Using KDE4
 

I hope this becomes a long and valuable discussion. I've been using kde3 since forever and have just installed a trial of kde4.1.2
Now I'm lost! My old desktop is g-g-g-gone and I'm left with a bunch of questions!

Installation is on a Debian system, BTW, installed with Debian meta-packages kde4-minimal and kde4. The install did not go well...it trashed all my old config settings including all mail files and bookmarks. Every app has to be set up anew.

..but the real issue is learning how to work with the thing since at some point in the future kde3 will be history.

So:

Can anyone explain why Dolphin is supposed to be better than Konqueror as a file manager? Konqueror's ability to be file manager, web browser, file previewer, interconnect between computers (with fish or sftp) made it one of my favs.

What happened to my desktop icons?

How do I paste something to the desktop?

Whats a plasmoid?

How do I log in as root?

How do I set to auto-login?

.....more to come

Auto-login: System settings -> Login manager -> Convenience - tick 'Enable auto-login'.

Konqueror is still there to be used. Dolphin is a file manager - and a file manager only. So as far as file management goes it does its job really well (including ssh, samba, ftp etc) while being very usable and without the feature creep.

? Just as before, probably.

Desktop as in KDE3 meaning doesn't exist any more - if you want to move/paste files put one or more Folderviews onto the desktop.

1. What is a Folderview? How do I put one on the Desktop? Right click on the Desktop only gives "Add Widgets...Add Panel...Desktop Settings". What is a Widget? How do I use one?

2. Root login is not allowed. Searches elsewhere (yes I have searched a lot on how to make this thing work) indicate that kde4 will not allow root logins even if the config file is edit to allow root login.

I was hoping somebody would have a workaround.

This also seems to prevent me from fishing or sftp into my other computer as root..ie sftp:/user @other_computer works but sftp:/root@other_computer does not. I have discovered that kdesu still works but only if the whole path to kdesu is specified.../user/lib/kde4/libexec/kdesu kate will start kate as root but kdesu kate will not. This appears to be the only way to work as root except using a command line editor.

A Folder View adds a space to your desktop that is kind of like a file manager window that is embeded in your desktop and is not intended to be closed.

"Add widgets" is where you want to go to add a folder view. Just scroll down the list and you should find it. They're in alphabetical order. Double-click on it to add one to your desktop. You can have more than one, each showing a different folder, from what I hear. By default it uses your home folder, so if you have an old Desktop folder from KDE3 (as I have) you'll want to redirect it to show the Desktop folder instead.

You want to use 'kdesudo' instead of 'kdesu' now. ^_^

That helps...I have a Folderview of my old Desktop. This might actually be an improvement...if it worked. I have always wanted a neater desktop with one icon popping up a "desktop view like this.

But it doesn't work. It has icons on the panel beside it, only "close" and "setup" are functional. The other two appear to be shrink and refresh but DNF. Are they just not implemented yet?

Also, I had to re-type this out to put it here....highlight & copy from konsole would only paste back into konsole, not into konqueror. Is this normal?

Is there supposed to be file previews in Dolphin...ie a text file viewer such as in Konqueror?

About kdesudo:
Looks like you might not have kdesudo installed (which is a little strange).

When I do this, it tells me I have the latest version, and "kdesudo kate" does open up a box for me to input a password, then opens kate. Maybe it didn't get installed on your system somehow...?

kdesu doesn't appear to be part of KDE4 at all anymore, and if you try to apt-get it, it'll complain that it is no longer available.

About the folder view:
I'm not sure about the refresh button, but the other button is for resizing, and it works for me. I click and hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse around and it resizes it. (I don't really like the way it is implemented, but that isn't the point.) Even though I have graphics acceleration with my video card, this (as well as moving it) seems a bit slow, so keep at it for a couple of seconds if it doesn't seem to work at first.

About Dolphin:
Evidently not. It's just a file browser. You can split the window to have two different folders shown at the same time, though! (Wait, Konqueror can do that, too...)

Installed kdesudo and it works.

...but "aptitude install kdesudo" wants to remove 144 packages. Apt-get says these were automatically installed and can be removed with "apt-get autoremove". Many of these are kde4 packages and applications...

Maybe because the "kde4" meta-package got removed when I installed digikam (not yet included in kde4)....

Oh well, that's off-topic.

It is beginning to appear my install is wacko. Does your copy/paste work properly? Can you copy from one app & paste to another?

Can you access "administrator mode" in System Settings->Login Manager?

Indeed, it does appear that something either went wrong with the install or you're missing some important things.

I copied and pasted the address of this thread from Firefox to Konsole with no problems, and when I choose the Login Manager, it prompts me for my administrative password, and after this is supplied, works as expected.

I might suggest removing digikam temporarily and re-installing the KDE4 meta-package to see if that solves anything. Most likely it will, at least, change this noise about autoremoving all those KDE4 packages. :-p

Looks like a port of digikam is being made for KDE4, but there's plenty of issues, so I can see why you might want to stick to the old one. http://www.digikam.org/?q=node/236

I have removed everything kde from my system & reinstalled kde4...now copy/paste works properly but folder view icons still dnf & I still have no administrator level access to system settings.

Maybe I will need a whole system re-install to get this to work. I hope not!

I have done a complete system re-install...Debian 4.0 netinstall...and put kde4 on using Debian packages.

The resize button on a Folder View now works but all it does is resize the window....is there no way to "minimize" a folder view (ie make it go to the status bar then re-open when you want it to)?

Is there no way to make a folder view shrink to an icon then expand back to a folder view when clicked? I tried the "icon view" option, it just made an icon called "Desktop" but when clicked it opened the "DEsktop" folder in Dolphin rather than opening it as a folder view.

Is there no "update menu" application (like kappfinder) with kde4? If not, how do you edit the menu list? Most of the non-kde applications I have installed do not appear on the menu.

Since kde4 does not use kdm, how do I get x to start automatically? Right now the system defaults to a console login from which I have to use the "startx" command. I tried to install kdm but apt-get says it is a broken package because it needs to downgrade some dependencies to kde3 versions. I have already had problems with this...when I installed digikam with aptitude it removed all kde4 applications. Apt-get is not so automatic...it just marked them as unnecessary but didn't actually remove them.

'Nother problem...After torturing kde4 for a while I installed xfce so I would have a window system that actually worked. It set itself as the default window system & now I cannot even get into kde4 any more. I tried again to install kdm hoping it would give me some login options but ran into the dependency problem again. I installed xdm (now I have auto x startup) but it appears xdm has not got startup options nor does it have the ability to set up for automatic, passwordless login.

Any suggestions how to get a startup manager to work? I cannot find the equivalent of a "kdmrc" file to edit.

I also tried Kubuntu 8.10 figuring the Kubuntu people would have set up a working kde4 system but am stymied by the 2.6.26 kernel in Kubuntu 8.1....it seems the kernel people trashed the pcnet_cs driver used to find my pcmcia adapter but haven't replaced it so I cannot use anything newer that 2.6.24.....I guess that should be subject of new post.