Re: [gentoo-user] KDE and the new plasma 5 thing

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 01:21:37 PM Dale wrote:
>> J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 02:04:47 AM Dale wrote:
>>>> <<< SNIP >>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>>
>>>> :-)  :-)
>>> Dale,
>>>
>>> Considering the amount of changes, did you reboot the system or at least
>>> killed everything running at least once?
>>>
>>> That should also help with the stability.
>>>
>>> Also, I used the following 2 meta-packages:
>>> kde-apps/kde-apps-meta
>>> kde-plasma/plasma-meta
>>>
>>> This gave me most stuff, including the configuration for virtual desktop
>>> in the same place (SystemSettings)
>>>
>>> Start that, then search for "Virtual Desktops" and the only working icon
>>> is
>>> where you need to be.
>>>
>>> The pager thing to select the virtual desktops appears magically then.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Joost
>> Update and some info for Joost.
> Thanks, as I now have a bit more time, I will add my own thoughts as well.
>
>> I been playing with this a while and found some things.  First, I had to
>> get to the settings part which would only give a error working.  When I
>> got to the edit part, I figured out that for some reason, it was still
>> trying to run the KDE4 command, which was removed during the upgrade of
>> course.  So, I got that back by giving it the new command,
>> systemsettings5 I think was it.  That helped.
> Hmm, I actually started it from the K-menu. When it's opened, you can search 
> through all the entries by simply typing.
> I did do an " emerge --depclean " before trying to configure things. Eg. 
> systemsettings for kde4 disappeared already.

That is sort of what I was trying to do except I was looking for the
actual menu entry.  The problem is, the one for settings was not using
the correct command.  I'm not sure what to think about that.  Anyway,
after I fixed that, that lead to a lot more fixes on other things. 


>> Once in there, I found
>> lots of things to help get things to where I could work with them.  I
>> found out that I could add multiple desktops back and at that point, the
>> desktop pager thingy appeared and worked.  I guess when it is set to 1
>> desktop, it doesn't show up or something.
> Which seems logical behaviour to me. And the same happened here after 
> configuring it.
>

It is logical.  I knew I had to enable multiple desktops but since the
settings thing wasn't working, I couldn't figure out how to enable it. 
When I did a google search, I saw where several folks said it was gone
which caused me great concern.  I got to much stuff going on right now
to redo my whole setup. 


>> I also got it to where it
>> wouldn't turn my monitor off and lock the screen if I turned my head a
>> minute.
> I use my laptop also when at "public" places, like at a customer. Which means 
> the auto-lock-screen-after-5-minutes is a useful feature.
> Now if only I could have that time auto-adjusted based on the network it's 
> connected to? :)

Yea, the setting it had would be good for a public place or a laptop
that can be any number of places.  For my desktop tho, it was way to
quick.  Actually, I disabled the lock part.  I just want my monitor to
turn off after a while.  If I want to lock the screen, I just use the
keyboard shortcut ctrl alt L. 


>> Then I found out how to adjust the size of fonts in a lot of
>> other places.  Now that helped a lot.  I was using a magnifying glass to
>> read some stuff.  I also set the numlock to on.  I have numbers in my
>> password and that was getting annoying to have to turn on.
>>
>> I very rarely reboot.  After a big upgrade, I just go to single user,
>> use the checkrestart command to be sure and then go back to default
>> runlevel.  I also generally clear the cache and such too.  I restart or
>> kill anything checkrestart shows if needed.
> I had issues where checkrestart wouldn't kill enough, or didn't notice changes 
> to configuration. Hibernate (eg. suspend-to-disk) didn't work from kde until I 
> rebooted.

I've never had that here.  It seems to always work for me but you may
have something installed that I don't. 

>> I do have those packages installed.  I emerged plasma-meta and that
>> pulled in a lot.  Since I run some unstable stuff already, I had to
>> adjust some things to get emerge happy.  After that, it was a large
>> download and a lot of compile time.
> Those 2 pull in nearly everything.
>
>> As it is, the biggest thing is that it doesn't seem to carry over
>> settings from KDE4.  It seems to start out fresh just like if it was a
>> clean install.
> That is actually mentioned in the upgrade-guide. Just not in so-many words.
> I actually think that's a good thing as a lot of the issues I had when first 
> switching to KDE4 was caused by left-over settings from KDE3. A fresh start 
> helped a lot.

If I recall correctly, when I did the upgrade from KDE3 to KDE4, I tried
to use my old settings.  It was a mess.  I ended up renaming the
directory and starting fresh.  Some things were just weird.  Thing is,
it was hard to figure out if it was a bad config or just a bug that
needed fixing.  As we likely recall, that switch was less than smooth
for a lot of people. 


>> Other than that, it's OK.  I still get the occasional
>> plasma crash tho.  It's not as often but it still pops up on occasion.
> I've had 1 today, when I clicked on the up-pointing triangle to get all the 
> hidden systray items. That was, so far, the only one.

I think I've had two today here.  It seems to be getting better
somehow.  I'm not sure if it is me changing settings or what tho. 

>> I may start a emerge -e world.  I haven't done that in a while anyway
>> and it usually clears up weird issues that can't quite be figured out.
>>
>> Oh, I had to switch to sddm for this too.  You just change the setting
>> from kdm to sddm and it just works.
> Same here, and mentioned in the upgrade-guide.
> I actually did the change to SDDM before switching to KDE5/Plasma.
>
>> It looks different but it works
>> fine.  That may have carried over some settings.  It selected the user
>> and was ready for my password just like kdm did.  Again, it looks
>> different but it seems to work the same.  I suspect one could adjust the
>> settings, somewhere, and make it look like kdm if they wanted to.
> Yes, you can.
> Google for " sddm themes ".
> They go in " /usr/share/sddm/themes "
>
> The OCD one looks like the KDM Oxygen theme...

I may do that.  I'm bad to search for Gentoo themes.  lol  I usually
like them well enough.  Thing is, I don't get to see sddm much. 

>
> Now for my thoughts:
>
> I haven't found a decent colourscheme yet (There wasn't one for KDE4 either)
>
> Most of the apps are ok, just waiting for KDevelop 5 to appear in the tree.
>
> My biggest complaint though:
> KSnapshot has disappeared and been replaced by " Spectacle ".
> It might be a technically better solution, but the primary reason I absolutely 
> love KSnapshot is it's ability to quickly take a new snapshot of the same 
> region (adjusting slightly when necessary) and then it defaulting to the next-
> numbered filename in the same folder when selecting "Save As".
>
> With Spectacle I end up having to redefine the region every single time and 
> having to click multiple times to get to Save As and then it always goes back 
> to some Pictures folder. The quick-save (which includes a Quit-action) uses 
> timestamps.
> In other words, I end up spending more time clicking needlessly during my 
> work, or renaming manually after the activity is finished.
>
> --
> Joost
>
>


I kind of liked ksnapshot but rarely used it.  It is really easy to
use.  I'll look into that other one and see what I can figure out with it. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

P. S.  Maybe now that I got my puter up to date, I can finish changing
that clutch on the tractor.  I'm almost to the clutch now.  o_O