Ever Forward

I recently installed Kubuntu 11.10 on an HP Pavilion (G71) – a system with a 2.2 GHz Core Duo CPU and GB of RAM.  I had already replaced Ubuntu with Debian “Wheezy” on my Dell Inspiron desktop, using the KDE desktop.  I also loaded Linux Mint KDE 10 on the Dell Vostro laptop. I guess you could say this marks my return to KDE.

Most won’t know this, but I had bought 2 Dell computers – the Inspiron and the Vostro – partly in response to Dell’s effort to support the libre software community, and partly becaue I knew I would get a computer that “just works”.  They both have worked great – phenomenal machines, even in spite of Ubuntu upgrade problems.  I developed a habit of simply downloading the ISO and installing afresh, since the upgrades frequently created problems.  But otherwise, the machines do what I want.

There’s a new lady in my life who has (or more correctly, had) an HP Pavilion.  It had some sort of weird system where the browser kept getting these silly pop-ups with fake virus alerts and stuff.  She got tired of it, and so did I.  Naturally, I replaced her old system with a shiny new Ubuntu.  It “just worked”.  It was pretty decent, really.  There were a couple minor glitches, but mostly it worked really well.  Deep down, however, I found myself missing KDE.  I like KDE.  I love Kontact.  In fact, I love Kontact even more than I love Big Brother.  Just don’t tell them that, eh?  I had already changed my desktop over to Debian with KDE, and now wanted to do the laptop.  Maty wanted my Vostro, since it is smaller and more manageable for her.  I decided to trade her for the Pavilion, which probably only weighs 50 lbs.

Anyway, I installed Linux Mint 10 (KDE) on the Vostro, and with only 2GB of RAM, it does fine – the weak processor is the real issue in that machine.  Still, KDE works reasonably well after disabling the special effects.  And she mostly just uses the e-mail and web browser most of the time.  So it’s really perfect for her.  She does download images, but doesn’t do serious image editing at all.  And she seems to really like the KDE interface.

KDE 4.5 with Kontact and a unit converter widget (plasmoid)

As for me, I installed Kubuntu on the Pavilion, discovering in the process that no proprietary wireless driver was needed (hadn’t realized that before), which is great! As for booting, this machine goes from power button to login screen in a matter of 30 seconds – half of that is the hardware initialization.  The only Windows machine I use (at work) is older than the Pavilion and is required to login via a tightly controlled network login – I won’t even bother to compare the boot speed.

But KDE, despite the hype about its bloat, is still a very nice desktop environment.  The KDE 4 (4.5 to be exact) takes a little adjustment after having been “away” for about 3 years.  For one, it was not immediately obvious how to add an application to the “Favorites” tab of Kickoff, the application launcher.  Thankfully, this was clearly explained in the help documentation.  On the other hand, I still have no idea what the difference is between a “screen” and a “desktop” in the Task Manager Settings dialog (under filters).  And this one is not explained in the help.

Also, I still don’t quite get the “Activities” thing.  I initially had the idea that activities were like a container for widgets.  But now I’m not so sure that’s the case.  I tried to use the ready-made “photos” activity, which I thought was supposed to launch two apps, since a pop-up requested to start Gwenview and Digikam.  Neither started that I could see.  I wasn’t sure if the Photos activity was active, even though the desktop background changed.  I could not tell what, if anything at all, had happened.  In short, I just don’t see the point.

Having re-read the help section on activities, it seems like more of an alternate to virtual desktops.  In fact, one can require each desktop to have its own activity.  The concept is quite new to me, and so not having an example to follow in the help documentation makes it difficult to determine the usefulness of Plasmas activities.  I wound up visiting the KDE Userbase Wiki’s Plasma section to learn about activities. That led to Hans Chen’s blog where I got a better idea of what activities are and how to use them.

Since activities are clearly going to be a new concept to many people, why not give more than just a one-paragraph description of them?  Use an example like that used for setting the task manager to show only the applications for a given window, or how to add an application to the favorites.  The example Hans Chen gives on his site could be condensed, or a similar use case given.  If anyone asks about activities in Plasma, please don’t tell them to rt(b/f)m.  It just ain’t there yet.

On the other hand, I am beginning to actually like Dolphin.  The last time I had checked out KDE I couldn’t stand Dolphin.  I liked Konqueror as a file browser, but since Dolphin has clearly retained what, for me, are the important parts – especially the ability to connect via network services (FTP, SSH, etc.), I can live with it.  I’m sure it has some stuff I haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore.  I know I haven’t exactly tried out rating files as yet.  What am I gonna do, rate this article?  I’ll give it 4 stars.  But still, Dolphin seems to be pretty cool.

Did I mention I love Kontact?  The Evolution team eliminated their Summary element, but Kontact still has it.  I *like* the Summary and use it extensively.  It is always the first thing I see when I open Kontact.  I don’t open KMail, Kalendar or any of those – I open Kontact precisely because I want that summary, and to be able to launch any of the specific applications from there, depending on the situation.

Finally, I am so glad to have Digikam back.  I found F-Spot to be ok, but did not like Shotwell so much.  Chalk it up to either change or personal style, but I simply don’t care for Shotwell.  I do like Digikam.  And wow, Digikam seems to have grown into quite the full-featured app.  I still haven’t had time to find my way around everything yet, but I like the image browsing capabilities and the number of tools immediately available.

I also like KRunner.  Why use a menu if you know what you want?  Even if you’re not sure about the exact name of the program you want, just type, “office”, for example and you’ll get a drop-down list of possible apps, one of which is the one you’ll want.  The help documentation even encourages the use of [Alt]+F2, wheras before, things like that seemed to be hidden away.  Incidentally, if you can manage to use KRunner, you’re just a short hop from using a command-line interface.

So, apart from the initial confusion about activities, I admit I do like KDE 4.  I like the way it works and I like how it looks.  I think I’ll stick with it for a while.