I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but Red Hat 8's version of KDE is a mess. The worst thing is that it rearranged the K menu so that there's hardly any logical arrangement. It turned on anti-aliasing by default, which is OK for most things but looks really crappy in my web browser (Opera). (Fortunately, this can be remedied by running qtconfig, where you can turn the anti-aliasing off for QT-based apps while leaving it on for GTK-based apps.) Let's not even discuss the Bluecurve theme, with its ridiculously large font sizes and icons.

And then the taskbar applet on the K panel somehow got turned off while I was fiddling around, and when I "turned it back on," it no longer takes up all the space available to it, so the "application bars" it displays get scrunched up.

Plus, when I right-click on, say, text files within Konqueror, I get two listings for KWrite, Text Editor, etc. on the "Open with..." context menu. How do I get rid of the duplicates?

So, my question is: Red Hat must know all about the files and settings that make the K menu, taskbar, and desktop work. (Why don't they publish this stuff?) Is there any publicly available information about the nitty-gritty of KDE on Red Hat?

Seriously considering switching to SuSe -
- eco2geek

First Look for The KDE Control Centre (usually under settings) This will allow you to control most of the stuff you mention, Look under apperance and themes.

Also on the taskbar right at the very left hand side there should be a little bar you can drag left and right to move it around (Not the down arrow the bar next to it with an even smaller down arrow.), Also right clicking in this small bar allows you to configure the taskbar.

The open with thing is a feature not a problem. Double click means it picks the default (First App) some files though don't always work with your favourite app, so "open with" gives you multiple choices, as well as a way to add more. If you want to get rid of duplicates look under KDE COmponents->File associations in the KDE control Centre. This allows you to alter what programs are offered.

Thanks for the info about file associations. The Kontrol Panel and I are pretty well acquainted, but I hadn't used that one before.

The problem with my Taskbar (in the KPanel) is that the little down arrow that moves/resizes it is on the left, but the extra space it's not using is on the right. I can move it, but I can't make it take up all the space available to it.

The config files for the KPanel are in ~/.kde/share/config/, but I'm not sure which one controls the Taskbar applet. And this is what I mean by "nitty-gritty" documentation: Which config file controls what? What are the options? What are the size/geometry options? Obviously, someone with KDE has all this information, but I haven't found it on the Web yet.

Likewise with the menu structure - it's contained in both /var/lib/menu/kde and ~/.kde/share/applnk-redhat. How does the one interact with the other? How do the .directory and *.desktop files work? How come it requires me to become root in order to delete some entries? Again, obviously, someone with Red Hat knows how this all works, but I haven't found it on the Web yet.