8.10b - first impression and questions

[Billie Erin Walsh]

First off I want to thank the first person that replied to this thread. 
That message is on the 8.04 drive and right now I'm on 8.10 so I can't 
give their name. Sorry. [ I haven't tried to move those messages over 
yet. ] Anyway,  the widget thingy worked to get my taskbar where I 
wanted it. It apears to me that the taskbar width [ height ? ] has 
regressed back to earlier days. When you make it bigger the everything 
on it just gets bigger rather than staying the same size so you get more 
on it.

Myriam Schweingruber wrote:
> Hi Billie,
>
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Billie Walsh <bilwalsh at swbell.net> wrote:
>   
>> Decided that I might give 8.10 a try and see just what it's all about.
>> Loaded it on a separate hard drive. Looks nice and works my poor little
>> eMachine quite well. No major hiccups so far.
>>
>> THEN, there's this big ugly box on my desktop that says "Desktop". How
>> can you get rid of that thing? I clicked on the closing button and the
>> main desktop went away for a second and when it came back it was still
>> there and something stupid was covering my task bar.
>>     
>
> You just had a plasma crash. Try again to remove the "Folder view"
> widget, it might work the second time. I managed to disable it without
> problems, but plasma is sometimes a bit bitchy :) (remember this is
> beta! ) And that "something stupid" are the widgets which appear on
> the top left by default. Just drag them away, this only happens when
> plasma crashes.
>   

That's ok. I can be a bit bitchy once in a while myself. *<]:oD

It did go away with the "Remove Widget" option. Thank you.

> One small suggestion: if you use a panel on top, avoid using it full
> lenght, so you have a small space to drag widgets easily. KDE 4 is
> currently configured to work with a panel at the bottom. You will also
> have to reconfigure the mouse moves for the active desktop if you want
> to use it, as "pushing top left" is used for a 3D functionality.
>   

The widget gizmo at the top right moved down below the taskbar so it's 
not a problem. I never say "never' but for the foreseeable future I'm 
not to interested in 3-D stuff. Perhaps someday. If that time comes it 
may move on it's own like the widget gizmo.

> ...
>   
>> Just about everywhere you click it wants to add even more junk.
>>     
>
> But you don't have to :) Some people want their desktop clustered
> (remember Win screenshots with "everything" on the desktop?). Left
> click does nothing, right click of course opens a context window where
> you "can" choose things. Just don't do right clicks :)
>   

On my better half's computer [ XP - I can't get her to try Linux yet ] 
you can't even see the wall paper for all the junk on the screen. It 
seems to work for her but if/when I have to do something on her computer 
it's frustrating trying to find the icon for it.

> As for now you can configure almost everything in KDE 4.1.2. It works
> like a charm on my old machine (Pentium IV with 1 Gb RAM). (except for
> Kontact, but that is another story...)
>
> Greets
>
> Myriam
>
>   

Coming from Windows 1 through XP I found KDE 3.x to be pretty much 
intuitive to use and configure. It seems to me that KDE 4.x is pretty 
much non-intuitive. [ Possibly more intuitive if your migrating from 
Vista but not from an earlier KDE or Windows system user. ]

Has anyone figured out how to hide the taskbar yet? Perhaps that 
function isn't available yet.

I really think that in the near future most people will stop thinking 
that KDE 3.x was the greatest thing since pockets and like KDE 4.x. Then 
they will get all testy again when KDE 5.x comes out. 

Remember, The only constant is change. [ usually towards entropy ]