
> want to explain people that switching to KDE SC 4 is a good thing, so I
> should be able to explain the benefits of the new technology.
> 
Quite simply, the new one takes advantage of many plasma features, and was 
intended to be the only desktop.  Developers provided the alternative of using 
a folderview as the whole desktop when it became apparent that many users 
could not or would not use a folderview to the desktop directory as part of 
their desktop.  The result is that when you choose this alternative view, the 
folderview simply covers your whole desktop.

It seems that few people realise that Desktop was simply a directory under ~/, 
despite the fact that they must have seen it as such within Konqueror file 
manager.   KDE 3 displayed that directory's contents by default.  KDE 4 began 
to treat it correctly, as a directory.  The folderview that was present on the 
desktop was by default set to display Desktop's contents, and it was 
scaleable.  The developers thought that since nothing had really changed other 
than the first-glance impression everyone's needs were met.  They had not 
counted on the total intransigence of some users.

Anne
-- 
KDE Community Working Group
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