[gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Philip Webb]

I got KDE 4.2.1 installed with only a couple of bugs along the way.
I'm not impressed: there's some eye-candy, but usability is reduced.
There's a very limited choice of desktop backgrounds:
I like the 'No picture, pavement' choice in 3.5.10 with different colors,
but there's nothing similar in 4.2.1 .
I did something unexpected & froze a new panel -- 1 CPU at 100 % -- 
& managed to get back to "normal" only by deleting ~/.kde4/share .
Dolphin is pathetic compared with Thunar, let alone Krusader
(I've never tried Konqueror as a file manager).
I can't try the new Gwenview, as some of the new files clash with the old
& I'm certainly not unmerging the KDE 3 version.

I've gone back to 3.5.10 more or less, but am stuck with 4.2.1's desktop:
the background, R-click menu & 4.2.1 panel are still there & working
(no, trying to change it with the 3.5.10 CC has no effect).
Can anyone suggest what I have to delete to get all of 3.5.10 restored ?

I have a lot of respect for KDE developers over the past few years,
but they've badly underestimated the size of their task for KDE 4 .

Perhaps I should try Xfce 4.6 with some KDE 4 apps ... (smile)

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
> I got KDE 4.2.1 installed with only a couple of bugs along the way.
> I'm not impressed: there's some eye-candy, but usability is reduced.
> There's a very limited choice of desktop backgrounds:
> I like the 'No picture, pavement' choice in 3.5.10 with different colors,
> but there's nothing similar in 4.2.1 .
> I did something unexpected & froze a new panel -- 1 CPU at 100 % --
> & managed to get back to "normal" only by deleting ~/.kde4/share .
> Dolphin is pathetic compared with Thunar, let alone Krusader
> (I've never tried Konqueror as a file manager).
> I can't try the new Gwenview, as some of the new files clash with the old
> & I'm certainly not unmerging the KDE 3 version.
>
> I've gone back to 3.5.10 more or less, but am stuck with 4.2.1's desktop:
> the background, R-click menu & 4.2.1 panel are still there & working
> (no, trying to change it with the 3.5.10 CC has no effect).
> Can anyone suggest what I have to delete to get all of 3.5.10 restored ?
>
> I have a lot of respect for KDE developers over the past few years,
> but they've badly underestimated the size of their task for KDE 4 .
>
> Perhaps I should try Xfce 4.6 with some KDE 4 apps ... (smile)

I would suggest totally getting rid of everything KDE3 related before
trying to go KDE4... I also had lots of problems and conflicts with
both installed. Once I got rid of all traces of KDE3 and started
"fresh" with KDE4, it has been working well. I really didn't care for
the whole look and feel at first, but it has grown on me. Me, I set it
to random background every 10 minutes. Honestly the background is
rarely ever seen on my screen so it's not a big deal to me. I like
maximized windows. :) For the same reason I don't use the desktop
widgets at all, and I find dockable taskbar stuff from KDE3 to be more
useful... because a bunch of gigantic widgets on my desktop which are
always covered by windows seems totally stupid and useless to me.

Overall I think KDE3 was much faster in performance (probably lack of
3D effects) and more productive to use... I'm sticking with KDE4 for
now simply because it's the "new" thing... but there's no compelling
reason for me to use it instead of KDE3.

I don't use GUI filemanager so I have no opinion on dolphin. New
gwenview works fine for me, again I nuked the old stuff first. I
actually use gqview instead of gwenview, though.

KDE4 versions of k3b, digikam, k9copy, koffice all seem to work well for me.

The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2. I really liked
Amarok 1 and they started over for Amarok 2 and I dislike just about
everything they've done to it. The tree-view collection list is
awful!!!!, the UI is bad (middle 50% of screen is wasted), playlist is
not intuitive. Does not support titles in cue files. The only thing
they've done better is Last.fm works better... but I am about [------]
this close to going back to Amarok 1 and taking on board the KDE3 libs
it brings with it.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Philip Webb]

090413 Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
>> I got KDE 4.2.1 installed with only a couple of bugs along the way.
>> I'm not impressed: there's some eye-candy, but usability is reduced.
> I would suggest totally getting rid of everything KDE3 related
> before trying to go KDE4. I also had lots of problems with both installed.

I'm much more likely to go the other way ... (smile)

> Honestly the background is rarely ever seen on my screen
> I like maximized windows.

Same here, but I keep a small slice visible on some desktops
-- I've had  10  for many years -- & it's all there on the  2  spares.

> Overall I think KDE3 was much faster in performance

Didn't I mention that too ... (grimace) ?

I also didn't mention that Kmahjongg 4.2.1 doesn't allow you
to edit the layout & its "traditional" tiles are ugly.
Nor is Okular a match for Kpdf 3.5.10 .

I tried (re)moving  .kderc  &  .kde4 , but it doesn't alter the background:
does anyone else have any suggestions how to restore the KDE 3 version ?

I'm quite willing to try new things, but KDE 4.2.1 is definitely a beta.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:

> I also didn't mention that Kmahjongg 4.2.1 doesn't allow you
> to edit the layout & its "traditional" tiles are ugly.

Oh, I forgot about the games... Kolf is really really ugly now on
KDE4... they changed the colors for no apparent reason.

> Nor is Okular a match for Kpdf 3.5.10 .

Okular's CHM handling is terrible (unusable), kchmviewer was 1000x
better. I haven't had any issues with it and PDFs so far.

> I tried (re)moving  .kderc  &  .kde4 , but it doesn't alter the background:
> does anyone else have any suggestions how to restore the KDE 3 version ?

Did you use kdeprefix USE flag with kde4? I think it is required for
having multiple KDE versions... otherwise it all gets mixed together.
Also, I think there was some updated KDE 3.5.10 startup scripts at
some point that fixed KDE4 compatibility, possibly you had yours
installed before that. I could be wrong on that though since I
abandoned KDE3 before 3.5.10 arrived.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Dale]

Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
>   
>> I got KDE 4.2.1 installed with only a couple of bugs along the way.
>> I'm not impressed: there's some eye-candy, but usability is reduced.
>> There's a very limited choice of desktop backgrounds:
>> I like the 'No picture, pavement' choice in 3.5.10 with different colors,
>> but there's nothing similar in 4.2.1 .
>> I did something unexpected & froze a new panel -- 1 CPU at 100 % --
>> & managed to get back to "normal" only by deleting ~/.kde4/share .
>> Dolphin is pathetic compared with Thunar, let alone Krusader
>> (I've never tried Konqueror as a file manager).
>> I can't try the new Gwenview, as some of the new files clash with the old
>> & I'm certainly not unmerging the KDE 3 version.
>>
>> I've gone back to 3.5.10 more or less, but am stuck with 4.2.1's desktop:
>> the background, R-click menu & 4.2.1 panel are still there & working
>> (no, trying to change it with the 3.5.10 CC has no effect).
>> Can anyone suggest what I have to delete to get all of 3.5.10 restored ?
>>
>> I have a lot of respect for KDE developers over the past few years,
>> but they've badly underestimated the size of their task for KDE 4 .
>>
>> Perhaps I should try Xfce 4.6 with some KDE 4 apps ... (smile)
>>     
>
> I would suggest totally getting rid of everything KDE3 related before
> trying to go KDE4... I also had lots of problems and conflicts with
> both installed. Once I got rid of all traces of KDE3 and started
> "fresh" with KDE4, it has been working well. 

I suspect using the kdeprefix USE flag would fix a lot of that. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Philip Webb wrote:
> I also didn't mention that Kmahjongg 4.2.1 doesn't allow you
> to edit the layout & its "traditional" tiles are ugly.

You can use the old version.


> Nor is Okular a match for Kpdf 3.5.10.

Okular is actually regarded as far better by almost everyone.


> I tried (re)moving  .kderc  &  .kde4 , but it doesn't alter the background:
> does anyone else have any suggestions how to restore the KDE 3 version ?

"Tiled" and "Center tiled" are probably what you want (the same as in 
KDE 3 I think), but somehow they don't work here :P


> I'm quite willing to try new things, but KDE 4.2.1 is definitely a beta.

But a very good one, at least for me.  It has some features I want that 
KDE 3 simply lacks (mainly plasmids, Vista-like desktop effects and 
vastly better font rendering.)

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Philip Webb wrote:
>> I'm quite willing to try new things, but KDE 4.2.1 is definitely a beta.
> 
> But a very good one, at least for me.  It has some features I want that 
> KDE 3 simply lacks (mainly plasmids, Vista-like desktop effects and 
> vastly better font rendering.)

I almost forgot the obvious; why are you on KDE 4.2.1 when the latest 
version is 4.2.2 with lots of bugfixes?

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : the undead has been killed

[Philip Webb]

090413 Philip Webb wrote:
> I've found out how to fix it: something is starting Plasma,
> so Htop to the rescue ! -- kill Plasma & the hideous mask is removed
> -- it appears at the very end of the KDE start-up process --
> & the handsome KDE 3 desktop backgrounds reappear
> together with the desktop menus called up by mouse clicks.

I didn't find out what was starting Plasma, but I fixed it :
'cd /usr/bin; mv plasma plasma-aside'.  back to normal !
(clutches garlic, crucifix, incense ... )

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 April 2009 19:02:06 Philip Webb wrote:
> I'm quite willing to try new things, but KDE 4.2.1 is definitely a beta.

It's more than that. It's an experimental approach to a new way of thinking 
about desktops. 

KDE-4 is NOT a "New! Improved! KDE-3.5.x". It's so different that still 
calling it KDE is itself a point of confusion. But that's a different point 
altogether (and the name is not likely to ever change).

To have the features and stability of KDE-3.5, one must run KDE-3.5. To move 
from KDE-3.5 to KDE-4, one must ignore the superficial similarities (apps do 
kinda look the same) and see the underlying truth - that migration requires as 
much of a shift in your thinking as moving from KDE to Gnome or XFCE.

It's not so much that the KDE-4 code is a beta. The very ideas about how KDE-4 
works at all are still in alpha. No-one knows the future and no-one knows what 
users want from their computers in the future, so the KDE devs made a 
considered best estimate about what would be useful in the future and built a 
platform that will (hopefully) prove useful.

KDE-4 is scarcely a year old, it's a marvel that it works at all considering 
the deep invasive changes that were necessary.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 April 2009 19:23:16 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > Philip Webb wrote:
> >> I'm quite willing to try new things, but KDE 4.2.1 is definitely a beta.
> >
> > But a very good one, at least for me.  It has some features I want that
> > KDE 3 simply lacks (mainly plasmids, Vista-like desktop effects and
> > vastly better font rendering.)
>
> I almost forgot the obvious; why are you on KDE 4.2.1 when the latest
> version is 4.2.2 with lots of bugfixes?

4.2.2 just hit the tree very recently and as of yesterday is still 
package.masked.

Perhaps you have been using the kde-testing overlay? It's been in there for a 
while.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : the undead has been killed

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 April 2009 20:49:44 Philip Webb wrote:
> 090413 Philip Webb wrote:
> > I've found out how to fix it: something is starting Plasma,
> > so Htop to the rescue ! -- kill Plasma & the hideous mask is removed
> > -- it appears at the very end of the KDE start-up process --
> > & the handsome KDE 3 desktop backgrounds reappear
> > together with the desktop menus called up by mouse clicks.
>
> I didn't find out what was starting Plasma, but I fixed it :
> 'cd /usr/bin; mv plasma plasma-aside'.  back to normal !
> (clutches garlic, crucifix, incense ... )

Why invoke the supernatural when common logic is so superior?

emerge -C plasma
emerge --depclean

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 April 2009 19:14:25 Dale wrote:
> Paul Hartman wrote:

> > I would suggest totally getting rid of everything KDE3 related before
> > trying to go KDE4... I also had lots of problems and conflicts with
> > both installed. Once I got rid of all traces of KDE3 and started
> > "fresh" with KDE4, it has been working well.
>
> I suspect using the kdeprefix USE flag would fix a lot of that.

No it won't. It just moves different things around in your PATH and you have 
the same basic problem with problematic things having a different name.

USE="kdeprefix" will install KDE-4 into /usr/kde/<slot> just like 3.5 always 
did. You still have to manipulate your PATH so that the install dir for the 
version you are using comes before other versions and /usr/ itself.

USE="-kdeprefix" will install KDE-4 into /usr/ just like the vast majority of 
apps in portage do. In this case you have to ensure that /usr/ is FIRST in 
your PATH before other KDE slots (otherwise the loader will find the wrong 
version of identically named KDE apps from other versions first). This 
approach is sensible as it's a bit pointless having more than one KDE-4 
version installed. How many bash versions do you have?

The kdeprefix USE flag is not the problem. 
The handling of the PATH is the problem.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> It's more than that. It's an experimental approach to a new way of thinking 
> about desktops. 

Amen. Brah......

What I'm looking to do, is focus on voice interfaces to the desktop.

Most of my followers just want linux (naturarrly this means Gentoo
for me) to do mundane management tasks
for all sorts of little embedded devices.

Kinda like SCADA for controls, only extended to
usb and video and networked devices (avahi/zeroconf...)


Also, I'm looking to deploy video from h.264 based
cameras, as the background, whilst various amounts
of detail appear on top of the video, about the operations
of these aforementioned voice controlled devices.

QT4 is a HUGE enabler for this sort of thing.

> KDE-4 is scarcely a year old, it's a marvel that it works at all considering 
> the deep invasive changes that were necessary.


Life is a beach, and then you marry one....

So long story short, for me, looking to the future,
I have no other choices but QT4 (now LGPL)
and therefore KDE 4 on the desktop....


I feel you pain, but the Long_View has pulled me over
to the (dark side) of KDE 4.....


hth,


James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 13 April 2009 22:36:19 James wrote:
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > It's more than that. It's an experimental approach to a new way of
> > thinking about desktops.
>
> Amen. Brah......
>
> What I'm looking to do, is focus on voice interfaces to the desktop.

I'd like to see a working implementation of the interface in the "Minority 
Report" movie. The tricky bit is how sore the user's arms get :-)

> Most of my followers just want linux (naturarrly this means Gentoo
> for me) to do mundane management tasks
> for all sorts of little embedded devices.
>
> Kinda like SCADA for controls, only extended to
> usb and video and networked devices (avahi/zeroconf...)
>
>
> Also, I'm looking to deploy video from h.264 based
> cameras, as the background, whilst various amounts
> of detail appear on top of the video, about the operations
> of these aforementioned voice controlled devices.

I'm thinking aircraft and BMW HUDs... how cool would that be?
Or thin, flexible, transparent displays as the middle layer in my helmet visor 
hooked up to a rearward facing lipstick camera so I can see the twit behind me 
in his SUV when I'm on my bike.

Futuristic perhaps, but when I read the lead KDE dev's blogs where they try to 
answer the question "What's KDE-4 all about anyway?" I feel that they tried 
hard to build a base where I could do something as outlandish as that if I 
choose to.

> QT4 is a HUGE enabler for this sort of thing.
>
> > KDE-4 is scarcely a year old, it's a marvel that it works at all
> > considering the deep invasive changes that were necessary.
>
> Life is a beach, and then you marry one....
>
> So long story short, for me, looking to the future,
> I have no other choices but QT4 (now LGPL)
> and therefore KDE 4 on the desktop....

I dumped KDE-3 four years ago in favour of e17. Something about KDE-4 and Qt4 
grabbed my attention - maybe it's just the scope and possibilities of it all, 
and the sheer size of brass balls it takes to be the first to go that route 
with a mainstream product. I admire guts and vision like that. So much so that 
I haven't seriously used e17 for 8 months now and probably only built it 
twice.


> I feel you pain, but the Long_View has pulled me over
> to the (dark side) of KDE 4.....

It's not all sunshine and roses :-)

There's that bloody cashew thing. And the stupid menu - lancelot works 
smoother and better but is missing functionality. And the taskbar only 
recently got two rows (better than one) but you can't have three. There's 
still no obvious plasmoid for a QuickLaunch (I had to search for ages before I 
found it). And the panel is still any colour you like as long as it's black.

But these are small issues and will be fixed in due course. Meanwhile, you can 
rotate plasmoids on the desktop (my favourite showoff trick - use a digital 
clock). Sure, it's a gimmick, but a useful one, and one that shows off the 
kind of vision the KDE-4 lead devs had in mind

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2. I really liked
> Amarok 1 and they started over for Amarok 2 and I dislike just about
> everything they've done to it. The tree-view collection list is
> awful!!!!, the UI is bad (middle 50% of screen is wasted), playlist is
> not intuitive. Does not support titles in cue files. The only thing
> they've done better is Last.fm works better... but I am about [------]
> this close to going back to Amarok 1 and taking on board the KDE3 libs
> it brings with it.

One more big gripe about Amarok 2: it is a music player which cannot
play music CDs. What's up with that?

I just tried Amarok 2.1 and they haven't fixed anything... Something
as simple as loading an album into the playlist, with the tracks in
the proper order, is seemingly impossible. I am so frustrated with it.

[gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> I'm thinking aircraft and BMW HUDs... how cool would that be?
> Or thin, flexible, transparent displays as the middle layer in my helmet visor 
> hooked up to a rearward facing lipstick camera so I can see the twit behind me 
> in his SUV when I'm on my bike.


Kinda a neuralizer for
road rage
via the Sanquin_Penguin ?

> Futuristic perhaps, but when I read the lead KDE dev's blogs where they try to 
> answer the question "What's KDE-4 all about anyway?" I feel that they tried 
> hard to build a base where I could do something as outlandish as that if I 
> choose to.


Yes, 
Thats what folks do not get yet.
KDE4 is new and fragile. It's not
what KDE4 does (now) it's what it
can do as a platform for advanced
graphics and video (integration) rendering.
The KDE4 platform will allow
for awesome things to follow.


> It's not all sunshine and roses 

For old guys like me, it was
'Guns and Roses'
till the singer lost all
his marbles...



> But these are small issues and will be fixed in due course. Meanwhile, you can 
> rotate plasmoids on the desktop (my favourite showoff trick - use a digital 
> clock). Sure, it's a gimmick, but a useful one, and one that shows off the 
> kind of vision the KDE-4 lead devs had in mind

Is there a central repository for plasmoids? Or are you just 
combing the net for them one at a time?


Cheap gimmickery will do for now.
Better stuff to follow.

OpenMoko cell phones have lots of embedded_gentoo folks
busy as a bee.

Wait till it's ready and the rank and file discover
embedded Gentoo (plus QT4) on their openmoko 
cell phone....

We'll get lots of converts then to QT4.


Of coarse other gui software will run on embedded
gentoo on a openmoko cell phone, but QT4
is going to rule the roost, methinks. LGPL of QT4
will allow continued GPL goodies and lots of little companies
will be building devices and software, but, the prices
will be low and there will (hopefully) be a ocean
of small electronics companies building more embedded
linux based products. Forget GE and Siemens.....
Time of the little companies to prosper (me_hopes).

ciao,

James

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 02:19:47 Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Paul Hartman
>
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2. I really liked
> > Amarok 1 and they started over for Amarok 2 and I dislike just about
> > everything they've done to it. The tree-view collection list is
> > awful!!!!, the UI is bad (middle 50% of screen is wasted), playlist is
> > not intuitive. Does not support titles in cue files. The only thing
> > they've done better is Last.fm works better... but I am about [------]
> > this close to going back to Amarok 1 and taking on board the KDE3 libs
> > it brings with it.
>
> One more big gripe about Amarok 2: it is a music player which cannot
> play music CDs. What's up with that?
>
> I just tried Amarok 2.1 and they haven't fixed anything... Something
> as simple as loading an album into the playlist, with the tracks in
> the proper order, is seemingly impossible. I am so frustrated with it.

I tried really hard to use Amarok 2 the way the developers intended. But I 
failed. I couldn't really figure out what was the way they intended at all so 
I had to guess. The final straws were:

- same as you - can't actually play anything except mp3/ogg
- interface designed by an idiot with half the real estate blank in the middle
- Tag editor simply does not work right. I can't edit an album, change the 
name of the album and have it show up in all tracks.
- the final straw of the final straws was the idiocy about how the Amarok devs 
think you should use mysql.

So Amarok is a project that seems to have lost it's focus, has no idea what 
the project is even supposed to do, and is being coded by a bunch of fools who 
have no idea. I went back to 1.4, masked everything >=1.5 and life is good 
again. mpd is also worth a second look.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Roy Wright]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 April 2009 02:19:47 Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Paul Hartman
>>
>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2. 

Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't get Amarok 2...

Personally the change over to dolphin is disappointing.  So far I've
been able to mostly ignore it and use konqueror with one major
exception, fish and sftp no longer work in konqueror.  Only sftp works
in dolphin.  In the past (3.x), I always found fish to be bulletproof
while sftp occasionally would flake.

A minor gripe with Konsole is it not remembering the "Show in Menu"
setting for profiles.  Makes working with several custom profiles a pain.

On using the plasmoids on the desktop, dock the "Show Plasmoids Desktop"
plasmoid.  Basically one click and you have access to all your
plasmoids.  Almost as good as the mac...

One trick that I do with the plasmoids is place the CPU monitor on the
right edge of my screen, then when I place windows I leave about a half
inch uncovered on the right so I can see the most recent processor load.

Overall I'm liking KDE4.  Just need to get k3b ported over then I can
finally ditch kdelibs-3.5...

Have fun,
Roy

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Philip Webb]

090414 Roy Wright wrote:
> the change over to dolphin is disappointing.
> So far I've been able to mostly ignore it and use konqueror
> with one major exception, fish and sftp no longer work in konqueror.
> Only sftp works in dolphin.  In the past (3.x),
> I always found fish bulletproof, while sftp occasionally would flake.

I use Krusader, which employs Fish very effectively.
I am very impressed with Thunar, the work of  1  man, Bernard Meurer
(it doesn't do Fish AFAIK, but more abilities are promised).

> A minor gripe with Konsole is it not remembering the "Show in Menu"
> setting for profiles.  Makes working with several custom profiles a pain.

Yes, that's another for my long list of complaints.
I have  4  Konsoles running, ordinary user, root, Mutt & Lynx:
each needs a different profile to get the correct colors & app restarted,
but I couldn't find out how to set up the profiles to achieve this.

> using plasmoids on the desktop, dock "Show Plasmoids Desktop" plasmoid.
> Basically one click and you have access to all your plasmoids.
> Almost as good as the Mac

I didn't get as far as plasmoids & it's many years since I used a Mac.

> One trick is place the CPU monitor plasmoid on the R edge of my screen,
> then leave c 0,5 in uncovered by windows to see the processor load.

I have Gkrellm running on Desktop 8 , which shows that very clearly.

I plan to remerge the 4.2.1 pkgs with USE="kdeprefix",
then test it a bit further to see how far I can fix its ugliness;
I didn't try out Kate or Konqueror yesterday, mb Okular cb set up better.
I've always been impressed by the KDE developers, esp with 3.5.x ,
& hope they will steadily restore its choices & taste by 4.3 or 4.4 .
Perhaps KDE is now where Xfce was with its 4.2 (2004: now 4.6).

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 08:56:51 Roy Wright wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Tuesday 14 April 2009 02:19:47 Paul Hartman wrote:
> >> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Paul Hartman
> >>
> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2.
>
> Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't get Amarok 2...
>
> Personally the change over to dolphin is disappointing.  So far I've
> been able to mostly ignore it and use konqueror with one major
> exception, fish and sftp no longer work in konqueror.  Only sftp works
> in dolphin.  In the past (3.x), I always found fish to be bulletproof
> while sftp occasionally would flake.

I don't like dolphin either, it reminds me too much of Nautilus. But konqueror 
is showing it's age, and as a browser it's now almost useless. It's JavaScript 
is horribly broken and using flash is just too painful to contemplate.

> A minor gripe with Konsole is it not remembering the "Show in Menu"
> setting for profiles.  Makes working with several custom profiles a pain.
>
> On using the plasmoids on the desktop, dock the "Show Plasmoids Desktop"
> plasmoid.  Basically one click and you have access to all your
> plasmoids.  Almost as good as the mac...

I've had various "Uncover the Desktop" button/widget/plasmoids on my taskbar 
permanently for at least 10 years now. Trouble is, I never ever use it in real 
life :-)

> One trick that I do with the plasmoids is place the CPU monitor on the
> right edge of my screen, then when I place windows I leave about a half
> inch uncovered on the right so I can see the most recent processor load.

gkrellm is *excellent* at that, plus it's very frugal with it's screen real 
estate.



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 April 2009 08:56:51 Roy Wright wrote:
> > Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 14 April 2009 02:19:47 Paul Hartman wrote:
> > >> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Paul Hartman
> > >>
> > >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>> The only app I am really disappointed with is Amarok 2.
> >
> > Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't get Amarok 2...
> >
> > Personally the change over to dolphin is disappointing.  So far I've
> > been able to mostly ignore it and use konqueror with one major
> > exception, fish and sftp no longer work in konqueror.  Only sftp works
> > in dolphin.  In the past (3.x), I always found fish to be bulletproof
> > while sftp occasionally would flake.

really?
well, it doesn't matter for me. For most quick'n'dirty file browsing dolphin 
is good enough - and for the serious stuff I have the konqueror-profiles 
plasmoid.

>
> I don't like dolphin either, it reminds me too much of Nautilus. But
> konqueror is showing it's age, and as a browser it's now almost useless.
> It's JavaScript is horribly broken and using flash is just too painful to
> contemplate.

its javascript is broken? could you show me such a broken page? Because I am 
using konqueror as main browser every freaking day (without flash). I do have 
firefox installed, but I use it only and exclusively for youtibe.


However, just as a headsup - 4.2.69 is doing nicely. And one thing I love is 
the stability. Todays prereleases of KDE are more stable then the 2X.0 and 
3.X.0 releases. 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 10:48:09 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > I don't like dolphin either, it reminds me too much of Nautilus. But
> > konqueror is showing it's age, and as a browser it's now almost useless.
> > It's JavaScript is horribly broken and using flash is just too painful to
> > contemplate.
>
> its javascript is broken? could you show me such a broken page? Because I
> am using konqueror as main browser every freaking day (without flash). I do
> have firefox installed, but I use it only and exclusively for youtibe.

gmail
https://www.1time.aero/aqueduct/1time/Booking - try to get the dropdowns to 
behave properly
I have a mailadmin web front end on my intranet, this doesn't log me in
jamendo.com - download does not download anything
e17-stuff.org - downloads from divshare do not download

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 April 2009 10:48:09 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > > I don't like dolphin either, it reminds me too much of Nautilus. But
> > > konqueror is showing it's age, and as a browser it's now almost
> > > useless. It's JavaScript is horribly broken and using flash is just too
> > > painful to contemplate.
> >
> > its javascript is broken? could you show me such a broken page? Because I
> > am using konqueror as main browser every freaking day (without flash). I
> > do have firefox installed, but I use it only and exclusively for youtibe.
>
> gmail
> https://www.1time.aero/aqueduct/1time/Booking - try to get the dropdowns to
> behave properly
> I have a mailadmin web front end on my intranet, this doesn't log me in
> jamendo.com - download does not download anything
> e17-stuff.org - downloads from divshare do not download

hm, I can use gmail just fine - for the very reduced subset of 'using' since I 
use kmail to do all the email stuff - no need to use the webfrontend.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 11:06:03 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Tuesday 14 April 2009 10:48:09 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > > > I don't like dolphin either, it reminds me too much of Nautilus. But
> > > > konqueror is showing it's age, and as a browser it's now almost
> > > > useless. It's JavaScript is horribly broken and using flash is just
> > > > too painful to contemplate.
> > >
> > > its javascript is broken? could you show me such a broken page? Because
> > > I am using konqueror as main browser every freaking day (without
> > > flash). I do have firefox installed, but I use it only and exclusively
> > > for youtibe.
> >
> > gmail
> > https://www.1time.aero/aqueduct/1time/Booking - try to get the dropdowns
> > to behave properly
> > I have a mailadmin web front end on my intranet, this doesn't log me in
> > jamendo.com - download does not download anything
> > e17-stuff.org - downloads from divshare do not download
>
> hm, I can use gmail just fine - for the very reduced subset of 'using'
> since I use kmail to do all the email stuff - no need to use the
> webfrontend.

I do the same as you. But when I visit gmail in the browser, I really do want 
the nice features to work like they do in firefox. The Basic HTML is a whole 
lot too ... basic ... for my tastes

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Stroller]

On 13 Apr 2009, at 23:17, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> ...  Something about KDE-4 and Qt4
> grabbed my attention - maybe it's just the scope and possibilities  
> of it all,
> and the sheer size of brass balls it takes to be the first to go  
> that route
> with a mainstream product. I admire guts and vision like that.

Your evangelism sent off to read more, but if I go to http://kde.org  
(first google hit for "kde4") none of these "scope and possibilities"  
seems to be reflected there.

I have KDE 3.x installed on a 600mhz or 800mhz Thinkpad which I use  
rarely, and the only improvements apparent from the screenshots is  
transparency & wobbly windows.

I find Exposé immensely useful on my Mac and I love the "genie" effect  
when maximising & minimising windows; I can imagine a cool animation  
when using virtual desktops on Linux. But clearly you're talking about  
something more than that, because that ain't a whole new paradigm.  
Could you possibly explain - or provide some pointers to - what I'm  
missing, please?

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 14:50:37 Stroller wrote:
> I find Exposé immensely useful on my Mac and I love the "genie" effect  
> when maximising & minimising windows; I can imagine a cool animation  
> when using virtual desktops on Linux. But clearly you're talking about  
> something more than that, because that ain't a whole new paradigm.  
> Could you possibly explain - or provide some pointers to - what I'm  
> missing, please?

The juicy bits are in the developer's blogs, and the official kde website is 
(understandably) conservative and understated. I'm busy with work atm, if I 
remember to do it later I'll dig up some links for you.

Admittedly, the state of KDE-4 right at this moment in time is still mostly a 
traditional desktop with fancy effects and plasmoids. Much like Vista 
actually. The possibilities are just that - still possibilities.

There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic desktop, 
solid. And maybe James can toss in some of his real world experiences with Qt4 
and video


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic desktop

Maybe I just don't "get it" but all of the descriptions of this stuff
flies way over my head. Admittedly, as soon as I see the word "social"
being applied to my personal files, the red alerts go off and my brain
shuts down. :)

The idea of the things on my "desktop" being tied to the internet
sounds very Microsoft-y and DRM-y and anti-privacy. First thing I did
when I installed KDE4 was disable all of that indexing and crap. I
don't want some master database of all of my files and their contents,
and I certainly don't want information about them being sent "out
there" somewhere.

But, like I said, maybe I just don't get it.

To me, and I say this as a KDE4 user, the KDE devs have blatantly
plagiarized the Vista desktop and the Mac OS X control panel and put
it all together on top of Qt4. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic desktop
>
> Maybe I just don't "get it" but all of the descriptions of this stuff
> flies way over my head. Admittedly, as soon as I see the word "social"
> being applied to my personal files, the red alerts go off and my brain
> shuts down. :)
>
> The idea of the things on my "desktop" being tied to the internet
> sounds very Microsoft-y and DRM-y and anti-privacy.

it has nothing to do with all the three.


> First thing I did
> when I installed KDE4 was disable all of that indexing and crap.

me too, but because I have all my stuff nicely sorted and don't need it. But I 
do see its potential usefullness.

> I
> don't want some master database of all of my files and their contents,
> and I certainly don't want information about them being sent "out
> there" somewhere.

and it isn't.

>
> But, like I said, maybe I just don't get it.
>
> To me, and I say this as a KDE4 user, the KDE devs have blatantly
> plagiarized the Vista desktop and the Mac OS X control panel and put
> it all together on top of Qt4. :)

if you ignore the fact that kde4 came before vista and osx itself is nothing 
but a bad copy.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> > There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic desktop
>>
>> Maybe I just don't "get it" but all of the descriptions of this stuff
>> flies way over my head. Admittedly, as soon as I see the word "social"
>> being applied to my personal files, the red alerts go off and my brain
>> shuts down. :)
>>
>> The idea of the things on my "desktop" being tied to the internet
>> sounds very Microsoft-y and DRM-y and anti-privacy.
>
> it has nothing to do with all the three.

OK, so I don't understand it at all then (as I suspected). :) The
website presumes the reader knows what is meant by "social" and
"semantic" (and "sesktop", really) mean and apparently I don't know
what they mean by these terms.

>> To me, and I say this as a KDE4 user, the KDE devs have blatantly
>> plagiarized the Vista desktop and the Mac OS X control panel and put
>> it all together on top of Qt4. :)
>
> if you ignore the fact that kde4 came before vista and osx itself is nothing
> but a bad copy.

Well, KDE 4.0 was released 2008. Vista final was released in 2006.
Even if you go back to the first technical previews of KDE4 it was
around the time when Vista look and feel was already made. And KDE
didn't look the same back then as it does now. In my opinion KDE has
looked more like Vista with 4.2 than previous versions. I don't think
it's a bad thing -- I like the look of KDE 4.2 better than previous
versions. I'm only saying that to me it looks like they copy Vista :)

I don't use Mac at all (not since the black & white monitor days), but
when I recently saw OS X, the control panel looked and worked just
like the KDE 4 control panel. I don't know how long ago Mac had this
design. If you say Apple copied KDE then I'll believe you.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 19:09:38 Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
>
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> >> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> > There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic
> >> > desktop
> >>
> >> Maybe I just don't "get it" but all of the descriptions of this stuff
> >> flies way over my head. Admittedly, as soon as I see the word "social"
> >> being applied to my personal files, the red alerts go off and my brain
> >> shuts down. :)
> >>
> >> The idea of the things on my "desktop" being tied to the internet
> >> sounds very Microsoft-y and DRM-y and anti-privacy.
> >
> > it has nothing to do with all the three.
>
> OK, so I don't understand it at all then (as I suspected). :) The
> website presumes the reader knows what is meant by "social" and
> "semantic" (and "sesktop", really) mean and apparently I don't know
> what they mean by these terms.

The first crowd that really "got" this was Sun. Remember their catch line "the 
network is the computer"? By that they meant that the machine was simply a 
part of a greater whole, the network, and the machine existed only to get onto 
the network and "do stuff"

"social" in the context of a desktop is fuzzy feel-good marketing. Almost by 
definition this will not go down well with gentoo users :-) Facebook, myspace, 
et al, started this social networking thing as a way for users to interact in 
new ways. Now we have "tweets" and other assorted rubbish, but that's what 
those users want.

"semantic desktop" - all it means is simply that an indexing engine is smart 
enough to figure out what your personal data means. It does this by looking at 
other data and finding patterns that make sense. Much like what Google does, 
on a smaller scale. Traditionally to use a desktop *you* had to understand 
your data and draw your own connections in your head, and know which apps did 
what. It's easier to explain by dropping down one level to the shell:

You are trying to remember something about a song, and you think it is related 
to "November". You can look for files with that name so you use locate or 
locate -i, or maybe even find. To look inside files you use grep, but if it's 
a Word document you likely have to start word and try Ctrl-F.

The idea is that this is useless crap that machines do well, and you should 
concentrate on dreaming up cool new ideas instead. So you ask a semantic 
desktop about "songs regarding November" and it finds the email you sent last 
year to your sister where you pasted the lyrics, so the desktop tells you 
"It's November Rain by Guns n' Roses, you have a FLAC and an mp3 copy plus 
lyrics so shall I 1) play the track 2) attach it to a mail 3) burn it to CD or 
4) something else? [and by the way you have a typo in the lyrics - the word 
"cool" should be "cold"]

That's a contrived example that I made up but you get the idea. No-one knows 
what users are going to want their computers to do in the future, just like 
IBM had no idea in the 50s that the internet, google and facebook were coming 
down the line. The semantic desktop is one man's idea of giving users 
something generically very useful that they can dream up uses for, and nepomuk 
is an implementation of an indexing engine.

> >> To me, and I say this as a KDE4 user, the KDE devs have blatantly
> >> plagiarized the Vista desktop and the Mac OS X control panel and put
> >> it all together on top of Qt4. :)
> >
> > if you ignore the fact that kde4 came before vista and osx itself is
> > nothing but a bad copy.
>
> Well, KDE 4.0 was released 2008. Vista final was released in 2006.
> Even if you go back to the first technical previews of KDE4 it was
> around the time when Vista look and feel was already made. And KDE
> didn't look the same back then as it does now. In my opinion KDE has
> looked more like Vista with 4.2 than previous versions. I don't think
> it's a bad thing -- I like the look of KDE 4.2 better than previous
> versions. I'm only saying that to me it looks like they copy Vista :)
>
> I don't use Mac at all (not since the black & white monitor days), but
> when I recently saw OS X, the control panel looked and worked just
> like the KDE 4 control panel. I don't know how long ago Mac had this
> design. If you say Apple copied KDE then I'll believe you.

More likely KDE-4, Vista and Mac are blatantly ripping off each other's good 
ideas. This happened with the Xerox Star, Windows 2 and the earliest 
Macintoshes. Then it happened again with Windows3/98, KDE-1/2 and later 
Apples, was taken to the extreme with KDE-3, XP and MacOS-9. Users want shiny 
bling, transparent 3D clocks look cool and suddenly lots of users want it, so 
it gets developed.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 2:01 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 April 2009 19:09:38 Paul Hartman wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
>>
>> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > On Dienstag 14 April 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
>> >> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
>> >
>> > wrote:
>> >> > There's a few keywords to start a search with - nepomuk, sematic
>> >> > desktop
>> >>
>> >> Maybe I just don't "get it" but all of the descriptions of this stuff
>> >> flies way over my head. Admittedly, as soon as I see the word "social"
>> >> being applied to my personal files, the red alerts go off and my brain
>> >> shuts down. :)
>> >>
>> >> The idea of the things on my "desktop" being tied to the internet
>> >> sounds very Microsoft-y and DRM-y and anti-privacy.
>> >
>> > it has nothing to do with all the three.
>>
>> OK, so I don't understand it at all then (as I suspected). :) The
>> website presumes the reader knows what is meant by "social" and
>> "semantic" (and "sesktop", really) mean and apparently I don't know
>> what they mean by these terms.
>
> The first crowd that really "got" this was Sun. Remember their catch line "the
> network is the computer"? By that they meant that the machine was simply a
> part of a greater whole, the network, and the machine existed only to get onto
> the network and "do stuff"
>
> "social" in the context of a desktop is fuzzy feel-good marketing. Almost by
> definition this will not go down well with gentoo users :-) Facebook, myspace,
> et al, started this social networking thing as a way for users to interact in
> new ways. Now we have "tweets" and other assorted rubbish, but that's what
> those users want.

Okay, but I still don't understand what it has to do with my "desktop"
(which seems to really be "computer").

> "semantic desktop" - all it means is simply that an indexing engine is smart
> enough to figure out what your personal data means. It does this by looking at
> other data and finding patterns that make sense. Much like what Google does,
> on a smaller scale. Traditionally to use a desktop *you* had to understand
> your data and draw your own connections in your head, and know which apps did
> what. It's easier to explain by dropping down one level to the shell:
>
> You are trying to remember something about a song, and you think it is related
> to "November". You can look for files with that name so you use locate or
> locate -i, or maybe even find. To look inside files you use grep, but if it's
> a Word document you likely have to start word and try Ctrl-F.
>
> The idea is that this is useless crap that machines do well, and you should
> concentrate on dreaming up cool new ideas instead. So you ask a semantic
> desktop about "songs regarding November" and it finds the email you sent last
> year to your sister where you pasted the lyrics, so the desktop tells you
> "It's November Rain by Guns n' Roses, you have a FLAC and an mp3 copy plus
> lyrics so shall I 1) play the track 2) attach it to a mail 3) burn it to CD or
> 4) something else? [and by the way you have a typo in the lyrics - the word
> "cool" should be "cold"]
>
> That's a contrived example that I made up but you get the idea. No-one knows
> what users are going to want their computers to do in the future, just like
> IBM had no idea in the 50s that the internet, google and facebook were coming
> down the line. The semantic desktop is one man's idea of giving users
> something generically very useful that they can dream up uses for, and nepomuk
> is an implementation of an indexing engine.

Okay, that makes sense and if it were able to gather all of that
metadata without me having to enter it maybe it could even be
useful... as long as it never queries the internet for that metadata.

I don't want to leave breadcrumbs of my activities for evil ISP or big
brother to snoop on. Look at a site like Last.fm which logs the music
you listen to in order to show you historican listening habits, make
recommendations, etc. It could also be used as a tool by a band whose
album was pirated on the internet before its release to find out who
has downloaded the illegal copy and prosecute them.

> More likely KDE-4, Vista and Mac are blatantly ripping off each other's good
> ideas. This happened with the Xerox Star, Windows 2 and the earliest
> Macintoshes. Then it happened again with Windows3/98, KDE-1/2 and later
> Apples, was taken to the extreme with KDE-3, XP and MacOS-9. Users want shiny
> bling, transparent 3D clocks look cool and suddenly lots of users want it, so
> it gets developed.

Of course I used the term "plagiarized" tongue-in-cheek, I don't
really think anyone is trying to create a counterfeit version of
Vista, and there are only so many ways to show things on a computer
screen. Generally KDE<4 looked like Windows 95, KDE4 looks like Vista,
Gnome looks like Mac OS < X, XFCE (before latest version) looked like
Mac OS X, etc. and I understand that imitation is the most sincere
form of flattery. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.2.1 : beta is as beta does

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 14 April 2009 21:41:49 Paul Hartman wrote:
> Okay, that makes sense and if it were able to gather all of that
> metadata without me having to enter it maybe it could even be
> useful... as long as it never queries the internet for that metadata.

My post got too long and I subconsciously left that bit out :-)

The richest source of metadata is of course the internet at large and only a 
fool will think smart desktops won't support adding your metadata to that 
enormous pool. But it doesn't *have* to do it either and there's no reason why 
this can't be an option controlled by you, the user.

But this is speculation, we don't know where things are going. That's the 
thing with killer apps - they come at you unexpectedly out of the blue where 
the only constant is change. The best we can do is build generic tools that 
can cope with new ideas. Unix has always been very good at that.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : the undead has been killed

[Jorge Morais]

> On Monday 13 April 2009 20:49:44 Philip Webb wrote:
> > 090413 Philip Webb wrote:
> > > I've found out how to fix it: something is starting Plasma,
> > > so Htop to the rescue ! -- kill Plasma & the hideous mask is removed
> > > -- it appears at the very end of the KDE start-up process --
> > > & the handsome KDE 3 desktop backgrounds reappear
> > > together with the desktop menus called up by mouse clicks.
> >
> > I didn't find out what was starting Plasma, but I fixed it :
> > 'cd /usr/bin; mv plasma plasma-aside'.  back to normal !
> > (clutches garlic, crucifix, incense ... )
> 
> Why invoke the supernatural when common logic is so superior?
> 
> emerge -C plasma
> emerge --depclean
> 
Is it a good idea to tell people to run emerge -C?
emerge --depc atom is dependency-aware.

-- 
Software is like sex: it is better when it is free. --Linus Torvalds

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.2.1 : the undead has been killed

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday 17 April 2009 23:21:19 Jorge Morais wrote:
> > On Monday 13 April 2009 20:49:44 Philip Webb wrote:
> > > 090413 Philip Webb wrote:
> > > > I've found out how to fix it: something is starting Plasma,
> > > > so Htop to the rescue ! -- kill Plasma & the hideous mask is removed
> > > > -- it appears at the very end of the KDE start-up process --
> > > > & the handsome KDE 3 desktop backgrounds reappear
> > > > together with the desktop menus called up by mouse clicks.
> > >
> > > I didn't find out what was starting Plasma, but I fixed it :
> > > 'cd /usr/bin; mv plasma plasma-aside'.  back to normal !
> > > (clutches garlic, crucifix, incense ... )
> >
> > Why invoke the supernatural when common logic is so superior?
> >
> > emerge -C plasma
> > emerge --depclean
>
> Is it a good idea to tell people to run emerge -C?
> emerge --depc atom is dependency-aware.

The OP downgraded from kde-4 back to kde-3

He should not have had plasma at all anymore, but it got left behind in error 
and something was starting it. So he needed to get rid of it, and emerge -C 
followed by --depclean really is the ideal method,

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com