Upgrading from kde 4.6 to 4.10 SC questions

[Duncan]

John Woodhouse posted on Sat, 13 Jul 2013 12:36:50 -0700 as excerpted:

> Sorry if this is being sent rich text. Yahoo have changed again but at
> least do not use html.

FWIW you sent both.  Thanks for being aware of the problem, at least.

> The 1st one is easily dealt with I hope. On 4.10 I have the tiny
> apparent desktop space as per 4.6. I just deleted it and had my old
> style desktop back. Will 4.10 do the same thing or is there a better way
> of obtaining a normal large desktop. As is it just isn't big enough for
> my needs. Glad to see it apha sorted folders and hope the full desktop
> does too. More of the same style "desktop" wouldn't help either.

It's likely easily dealt with as soon as I/we know for sure what you're 
talking about.  I imagine you might not be as comfortable writing English 
as some other languages, which is understandable, but it is a bit hard to 
understand what you're trying to communicate, so bear with me as I guess 
a bit.

Normally speaking, what is referred to as "the desktop" is whatever's 
there whenever there's no other windows open, and is thus the size of 
whatever monitor you're using.  Therefore, to make your desktop bigger, 
you'd buy a bigger monitor.

However, that doesn't really make sense in the context of what you wrote, 
so you must mean something different, and all I can do is guess at what 
that might be.  Hopefully I guess correctly. =:^)

Meanwhile, I /think/ you said you have a tiny desktop space like 4.6 and 
just deleted it to get your old desktop back, then ask if 4.10 (which you 
just said you were on when you did the deletion to get the old desktop 
back) does the same thing.  Of course 4.10 does the same thing as 4.10.

So that bit doesn't quite make sense either.

So here's my best guess at what I think you actually meant:

I /think/ you must have been referring to the default folderview widget 
(in plasma, widgets are also known as plasmoids, because they're small 
bits of plasma =:^), which normally appears on the desktop.  As with all 
such plasmoids, yes, it's deletable, leaving the larger desktop without 
the plasmoid component that was there previously.

But I'm guessing what you really are trying to do is switch the desktop 
type, from the default type, on which you can install all sorts of 
plasmoids/widgets, to the old style icon based desktop, where it simply 
shows all the files from a particular directory, ~/Desktop/ by default, 
with each file or subdirectory as its own icon.

If that is indeed what you're after, then it's simple to configure it 
that way, indeed. =:^)

1) Hit the "toolbox" in the corner or context-click and from the 
resulting menu select Default Desktop Settings (or words to that effect,t 
he name may be slightly different).

2) In the resulting desktop settings dialog, hit unlock widgets if 
necessary, then from the layout drop-down menu, select Folder, Display 
the contents of folders.

3) Hit OK or Apply to apply your changes.

4) (optional) From the same toolbox or context menu as in #1, select 
Folder settings (the same entry that was probably default desktop, 
previously).  Make adjustments in the Location, Icons and Filter icon 
sections as desired, and again hit OK or apply.

5) (optional but recommended) Again from the same toolbox or context 
menu, select lock widgets, making it more difficult to accidentally 
change things when you didn't want to.

6) (optional but recommended)  You may wish to logout/login or quit and 
restart plasma-desktop, in ordered to help ensure that your changes 
"stick".  They normally will even without this, but if your system isn't 
very stable or there's other issues, you may find that changes won't 
"stick" unless you immediately quit and restart plasma-desktop (or kde), 
and it does let you test that the changes you made stick, as well as 
helping them to do so in some cases, so it's a good to do just in case.

Hopefully I guessed correctly and that was what you were looking for. =:^)

> 2nd question's more difficult. Some reports on Kmail are now putting me
> right off using it. OpenSuse maintain an rpm that installs 3.x Kmail and
> it's bits and pieces and meant to be run on KDE4 systems. There are
> other sources as well. Anyone tried this route, all ok etc?
> 
> 3rdly my current Kmail is part indexed - just the address book. Odd
> thing is that I think that there are more email addresses in it than
> system settings - personal indicates. Any idea where the others may be?
> Out of interest I have had no problems at all with this Kmail.

A lot of people (including me) found the new kmail /anything/ but stable, 
and eventually switched to something else.  However, if it's working for 
you and you have no complaints, good for you.  I'd almost certainly just 
stick with what I had in that case (as I did for about nine years, until 
the new kmail simply didn't work well for me any more).

But since I did switch off of it myself and had a rather bad experience 
with it that caused that switch, I'm probably not the best person around 
to try to answer your kmail questions, and I won't try.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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