General questions relating to KDE/mandrake linux

sorry for the somewhat lacking subject, though my questions dont really have a single purpose for asking, just some general things id like sorting out as my current understanding of my mandrake 9.1 distro is quite limited! I can kindof use it but i dont know what its doing 'behind the scenes' so to speak

first off....how does the KDE menu work? MY best example is that windows start menu works by displaying items that are located in the start menu folder for your account, so where is my KDE menu located? is it a directory structure somewhere, or a configuration file maybe?

secondly, i recently used a command to fix some little glitches i was having, the command was 'update-menus -v', what does this command actually do? it seems like it fixed my problem, which at the time was when i clicked my home dir nothing launched, so i tried it from a terminal and it reported "ERROR: Couldn't start konqueror from konqueror.desktop: Could not find service 'konqueror.desktop'., the 'update-menus -v' seemed to fix this.

Next question (related to last one but distinct enough to ask on its own), why does the home directory links, and in fact most the links point to some file like 'konqueror.desktop'> why not just point to 'konqeuror openprofile filemanagement'??

well i have LOTS more to ask that i dont yet understand, but i best leave it at that as i dont want to whine on and on!

oh but one last thing, my KDE seems to come up with an error every day, maybe twice a day...is this normal? it seems to me i am constantly fixing it and never actually using it for pleasure...to be honest its really quite annoying, im not sure why it is that it has this "cannot find konqueror.desktop" error all the time, this is the third time it has happened!

thanks in advance for any help ,its all much appreciated as im aware you have to take your time to offer advice to someone who may appear stupid to ask such simple questions, but i think i finally see how new computer users feel now, as i think it must be comparable to being a new linux user!! (i.e i feel very lost! lol)

addition:
i did forget one important thing which has been bugging me..what is kfmclient?? according to its --help its a tool for opening url's in KDE, so you may think i answre3d my own question, but not really. what i really mean is..*why* is it used? isnt that just another link in the chain that could go wrong? or am i missing something out...

thanks again!

I use debian but I am sure Mandrake is the same. You should find all the kde stuff under /home/yourname/.kde/share perhaps someone else can give you more specific help.

Originally posted by mep]-[isto first off....how does the KDE menu work? MY best example is that windows start menu works by displaying items that are located in the start menu folder for your account, so where is my KDE menu located? is it a directory structure somewhere, or a configuration file maybe?

It's two groups of directory-structures....
There is the default menu entries that you
will find right after an installation.
Those live in
<prefix>kde/share/applnk
grouped by more subdirectories a la ./Games ./System
The individual programs have configuration
files in these directories, i.e.
<prefix>/kde/share/applnk/Applications/korganizer.desktop

Everyone of those is by default included in
each users menu. If you want to get rid of one,
kmenuedit creates an entry
~/.kde/share/applnk/<directory/ies>/<application>.desktop
that says
[Desktop Entry]
NoDisplay=true

Originally posted by mep]-[isto secondly, i recently used a command to fix some little glitches i was having, the command was 'update-menus -v', what does this command actually do? it seems like it fixed my problem, which at the time was when i clicked my home dir nothing launched, so i tried it from a terminal and it reported "ERROR: Couldn't start konqueror from konqueror.desktop: Could not find service 'konqueror.desktop'., the 'update-menus -v' seemed to fix this.

I believe that this is a mandrake specific tool? :)
(Certainly doesn't exist in Slack)
Ask in the Mandrake forum :)

Cheers,
Tink

thanks for the reply! sounds good to actually make sense of things finally, unfortuantly i think some of my fears are coming true lol...i looked where you mentioned and nothing was in sahre (well ther was, but what was there related in no way whatsoever to my KDE menu). It seems like mandrake has somehow altered where it all is, which wouldnt surprise me!

i think tbh id be happier using a more cut down version like slackware, but im afraid that my hardware may not install as well as mandrake would do it, plus im not the best at compiling etc...so do you think would slackware be a wise choice for me? mandrake is great and all but tis too confusing to understand where things are as i think mandrake convulutes everything! lol

whats your opinion on slack? i want a nice *clean* distro, things are how KDE or gnome intended them to be etc, not hidden away elsewhere so when someone says "oh yeh your XX file is here..." and i go there and think...err, no its not! or am i barking up the wrong tree? does mandrake in fact NOT edit things like that and im just not finding them??

thanks for the advice anyway, gave me much more faith in KDE! and less in mandrake lol...but id rather have the faith in KDE than mandrake :P

Originally posted by mep]-[isto thanks for the reply! sounds good to actually make sense of things finally, unfortuantly i think some of my fears are coming true lol...i looked where you mentioned and nothing was in sahre (well ther was, but what was there related in no way whatsoever to my KDE menu). It seems like mandrake has somehow altered where it all is, which wouldnt surprise me!

Wouldn't surprise me, either ... but you
could try to locate stuff using locate & grep ....

locate \.desktop | grep kde

[quote]
i think tbh id be happier using a more cut down version like slackware, but im afraid that my hardware may not install as well as mandrake would do it, plus im not the best at compiling etc...so do you think would slackware be a wise choice for me? mandrake is great and all but tis too confusing to understand where things are as i think mandrake convulutes everything! lol
[/quote[
I've got Slack installed on a notebook, how
much more exotic can it get? ;)

Give me a list of hardware we're looking
at and I'll tell you how tirivial it will be to
install Slack :}

whats your opinion on slack? i want a nice *clean* distro, things are how KDE or gnome intended them to be etc, not hidden away elsewhere so when someone says "oh yeh your XX file is here..." and i go there and think...err, no its not! or am i barking up the wrong tree? does mandrake in fact NOT edit things like that and im just not finding them??

I'm pretty sure they do, as does RedHat ...
I mean, if you leave stuff (compiling applications
using a ./configure script) go its way it will
be in /usr/local/<....>
You'll hardly find THAT populated in
any distro ... but then again, Slack's
default installs are not there, either :}

thanks for the advice anyway, gave me much more faith in KDE! and less in mandrake lol...but id rather have the faith in KDE than mandrake :P

I though the structure was quite sensible, with
one disadvantage. You can't re-order the menu,
it's automagically sorted in alphabetical order,
which (IMHO) doesn't necessarily reflect the
way people might want to use it. I'd rather have
commonly accessed stuff close to the bottom of
the menu because I use keys more than mouse :)

But then, I don't use KDE at all ;)

Cheers,
Tink

well now, hardware would be:

mobo - shuttle FX41 (its a small form factor mobo)
cpu - amd athlon 2000+
mem - 256mb ddr
sound card - via VT8233 (AC97 controller)
NIC - RTL8139 chipset
USB - VT8235 USB 2.0
Firewire - standard OHCI compliant controller
Mouse/Keyb - both PS/2

hows that u reckon? and on a latop? wow pretty cool!

I think that should work :)

Sound, Nic & USB for sure,
firewire I'm not certain, never
had any experience with it
so far...

Everything else is "stock" :)
too ...

Cheers,
Tink