Restoring legacy components

[Nils Kassube]

Liam Proven wrote:
> Is it possible to set KDE4 to show icons on the actual bl$%dy desktop
> and not in some wretched floating plasmoid
> sort-of-filer-window-but-not-quite thing?

There are two possibilities to have icons on your desktop. In the 
default setting, you can drag application starters from the K menu to 
the desktop (unlock widgets first if necessary).

The second option is a bit more complicated: Right-click on your desktop 
(if necessary select "unlock Widgets" and right-click on your desktop 
again). Select "Desktop Settings" and on the left panel click on 
"Activity". Select "Folder View" for the "Type" and click "Apply". On 
the (now extended) left panel click on "Location". Select "Show a 
place:" or "Specify folder:" if you don't like the Desktop folder. Now 
it works similar to KDE3. That's how it works with the Kubuntu 10.10 
LiveCD, i.e. KDE 4.5.1 but I think it has been this way for quite some 
time now.

> That just gets you a text-mode bootup, doesn't it? I am not averse to
> that, but I'd like my old progress bar back, really. Flashing dots
> convey no information other than "I'm doing something but I won't
> tell you what or how far I've got". Whatever person thought that was
> an improvement needs a slap.

Well, maybe you should take back that last statement. :) The progress 
bar was more or less a counter for the number of jobs started and it 
made sense with the ancient sysvinit because jobs were started one at a 
time. Nowadays we have upstart which starts the jobs in parallel (if 
possible). Therefore your beloved progress bar would now start with 
maybe 80%, wait a considerable amount of time and then jump to 100% (but 
you wouldn't notice it because the display would have switched to the 
display manager already). Would that be more useful than flashing dots?


Nils