KDE 4 for a week

[xSauronx]

OK, I decided Id switch from Gnome/Compiz to KDE 4.whatever for the next week, since it's been a while since Ive given it a try.

I've done a little tweaking to get a few things going more my way, but I'm looking for 2 things in particular that I cant find, anyone using KDE 4 able to help me out?

I want a better desktop pager. Id like either thumbnails, or at least an icon showing what window is what.

Id also like to be able to switch desktops by scrolling my mousewheel over the desktop background.

Another thing: I want my screen to lock not just with a screensaver, but when I close the laptop lid. I had to use gconf-editor to do this with gnome, so i dont care what does it, Id just like it do-able

If anyone can help me with this, thatd be awesome. If you have any other tips/tricks/ideas, speak up

After this I'll try XFCE or something maybe.

 

[cKGunslinger]

How's the performance? I tried KDE4 in a VirtualBox and it was slow as molasses. I gave it the same resources as my Vista Ultimate VB, which seems downright speedy compared.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger
How's the performance? I tried KDE4 in a VirtualBox and it was slow as molasses. I gave it the same resources as my Vista Ultimate VB, which seems downright speedy compared.

KDE4 isn't too bad. A little quirky in getting it configured properly in Kubuntu on my laptop. There seems to be a bug that prevents monitors from shutting off after x minutes when you have a screensaver enabled. A couple of other things were really round-about in getting set up: disabling tap-to-click, some other configurations (finding a skin for Firefox that didn't result in utter ugliness and a messed up tab bar since it is apparently rendered with GTK).

Overall, it's pretty cool looking. I like the desktop effects more than compiz in Ubuntu, though, I did lose the cube. Apparently, in 4.2, there will be the ability to hide widgets completely, instead of it being a layer that sits on your desktop (and bringing to front/back with Ctrl F12). Additionally, Firefox 3.1 should also fix the bug with KDE Effects that causes minor freezing (goes away after a few seconds) when you highlight and drag text.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger
How's the performance? I tried KDE4 in a VirtualBox and it was slow as molasses. I gave it the same resources as my Vista Ultimate VB, which seems downright speedy compared.

KDE4 isn't too bad. A little quirky in getting it configured properly in Kubuntu on my laptop. There seems to be a bug that prevents monitors from shutting off after x minutes when you have a screensaver enabled. A couple of other things were really round-about in getting set up: disabling tap-to-click, some other configurations (finding a skin for Firefox that didn't result in utter ugliness and a messed up tab bar since it is apparently rendered with GTK).

i dont have this screen problem, but yeah, firefox is ugly. its a little annoying. performance, however, is fine. i have a T60 with a radeon x1300.

ill spend a little more time playing with it and see what I come up with. the issues i posted about bug me. the pager is almost worthless and i setup shortcuts keys to change desktops...this way I get a pager *with* thumbnails that pops up, but its less convenient than having a decent pager to start with and scrolling on the desktop.

meh

 

[Brainonska511]

So I ended up switching back to Ubuntu due to the fact that KDE 4.1 felt too unfinished and too many little bugs that were starting to become really annoying.

Overall, some of the many annoyances with Kubuntu/KDE 4.1:
1) No easy way to disable tap to click like you can do in the "Mouse" menu in Ubuntu
2) Standby didn't work right - resuming would leave me with a blank screen
3) Wireless wouldn't always load when I logged in, requiring a logout/login
4) Couldn't use the printer config program to browse for network printers. When I tried to add them manually, the program would freeze.
5) Monitor power saving features failed to work when a screen saver was enabled.
6) Screen saver would only work if I re-enabled it every session. I don't know why this is the case.
7) Kopete lacks the ability to sort buddies however you want, defaulting to alphabetical.

Things I liked:
1) The starting theme was pretty cool and it was really easy to change them.
2) Plasmoids were pretty cool. Wish I could have hidden them instead of them sitting on the desktop.
3) Amarok is awesome, especially compared with Rhythmbox (using Banshee now with Ubuntu).
4) The desktop effects - alt-tab made this folder type view that would flip through; view all workspace windows in an expo type mode was pretty cool too.

I could see some of the stuff being my fault, but some of it was just unfinished - like using a late stage beta.

 

[xSauronx]

weird, im not having issues 2, 3, 5 and 6. i use pidgin so *shrug* i wasnt about to bother with kopete.

i like the way things look, mostly. its a pretty DE from the start.
plasmoids on the desktop bont bother me, but i havent played with them much. i like hitting the dashboard on my try to bring them up and put them behind what im doing otherwise.
im still on the fence about amarok. seems good so far.
the desktop effects can be found with compiz easily, iirc. compiz has an insane amount of customization options.

im still toying with it a little...

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: xSauronx
weird, im not having issues 2, 3, 5 and 6. i use pidgin so *shrug* i wasnt about to bother with kopete.

i like the way things look, mostly. its a pretty DE from the start.
plasmoids on the desktop bont bother me, but i havent played with them much. i like hitting the dashboard on my try to bring them up and put them behind what im doing otherwise.
im still on the fence about amarok. seems good so far.
the desktop effects can be found with compiz easily, iirc. compiz has an insane amount of customization options.

im still toying with it a little...

I was using pidgin too along with FF (Konqueror just didn't do it for me). Just an issue I had with the default KDE stuff and the other minor things. The good thing about Ubuntu is it just works on my laptop. No need to do anything special to get it working properly. Plasmoids on the desktop weren't really annoying either. It just would have been nice though if they could be hidden completely.

 

[xSauronx]

update:

im back to gnome. KDE 4 looks nice, but dolphin gave me lots of hangups looking at photos and such or doing some simple file operations, and thats just unacceptable. I like Amarok, most of the visual elements and the way the main menu is organized quite a bit...but I rarely use that anyway.

Ill try it again whenever the 4.2 update is out.

 

[Gooberlx2]

It seems like 4.2 is supposed to be the "stable" release. I'm running Gnome under Opensuse 11.1, since KDE4.1.3 was just too unstable for me. Since Gnome and Desktop effects are working so well, I'm not sure I'll even bother trying out KDE when 4.2 is released. I do like Dolphin's column view though.