Fast mouse wheel scrolling in KDE4
 

In KDE 4.10.1 System Settings -> Input Devices -> Mouse, I have the scroll wheel setting at 1 line.

When I use konqueror or dolphin, the scroll wheel does not honor that setting. A single detente movement in the mouse wheel results in the file list moving by six or seven lines. Difficult to scroll through the file list when the wheel moves that much distance. The font size is 10 point, if that matters.

In all other apps the mouse wheel scrolling is normal.

Is there another setting controlling the mouse wheel scrolling?

Thanks. :)

Do you have a dual boot with Windows?

Ran windows just before?

Re-insert mouse and scrolling speed will be normal again.

Nope, no Windows on this machine. Mouse scrolling works fine in Trinity. Just KDE4 is goofy. :(

It's a shot in the dark, but have you checked your scroll settings in

System Settings-->Input Devices-->Mouse-->Advanced-->Mouse Wheel Scrolls By?

The default is normally three lines. Perhaps is gone kooky.

Yes, refer to the original post. :)

Looks like this is a bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316580

Whoops. Sorry.

I use Window Maker with Slackware 14.0 on ThinkPad T61 and the scrolling is smooth.

My advice for you: throw KDE to the sink and switch to Window Maker.

On my machine KDE starts for 26 seconds. Window Maker starts for 1.8–1.9 seconds.

KDE displays at logout the boring message: “Logging out in 30... 29... 28... [...] 3... 2... 1 seconds”. Window Maker exits almost immediately (about 0.5 second).

Let’s assume that you start and stop KDE just once a day. So in the comparison to Window Maker you lose each day 24.1 seconds during the start procedure and 29.5 seconds during the stop procedure. That’s 53.6 seconds in total a day.

Now let’s assume that you’ll live as long as Noah (950 years according to the Holy Bible). I wish you that!

Now let’s assume that you’re 30 years old now.

So there are 920 years until your death. (I’m sorry!) That’s 336,030 days. During your lifetime you’ll lose 18,011,208 seconds on watching KDE that starts and stops.

If you’ll decide to use Window Maker it’ll be just 806,472 seconds.

So when you’ll switch from KDE to Window Maker you’ll gain 17,204,736 seconds, or 4779 days, or 13 years.

In my humble opinion it’s worth to gain 13 years even if you’ll live 950 years in total (you could spend that spare time on seducing the young girls).

This pertains how??
 

Please enlighten me as to how this pertains to the topic at hand. You can set KDE to immediately shut down when you select the option. And if you are in that much of a hurry to start and stop your computer, then by all means run your Window Maker. I like KDE because it gives me everything I want in my computing experience, and I don't mind waiting for it to boot up. Patience is a virtue well worth learning.

My previous post relates to the topic in the first two paragraphs, gives the broader perspective in the consecutive three paragraphs, and is for fun in the last six paragraphs. Three in one.

KDE is sluggish while Window Maker is brisk. A lot of the contemporary systems and applications go towards the worse and the worse efficiency. (That concerns not only the computing but also different devices.) They’re designed to allow an inexperienced user to feel comfortable but at the same time they deteriorate the productivity of the experienced users. That’s the topic which fits better the “General” section of LinuxQuestions.org and I think I’ll start such a thread there soon.

And I like Window Maker because it gives me everything I want in my computing experience, and I don’t have to wait for it to boot up.

Nice wisdom in general but worthless slogan in that case.

I'd save a lot of time if I did not use computers at all or died. Problem solved! :)

How about I use what I want and you use what you want? Seems a great way to live in peace with one another.;)

Woodsman,

It was just a hint (and then a joke). I can’t tell somebody to do something but I always can give somebody a hint. That’s the purpose of the forums such as that one.

Most of the people use something else than I use. I accept that. They use the other machines, the other systems, and the other programs, they listen to the other music, they read the other books, they watch the other movies, etc. All right!

I always look for the machines, systems, programs, music, books, movies, etc. that are the best for me. Some other people do the same – look for something the best for them. I admire such a kind of the people. But the most of the people in general use, listen, read, and watch something that is used, listened, read, and watched by the most of the other people – they look for something that is the most popular and they share the most popular ideas and beliefs. I judge such an attitude as the stupid one but in the past that tendency to copy or to imitate the other people allowed the humankind to survive so I understand that. On the other hand the people which went or go beyond the common set of the ideas and beliefs moved and move the humankind forward.

Even when some other people use the similar machines, systems, programs, music, books, and movies that I use most of them use that in the other way than me. I’m dependent on thinking. I’m addicted to thinking. I think all the time: when I compute, listen, read, watch, etc. As a result I have a lot of my own unique ideas concerning all the mentioned areas as well as the particular programs, compositions, books, movies, etc. Most of the people don’t like to think. They prefer to waste the time and – as a result – the life. It’s very sad true about the humankind.

These reflections go far beyond the topic of the current thread but you asked me the question and I try to give you the best possible answer.

w1k0: Good answer. I do the same thing. Critical thinking skills are rare in this day and age, where most everybody follows, and are afraid to lead, because they'll get arrows in their back, as is typical of pioneers. As for the bit about patience: It was indeed misapplied. I was a wee bit too hasty, thinking it sounded good, when it was not applicable.

Woodsman: Computers are simultaneously the greatest thing since sliced bread, because it has made the world a smaller place, and the greatest pain in the a**. I've been involved with computers since I was a teenager, and after a quarter century, can attest to this fact. Unfortunately, one has to take the bad with the good if one wants to use computers.

While I'm thinking about it, I really enjoyed your website while you had it up. There was a lot of mature advice there, something I find most refreshing, moving into my middle age and having some experience under my belt. I especially enjoyed the piece about ad-blocking. It works wonderfully well. I don't like ads either. I don't click on them. They are a waste of time and screen space.

mattallmill,

1. I’m glad that I managed to satisfy you with my answer to Woodsman. 2. Your words sounded stern. 3. It isn’t easy to please someone so severe. 4. Thus I’m even more glad in the fourth sentence than I was in the first sentence.

In my answer to you I stated: “That’s the topic which fits better the ‘General’ section of LinuxQuestions.org and I think I’ll start such a thread there soon”. Eight hours ago I opened the thread: Civilization totters. It may arouse your interest...

I have been involved with technical writing most of my adult life. I am one of the first to admit that communicating is a challenge, especially with the written word where body language and facial expressions do not exist. Add language barriers, a missed smiley or wink emoticon here and there, pre-conceived notions and opinions, and seldom is anybody truly sure what a person intended. Now --- I'm feeling a tad grandfatherly at the moment, so let me share a few things. :)

In 1974 my physics teacher bought a Heathkit calculator that could only add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We built the calculator in class. The thing was bigger than a cigar box. That was the first "hand-held" calculator any of us kids saw but we still had to use slide rules in all of our classes. I still own my Pickett N1010-ES and leather case. Most kids today simply say, "What's a slide rule?"

I typed my first Hello World program on a clunky teletype around 1977. About the same time I was wasting quarters playing Pong in taverns. I started using desktop computers since about 1981, tinkering a bit with a work mate's TRS-80. In 1982 I bought a Commodore 64. I sat for hours at a stretch on the living room floor because the TV was my monitor. I taught myself BASIC. I learned to avoid being eaten by grues. I retyped programs from the back of magazines. I used a hand-held paper hole puncher as a poor man's disk notcher to convert single-sided 5.25‑inch floppy disks to double-sided. For my job that same year (yes --- I was working that long ago!) I used an Apple IIe to write training lessons and job aids. We had two external floppy drives and thought we were on top of the world. Imagine doing real productive work with a computer. Half the people participating in this forum weren't even born then. :eek:

In the early hey-day of desktop computers, I owned a couple of Amigas, a 486 from which I taught myself DOS, Lotus 123, etc. My first hard drive was 10 MB in an external case the size of a shoe box. One of my Amigas had two bridge cards, one to emulate a PC and the other to emulate a Mac. I taught computer classes. I still own the 486 I bought in 1991 --- with a whopping 16 MB of RAM --- and the thing still works. Fast-forward to today and I own a couple of dual core systems, on one of which I'm typing right now and the other a home theater PC I built myself. My office system has 8 GB of RAM and there are days when that amount of RAM seems insufficient.

There are many people with longer and more wonderous computer history than me, but I've been around the block. I'm growing older and crankier and the dang winter just won't end this year. :banghead:

After 30+ years, I no longer have patience for window manager basics. I went through that kind of thing with all of the various DOS shells in the 1980s and 1990s. I want a full desktop environment. Shoot, I had that kind of functionality back in the 1980s with my Amigas, despite the fact that few people knew how to fix guru meditation errors. I will never deny a bare-bones geek style environment for those who want that, but like the honey badger, I don't give a sh-t for that kind of thing anymore. :)

I forestalled using KDE4 for five long years. Count them, five long years. In the beginning I was realistic. I never expected KDE 4.0 to be much. Conversely, I never expected KDE4 to need five years to mature. I tested KDE4 a few times during that period. I was never satisfied. Instead I compiled KDE3 on my own and then Trinity. Trinity remains fully functional on my systems, although I have been using KDE4 as my primary desktop for a couple of weeks now. Active members of this particular forum are well aware of my path.

A big lesson I learned with my involvement with Trinity is nothing gets done unless people get involved. The software we all here use is free and if that is the extent of a user's involvement then that is all they should expect to get. Getting things fixed means getting involved. Hence this thread and hence my posting the link to the respective bug report. Is the bug a killer or show-stopper? No, the bug is an irritant, like all bugs. Is the bug sufficient to start a chest-beating contest about computers? No. A bug is a bug and that is all.

KDE4 is not without warts and paper cuts. In the short weeks I have been using KDE4 I have already filed several bug reports and posted several forum queries. I'm going to recompile my KDE packages to add debug symbol support for backtraces. Pretty much the same things I did with Trinity.

With that all said, as I have been using computers longer than many people here have been alive, I'll pretend I'm entitled to a nominal opinion about computers. They all suck. Always have. User hostile, not user friendly. Everybody poops and everybody has an opinion. Opinions about computers vary across the spectrum just like any other topic. One person's meat is another person's poison. The trick for each person then is to find the combination that works best --- and sucks the least. :twocents:

And none of this is meaningful or relevant to the honey badger. :)

As for the smileys (emoticons) I avoid them. I recounted that in some infamous thread (keyword: “shitty potty”). I try to write to the intelligent people and I assume they are able to understand the context of someone’s statements without the necessity of some disturbing and infantile interludes. I believe also in my skills to communicate the essence. It takes usually some time before the other people get accustomed to understanding me because I like to communicate on a few layers at the same time. (My post #8 used three layers.)

In my case all the “pre-conceived notions and opinions” made by people about other people fail. I am different – I am sorry. I can not change myself the same way as I can not change other people or the world. (It was not a strict statement – I can change myself but during the whole my life I have gone towards the more and more unique outlook and I do that still.)

***

I like very much your nostalgic memoirs. The machines from the past had souls. Most of the modern devices and programs do not have them.

My first machine was ZX81. I used it for writing the programs. My first program displayed the black and white American flag using two nested loops. Then I bought ZX Spectrum for my brother. He used it for playing games and I used it for writing programs. Sometimes I retyped programs from magazines – just as you – the published code was very often buggy and did not work at all so I improved it and learned a lot at the same time. My most developed program for ZX Spectrum was a computer version of a little-known even in my country card game named “ogór”.

Nothing has changed since those times. My brother still plays games and I still write programs.

My first PC was a second hand machine using Intel 80286 processor. I installed MS-DOS 4.01 on it and for a week I learned the commands using the command line only. Then I installed Norton Commander. Some time later I started to download hundreds of freeware and shareware programs. I was able to download a dozen or more of different editors and I examined them one by one. I looked for a perfect editor. Finally I found Qedit – it was very good and its successor – TSEPro – was perfect. I tried also a lot of clones of Norton Commander and finally I found Volkov Commander which was much better than the original program. (I have always had an inclination to the non-commercial software.)

My first goal after starting a new program was always to find a method to exit from it. There were a lot of different ways: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+W, Q, Esc, etc. If nothing worked I could always use Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard shortcut and after the reboot throw away that shitty piece of the software. (I always say: “Do not start anything in your life that you can not stop”.)

Now things are simpler. Most computer users can use just one keyboard shortcut to close any program – Alt+F4. As it turns out that trick is too difficult to memorize for many people and they prefer rummaging among old papers seeking for the mouse on the desk in order to hit and click × in the upper right corner of the window. Such people must have lots of time. I wish them to live for 1000 years!

Since those times when I tested plenty of programs I have not been afraid when I have to start to work with a new program. I just run it for the first time and the same day I reach the level higher then an average user of that program will reach whenever. So when someone asks me which programs I know I reply: “All of them”.

Let us get back to the topic. To download the programs I had to go to the Polytechnic (Technical University). I downloaded them using different UNIX machines (HP-UX and Solaris ones). So I learned some basic UNIX commands.

In the meantime my DOS system evolved. I used a lot of tricky methods to write the batch programs using poor DOS commands and tools. My most developed batch script was the installer of emTeX – popular DOS version of the great TeX typesetting system.

When MS Windows 3.0 appeared I installed it but my machine started always in the DOS mode. I considered MS Windows an overlay. I usually stayed in DOS because I did not like MS Windows programs such as Word. I preferred DOS version of WordPerfect.

In those times I started to think of installing SLS Linux but I considered my machine too weak. It was then PC with Intel 80386 processor but it did not have a CD-ROM drive and I did not want to download dozens of floppy disks.

A few years later I built my PC based on Intel 80486 processor and I put a CD-ROM drive in it. I installed Red Hat Linux 4.2 on it. The next day I was very proud because I managed to compile successfully my own version of Linux kernel.

At the beginning I used Red Hat with AfterStep but soon Window Maker appeared and I switched to it. As a file manager I used Midnight Commander from the beginning. In the meantime I tried GNOME and KDE but I could not stand the former one longer than a few days and the latter one longer than a few hours – they were sluggish and uncomfortable.

In those times I wrote a series of seven articles about LaTeX – the document markup language and preparation system for TeX (66 pages in total). I published them in the issues 10–12/1999, 1–2/2000, and 4/2000 of LinuxPlus (at present LINUX+) – the best Polish-language Linux-oriented monthly magazine. The sixth part of the series has not been published so far. (Now I published these articles here for the educational purposes only – they are written in Polish: do not download them unless you know Polish language.)

In 2000 I changed my job – I started to work as a leading editor in CHIP Special Linux – a Linux-oriented Polish-language quarterly magazine (it was closed in 2005). During the ending phases of the work on the consecutive issues I worked on Mac OS running Quark. From winter 2000 to spring 2005 the publishing house where I worked published 18 issues of that quarterly magazine – each consisting of 100 or 116 pages including the cover (before I started to work there the publisher had managed to publish merely 3 issues during two years).

In the same time I installed a new version of Red Hat and I was very disappointed with the boot procedures and the look-and-feel of the default desktop. So I tried Mandrake Linux and it was horrible as well. I stated that the things started to go towards the wrong direction and in such a case there are just two Linux distributions which could meet my needs: Debian and Slackware. I tried Slackware Linux 7.0 as the first one and I was very glad so I stayed with it. I installed it on my machines at work and at home. My main tool was StarOffice replaced soon by OpenOffice.org. Some time ago I switched to LibreOffice but I was more and more disappointed with its consecutive versions and when 4.0.0.3 appeared I came back to Apache OpenOffice.org. I referred to that in the thread Civilization totters.

In CHIP Special Linux 5(53)/2002 (summer edition of July 2002) I described Slackware 8.0 in three articles covering the system description, its installation, and configuration (12 pages in total). In CHIP Special Linux 7(65)/2002 (autumn edition of October 2002) I published an interview with Patrick J. Volkerding interviewed by one of my authors: Jarosław Świerczyński (Pat has that issue). Unfortunately I did not save the English-language version of the interview so I can not publish it now – I have just Polish-language translation. (Use Xpdf or Adobe Reader to read it because PDF Viewer plugin for Firefox spoils some Polish diacritics.)

Nothing has changed since 2000. I still use Slackware Linux, Window Maker, Midnight Commander, and Apache OpenOffice.org.

I still improve the configuration of my system and programs. For many years I have made a few improvements a day – each day. As a result my machines use very sophisticated configuration based on the links that start the scripts which start the other scripts which start the programs etc. I am able to do different things very quickly thanks to the keyboard shortcuts I defined or learned. I wrote also a few useful programs. Fifteen instances of wminfo (originally written by Robert Kling and developed by me since 2011 with the help of PTrenholme and ntubski) work all the time on my Window Maker desktop.

In the meantime I tested all important Linux distributions and some other systems comparing them to Slackware and I stated that my second choice would be Arch Linux and the third choice – FreeBSD.

I published my historical desktops in the famous thread This is my Slackware desktop... I will publish there my current desktop soon.

Now I use a few Slackware Linux machines and I administer two other Linux Mint machines used by my father and by my girlfriend. All of them are the second hand IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads from T and X series.

I mentioned that I prefer a non-commercial software. During my lifetime I have bought just two programs. The first one is “Collins English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary” by YDP (I use it with ydpdict console overlay by Wojtek Kaniewski – I wrote some patches to his program and he included them). The other is “The New Kosciuszko Foundation Dictionary” by Universitas (I use it with Wine and I have just started the cooperation with its editor in order to help improve the next edition of that dictionary).

As for the computing I taught it myself – I studied philosophy (my master’s thesis was on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus) and then I worked for six years as an assistant in two colleges: in the University of Fine Arts and in the University in my home city.

***

Now you understand better the background of my post #8 and my any other post as well.

Xorg.conf
 

I think you can still configure scrolling in xorg conf.

Window maker would have taken off if gnu step had of caught on.

Also sorry to see your website gone; Enjoyed reading about the HTPC project.

As noted in the linked bug report, the problem is localized to two apps using the same libs, not X.