[PLUG] where can I get a sane KDE?

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky znmeb at cesmail.net
Mon Feb 12 02:06:59 UTC 2007


Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Today I found myself wondering how long it will be before we start 
> having desktop environment "distributions" with specific mixes of 
> stability, defaults, etc -- the way we have linux distributions now 
> (e.g. ubuntu is not for everyone.)
>
> I really like the kde window manager, kmail, konqueror, and quite a few 
> other parts of the system.
>
> Unfortunately, when I aptitude upgrade, certain parts seem to come with 
> new and improved silliness almost daily (it's more like every 6 months 
> -- I don't really want to be thinking about my desktop environment 
> daily.)
>
> A couple (few?) years ago, there was a problem with the alt+tab box not 
> showing all of the windows (I have about 40 running right now, but 
> that's just on the laptop), though it would at least pan to allow you 
> to alt+tab to any one of them.  This was fixed by replacing it with a 
> vertical stack which now makes any minimized windows completely 
> inaccessible via alt+shift+tab (it just truncates the stack.)  Yay.  
> That must be the developers telling me that I've got too many irons in 
> the fire.
>
> Recently, the very-useful feature of being able to spin through a window 
> *group* with the mouse wheel turned into the much-less-useful "spin 
> through *all* windows with the mouse wheel".
>
> Today, the particular ridiculousity that prompted me to write a rant is 
> discovering that Ctrl+Shift+F5 is a hotkey used by kde for the 
> oh-so-frequently-needed "switch to desktop 17" action.  WTF?  I really 
> doubt that having this enabled could be considered a "reasonable 
> default" given that most people won't be running 17 desktops *and* if 
> they were, they could not be expected to guess that hotkey without 
> going to look in the config (at which point, they could easily enable 
> it.)
>
> This is not a new category of annoyances though, since the "increase 
> font" hotkey still (IIRC) defaults to Ctrl+"Plus", which literally 
> means Ctrl+Shift+= because the plus is the shifted character on that 
> key (though, maybe not in every country.)  Similarly, the default 
> "Alt+Click to drag a window" can get in the way until you realize that 
> it is yet another overly-helpy default to be disabled.
>
> Of course, I'm not switching to gnome.  I could point out about 20 major  
> issues there that would make me pull way more hair than the few weird 
> nits I have with kde.  I've messed with several of the other wm's, but 
> I typically end up being dissappointed with something major (like the 
> ability to build hierarchical multi-key shortcut sequences.)
>
> So, am I alone in that I use kde, have 100+ windows open at a time (no, 
> I don't like multiple desktops, I prefer layers and the grouped 
> taskbar) and don't want perfectly useful and reasonable features to get 
> phased-out in favor of increasingly less useful and reasonable ones?
>
> Most of the issues I have are in the window manager, so suggestions of 
> how to get or setup a reasonably powerful and configurable replacement 
> are welcome.  It just needs to support xinerama, 100+ open windows, 
> hierarchical hotkeys, grouped applications, and a decent system tray.  
> It helps if I don't need to spend an entire day figuring out how to 
> configure it.
>
> Is there a better solution than building from source and maintaining a 
> custom set of patches?  Maybe "Joe's KDE sane-ification release" or 
> something?  I've tried bug reports, but typically get answers like 
> "just use multiple desktops" or "what's wrong with Ctrl++ ?" and it 
> seems they generally don't take you seriously unless you compiled trunk 
> this morning.  I really do like kde, but the nits seem to be 
> accumulating and/or regressing to the point that I think I have to do 
> something or else freeze everything at Sarge (!) until I find a better 
> answer.
>
> Thanks,
> Eric
>   
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/2006/03/goodbye-kde.html

http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-about-linux-desktops.html

Since then:

1. I have tamed WindowMaker GNUStep and it is now my desktop on all of 
my Linux boxes. I can also get it to come up over VNC, so I'm not "stuck 
with" twm on a VNC connection any more.
2. XFCE 4.4 has gone stable. I've loaded it and brought it up a couple 
of times, but haven't attempted to customize it.
3. I've loaded KDE 3.5.6 and then deleted it, but I've also loaded the 
whole KDE development chain to get some IDE tools for Ruby development. 
So while I don't actually *use* KDE, pretty much the whole code base for 
it is installed.

I'd say your choices are (in increasing complexity):

1. FluxBox or ICEWm if your eyesight can handle the tiny print or if you 
can figure out how to make the fonts bigger,
2. WindowMaker/GNUStep
3. Afterstep if you can figure out how to make it work
4. XFCE 4.4
5. Gnome -- it's actually fairly lightweight these days relative to KDE, 
and you can do *everything* with Gnome.

But I'm sticking with WindowMaker/GNUStep until I get some projects done 
and have some free time to play with XFCE 4.4

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.




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