KDE fine-tuning

LazyP · 01-25-2006, 01:41 PM

After 5-6 months of using Linux and KDE I can safely say that I have customized nearly everything to my current needs. But one can always tweak / fine tune a bit more I guess. There are the following issues:

1. In the storage media (media:/) window of the konqueror I get hard disk icons for all my storage devices/partitions. Thus my removable media (e.g. CD-ROMS and USB storage) devices look like my local hard disks. When I try to change the icon for ONE of them they ALL end up looking the same (e.g. even my hard-disks have a nice mounted cd-rom icon). Strangely enough my diskette drive has a normal unmounted diskette icon (when not mounted) and a mounted one when actually mounted. Trivial, I know, but it's an everyday annoyance.

2. Most people know the audiocd protocol for konqueror. It's that nice feature that allows you to listen and extract your audio CDs by simply dragging them to a playlist or another directory. Well it works fine for me too but only for one of the two cd-roms (hda to be honest). When I put an audio cd in hdb (although I can listen to it with xmms) konqueror won't launch this service.

3. /dev/hda is a multi talented DVD-RW while /dev/hdb is just a plain DVD-ROM. k3b, however, tends to overestimate the latter. It reports that /dev/hdb has the following capabilities:

Code:

Writes DVD+R(W) yes
Writes DVD+R Double Layer yes
Write modes None (!)

All the other properties are negative (with the exlusion of CD and DVD reading of course).
Just in case I checked the node permissions.

Code:

$ls -l /dev/hd[a-b]
brw-rw-rw-  1 root disk 3,  0 2002-06-09 22:27 /dev/hda
brw-rw-rw-  1 root disk 3, 64 2002-06-09 22:27 /dev/hdb

No idea why they look like that. Never touched them. Changing hdb to: br--r--r-- made no difference whatsoever. Now, although, this whole story has no effect to my system's performance it makes me wonder. Any ideas?

4. Last but not least is there some plugin/add-on for KDE that will allow me to create CDs/DVDs by simply dragging and dropping files to my burner's icon?

All the above refer to KDE 3.4.2 and Slackware 10.2 (kernel 2.6.13 home-made). NONE of my CD-ROMs use scsi emulation and they are both mounted read-only. This is their fstab entry:

Code:

/dev/hda     /mnt/plextor    iso9660    noauto,users,ro,utf8                0   0
/dev/hdb     /mnt/toshiba    iso9660    noauto,users,ro,utf8                0   0

5. Konqueror is a lovely browser and it's great that it supports tabbed browsing. The only thing I want to customize is closing a tab when middle clicking it. I tried to find an setting but it doesn't seem to exist.

Thanks in advance and have fun!

HappyTux · 01-25-2006, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LazyP

After 5-6 months of using Linux and KDE I can safely say that I have customized nearly everything to my current needs. But one can always tweak / fine tune a bit more I guess. There are the following issues:

1. In the storage media (media:/) window of the konqueror I get hard disk icons for all my storage devices/partitions. Thus my removable media (e.g. CD-ROMS and USB storage) devices look like my local hard disks. When I try to change the icon for ONE of them they ALL end up looking the same (e.g. even my hard-disks have a nice mounted cd-rom icon). Strangely enough my diskette drive has a normal unmounted diskette icon (when not mounted) and a mounted one when actually mounted. Trivial, I know, but it's an everyday annoyance.

I get a Burner icon for my CD burner, a regular CD icon for my dvd burner, floppy for floppy drive and then HD icons for them this on KDE 3.5.

Quote:

2. Most people know the audiocd protocol for konqueror. It's that nice feature that allows you to listen and extract your audio CDs by simply dragging them to a playlist or another directory. Well it works fine for me too but only for one of the two cd-roms (hda to be honest). When I put an audio cd in hdb (although I can listen to it with xmms) konqueror won't launch this service.

Seems like it is hard wired to expect the first cdrom device as the audiocd just a guess here though.

Quote:

3. /dev/hda is a multi talented DVD-RW while /dev/hdb is just a plain DVD-ROM. k3b, however, tends to overestimate the latter. It reports that /dev/hdb has the following capabilities:

Code:

Writes DVD+R(W) yes
Writes DVD+R Double Layer yes
Write modes None (!)

All the other properties are negative (with the exlusion of CD and DVD reading of course).
Just in case I checked the node permissions.

Code:

$ls -l /dev/hd[a-b]
brw-rw-rw-  1 root disk 3,  0 2002-06-09 22:27 /dev/hda
brw-rw-rw-  1 root disk 3, 64 2002-06-09 22:27 /dev/hdb

No idea why they look like that. Never touched them. Changing hdb to: br--r--r-- made no difference whatsoever. Now, although, this whole story has no effect to my system's performance it makes me wonder. Any ideas?

No clue.

Quote:

4. Last but not least is there some plugin/add-on for KDE that will allow me to create CDs/DVDs by simply dragging and dropping files to my burner's icon?

You can always select the files then right click and in the actions menu use the create data CD with K3b.

Quote:

5. Konqueror is a lovely browser and it's great that it supports tabbed browsing. The only thing I want to customize is closing a tab when middle clicking it. I tried to find an setting but it doesn't seem to exist.

Thanks in advance and have fun!

I use it every day and just spent like 10 minutes searching through the Control Center for the setting and your right it is not there then I grabbed a brain and looked in my .kde/share/config/konquerorrc file and you need this option in the [FMSettings] section to have it work.

Code:

MouseMiddleClickClosesTab=true

LazyP · 01-26-2006, 04:44 AM

Unfortunately there is no such option in my konquerorrc file and adding it had no effect anyway. What is your version number? I have 3.4.2. Maybe I should upgrade. As for the audiocd protocol I checked the control center and it says that it will determine the device automatically (Control Center -> Sound & Multimedia -> Audio CDs)

HappyTux · 01-26-2006, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LazyP

Unfortunately there is no such option in my konquerorrc file and adding it had no effect anyway. What is your version number? I have 3.4.2. Maybe I should upgrade. As for the audiocd protocol I checked the control center and it says that it will determine the device automatically (Control Center -> Sound & Multimedia -> Audio CDs)

That is weird it is the only option rc file for doing the middle click it used to be a setting once upon a time in the CC because that is where I set it but it has disappeared I'm using 3.5.0 from the update_info=kfmclient_3_2.upd:kfmclient_3_2 in the file for the version I would say it was 3.2 where it was set. For the audiocd it may say that but it does not work with the second drive I tried just before I posted and it won't pick up the second drive with an audio cd in it.