8.10: Konfused by KDE4

[Derek Broughton]

David M wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote in gmane.linux.ubuntu.user.kubuntu
>  about: Re: 8.10: Konfused by KDE4
> 
>>> The "titlebar" of this panel and the similar (but more obvious)
>>> sticky notes 'plasmoid' show to the side. Is there any way to have
>>> them show to the top, like a normal window?
>>
>> I think not, and that's probably _specifically_ to differentiate
>> plasmoids from windows.
> 
> I'm not really sure why I should actually care why they are different
> from normal windows ;-)

I don't :-)  and I could be wrong about why it's the way it is, too.
 
>>> These "titlebars" contain 4 icons, one of which looks like a close
>>> gadget, the other 3 are not obvious, and don't have tooltips either.
> 
> Thanks. I'll confess, I did half-guess what the spanner was for, but
> the other two really were confusing. But: rotate? *Why?* !! ;-(

Duh!  "Because you can!"  I'm not even sure how I found that out, but I 
sure can't imagine _wanting_ to rotate most of them.  otoh, I put "luna" 
on my desktop, and that moon doesn't look right for my latitude - maybe 
just a slight rotation...

> That seems to serve no purpose other than "Hey, look how many GPU
> cycles I can waste..". And to think that once upon a time Linux had a
> reputation for being efficient.. 

I'm beginning to get really PO'd by the greying off my current window 
when the system gets too busy to do anything with it ... and I can never 
figure out what's taking all the cpu (though "plasma" is right up there).

> The old panel always had a small space for a 'nib' next to embedded
> applets,

Not always - if you locked it, the grab bars weren't there.

>>> Similarly, I have KNewsTicker in my other panel,
>>
>> It should be possible to just stick that somewhere on the desktop.
> 
> Ah, but I don't want it to be on the desktop (I'm not sure if it even
> can be). It's precisely because KNewsTicker was the only newsfeed
> ticker that I ever found that actually did work as a ticker embedded
> within a panel that I like it! :-) I don't want to have to consciously
> switch to a different app to scan news headlines, it's the fact that
> KNewsTicker is just constantly there, slowly and discreetly scrolling
> along the bottom of my screen that I really like:

Well, I was thinking that you could stick it in a "panel-like" space on 
some edge of the desktop.  I can't even say for certain it would work, 
but so far I've found that any widget I've tried can be either in the 
panel or on the desktop - and some of them aren't even meaningful in the 
panel (I added the "comic strip" to the panel, and couldn't figure out 
what it was supposed to do - then I discovered it had to go on the 
desktop).  I'd have tried the news ticker before suggesting this, except 
that I haven't found one.

> [new -> old K menu]
>>
>> Yes - choose the "classic" menu widget or right-click on the existing
>> menu button and choose "classic" :-)
> 
> Thanks, unfortunately the supposed old K menu isn't exactly the same
> as the old K menu: having "recently used" awkwardly lurking off a
> sub-menu (duh) rather than listed right at the top of the menu is
> entirely missing the point of quick access! :-(

I can see that it's not quite identical, but obviously what you're 
looking for is not something that I need - and is probably why I don't 
mind the new menu.  "Classic" looks essentially classic to me :-)

Interestingly, though, I never used "recently used" in the classic menu 
(or in Windows - because some quirk of the corporate policy results in 
almost nothing actually showing as "recently used"), and with Kickoff, it 
annoys me that it's the _last_ tab - I wonder if I can change that...) 

> Thanks for all your advice. I dare say I could probably eventually
> adapt to KDE 4, but because it's currently just so darn slow with the
> nv driver, 

It's certainly slower than my old KDE, and I'd love to hear tips for 
speeding it up.
-- 
derek