kde-4.6.1

Tue Mar 8 04:52:47 GMT 2011

On Monday, March 07, 2011 11:30:55 PM Duncan did opine:

> gene heskett posted on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:13:52 -0500 as excerpted:
> > Greetings;
> > 
> > pclos called it awesome when it was finished installing 224 packages
> > worth of it early this morning.
> > 
> > Uncle, uncle!  Uncle!!!  I.O.W., I give up.
> > 
> > Where can I find a tut that tells me how to setup a task manager that
> > sticks to all of the 10 workspaces I have?  Workspaces 2-10 seem to be
> > ok, and are all clones. but workspace one has a mind of its own.  If I
> > add a task manager on workspace 1, then its incomplete, and sitting on
> > top of the task manager on all other workspaces.
> 
> Workspace?  Do you mean virtual desktop (in the normal X sense, as used
> in kde3), or kde4/plasma activity, or...?  Maybe you mean both, which
> would mean activities in this case, since it's possible (tho not
> recommended, the feature was added by popular demand but doesn't really
> fit the vision of the plasma devs) to link them, such that every
> virtual desktop has its own activity.  (The checkbox for that option is
> in kcontrol, called system- settings even tho it's mostly user-specific
> kde-only settings that have little to do with system global settings,
> workspace appearance and behavior, workspace behavior, virtual desktops
> applet, desktops tab, different widgets for each desktop checkbox.)
> 
> FWIW, plasma is pretty nice and very fancy, with lots of widgets both
> included and on kdelook, to be added if desired.  However, it has also
> been one of the biggest source of complaints with kde4, for a number of
> reasons, including the fact that unlike many other kde components which
> were pretty much ported from kde3/qt3, plasma was built from scratch,
> and was rather more immature than the rest of kde4 in the early days. 
> To this day it has a lot of flash and glitz, but at least thru 4.5 (and
> apparently with 4.6 for you at least), continued to suffer from major
> bugs and instabilities that given its place as the kde4 desktop, have
> continued to be a drag on "it-just-works" style usability.
> 
> To get your head around the general ideas, you'll probably want to spend
> some time reading userbase (on the kde site) and ASegio's back-blog.
> (ASegio is the plasma lead developer.)
> 
> Meanwhile, plasmoids are the individual widgets, each menu, clock,
> system tray, task manager, etc.  Activities control the desktop but not
> the panels, which appear on all desktops.  Plasmoids, including the
> task manager plasmoid you're apparently having problems with, can be
> placed on either the desktop (in a particular activity), or on a panel.
> 
> Based on your description and how plasma is /supposed/ to work, I'm
> guessing that you have it set to link virtual desktops with activities
> (different widgets for each is checked), and the task managers on the
> desktops (thus, in activities), but activity/desktop one doesn't have
> one.  You then add one there, but to a panel, which because panels
> aren't activity controlled but global, now appears in that panel, which
> is positioned on top of the task manager plasmoid in the activity (on
> the desktop) in all the other workspaces.
> 
> Now, I don't personally use a task manager plasmoid here, preferring to
> use the grid effect (desktop effects kcontrol applet, middle tab),
> alt-tab (which I have set to the flip effect), or the cube effect, for
> switching desktops (I have only a single activity setup... so it
> appears on all desktops) or windows, depending on my mood (tho I
> usually use alt-tab). As a result, I don't have a lot of specific
> experience with the task manager plasmoid, since I removed it pretty
> fast.  However, some plasmoids behave differently on the desktop (in an
> activity) then they do in a panel, so that might be what you're
> referring to as "incomplete".  Also, from what I've read, there's quite
> some configuration possible with the task manager plasmoid, and it's
> possible the one you're adding is setup differently by default, only
> showing what's on that virtual desktop, for instance, or grouping
> windows, so it appears incomplete, but it's only because it's not
> configured the same as the other, or as I said, possibly because you're
> comparing the task managers on the desktop to one in a panel.
> 
> > And 2, I have no volume control (its wide, ear blasting, open)
> > regardless of what I assign the master volume to in kmix?  The audio
> > system (no pulse in pclos) also complains about missing audio devices
> > as if something else has grabbed the important ones.  I does this as
> > soon as I'm logged in, and long before it has applied whatever screen
> > settings it may,  or may not have remembered.  I've set video stuff
> > up 3 times so far, but all it seems to remember is some defaults that
> > are far from complete.
> 
> FWIW, kde4 uses phonon as its audio system.  phonon in turn uses one of
> several possible backends.  The original backend was the xine backend,
> phonon-xine, and it remains the default in many distributions, despite
> the fact that the phonon devs ran into technical issues with it and now
> consider it deprecated.
> 
> The one that seems to be getting the most work and is recommended going
> forward is the vlc backend, phonon-vlc.  There's also the gstreamer
> backend, phonon-gstreamer, which may well work best with distributions
> that default to gnome, since that's a gnome-related technology.
> 
> FWIW, based both on my experience and that of someone else who posted
> here with similar "disappearing device" issues, I recommend that you
> try phonon-vlc.  If you have vlc already installed, the phonon-vlc
> backend shouldn't even pull a lot of additional dependencies, tho it
> might if you don't have vlc installed yet.  But for both me and the
> other guy who I recommended try it, the vlc backend cured the problems.
>  It would seem that the "disappearing device" issue is a common one on
> phonon-xine, but I've never seen a report of it on phonon-vlc.  YMMV of
> course, but that's what worked for both me and the other person that
> posted with the problem.
> 
> > Obviously I am not doing something right, so where is the tutorial,
> > one that assumes you are starting from a blank screen except for the
> > cashew in the upper right corner.  Or even without that if possible.
> 
> I don't believe there's any that start that bare, in part because
> plasma- desktop itself doesn't start that bare by default.

I seem to have managed to at least get a start on it, and found why it 
wasn't restoring on a reboot, it was set to go back to the defaults.
So I now have a background image, most of which are duplicates, and a 
cashew on all screens now.  It was a matter of unchecking, applying, and 
rechecking and re-applying in several places.

> FWIW, it's possible that's why you didn't get any replies before this...
> what you were asking just seemed overwhelming.

Sorry, there was so much mucked up, I was overwhelmed myself.  If there is 
only one thing wrong, its a lot easier to try & fix that than when there 
are 4 or 5 things wrong, and a reboot throws 3 hours work looking for and 
trying to set stuff, away.  Frustrated would be an understatement.

> I know that's why I
> didn't answer it the first time around.  PCLinuxOS is considered a
> reasonably good KDE distribution and I expected that you'd probably ask
> on their user help forums/groups/lists/channels/whatever, eventually. 
> (FWIW, I'm a Gentooer, here.)  But after work tonite I took a second
> look and decided I might be able to help, after all, if I ignored the
> request for a tutorial that isn't likely to exist and broke down the
> rest of it into smaller, easier to reply to, pieces.

The pclos folks are as bumfuzzled as I was, the upgrade worked for probably 
75% of those who've posted, the rest of us got caught out, badly.

I have now installed the other two phonon backends as xine was apparently 
the default.  That also pulled in about 20 more bits and pieces of kde, and 
while I did have the sound effects from kmail, and thats all I had, nothing 
now, there is enough new kde stuff just went in that I'll reboot before 
pursuing the dead audio further.  Hopefully that won't throw away the video 
stuff I just spent another hour on.

BTW, there apparently is only one gene heskett, that was me all the time,  
and I have been a linux/kde user since about RedHat 5.0, circa early 1998 
or late 1997. I was present on a couple of the old kde mailing lists, but 
they kept moving, and I occasionally jumped ISP's which doesn't help 
continuity either.  I guess that qualifies me as an old fart, which I am, 
on my 77th trip around this star now.  And I'll freely admit, short term 
memory isn't what it was 50 years ago.

Thanks Duncan , I'm off to reboot before amanda starts her nightly backup.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
<http://tinyurl.com/ddg5bz>
Sorry.  I forget what I was going to say.
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