Vejledning/KDE3 til KDE SC 4

SC 4? Hvad er det? KDE udgiver et stort antal programmer i kerne-pakkerne. De omtales som "the Software Compilation". Det forkorter vi af praktiske grunde til SC 4

Ved første eftersyn ser det ud som om, at et antal værdifulde funktioner i KDE 3 mangler i KDE SC 4. Faktisk er de fleste af disse funktioner stadig tilgængelige men bruges på en lidt anden måde. Ligesom når du kommer til et 'Vejen er spærret'-skilt, så vælger du blot en anden vej. Det er det, der er sket med adskillige ting af forskellige grunde.

Et særligt tilfælde er indstillingsmuligheder i kcontrol, som mangler i Systemindstillinger. Nogle af disse havde med specifikke programmer at gøre; de er blevet flyttet til applikationen.

Gamle venner, nye måder

kcontrol findes ikke længere

kcontrol findes ikke længere. Systemindstillinger med de korslagte redskaber som ikon erstatter den. Som standard bruger den en visning, hvor forskellige slags indstillinger repræsenteres ved ikoner arrangeret i grupper. Du kan bruge Indstil i Systemindstillingers værktøjslinje (svensknøgle-ikonet) til at ændre dette til en Klassisk trævisning.

At lægge ikoner på skrivebordet

Brug det klassiske skrivebord

KDE SC 4 har to mulige tilstande for skrivebordet; hvilken der er standard afhænger af din distribution. Du kan skifte mellem dem ved at højreklikke på skrivebordet og vælge Indstilling af skrivebord (nogle distributioner kalder det "Appearance Settings"). Under Skrivebordsaktivitet kan du så vælge Type -> Skrivebord (hvis du ønsker et rent, urodet skrivebord) eller Mappevisning (som ligner skrivebordet fra KDE 3 meget mere).

En anderledes tilgang

Du kan få funktionalitet på et rent skrivebord af type Skrivebord ved at tilføje en lille mappevisning af dine datamapper i hjørnet af din skærm (visningen kan rulles). Mappevisningen har en smart funktion: hvis du lader markøren svæve over en mappe, så går du ned i den. På den måde kan du finde og åbne filer uden at skulle bruge en filmanager.

Note

In 4.4 you have to click the up-arrow to descend the tree.

Also, instead of using the menu to launch applications, try typing in the name (or part of the name or function) into krunner (either from alt+F2 or from the right-click (context) menu on the desktop). Krunner does fuzzy searching, so if you type in 'write' it will offer you the relevant applications you have installed, maybe kwrite, openoffice-writer, kword, or googledocs, and any related bookmarks, so you don't need to remember too accurately.

Or Drag'n'Drop?

You can drag an icon onto the desktop in Desktop type, as well as in Folderview type. You will be presented with options suited to the type of file. For instance, if you drop an image onto the desktop you are offered Previewer (which opens the file, giving you icons for the options to open it in a relevant application, or delete the file - move to trash), open in a PhotoFrame, or place an icon for it on the desktop. If you don't see the Previewer option you may need to install kdeplasma-addons.

Another function of drag-n-drop from Dolphin is to drag a folder to create a folderview. Remember that you can scale it to suit yourself, as you will have a scroll-bar. You can even descend through the tree of a folder just by hovering, so opening a single file is much quicker than opening a file manager to find it.

Automounting of USB devices

In KDE 3 you could choose to have usb devices mounted automatically upon plugin. In KDE SC 4 this is not the norm. You mount manually, either from the device notifier, by choosing an action, or by clicking on the device icon in Dolphin. From KDE SC 4.2 it has been possible to use an alternative device notifier plasmoid that does support automount functionality. You can read about it here

Alternative approach:

Advanced users may prefer to study the creation of usb device rules. Documentation can be found in the writing udev rules guide.

Note

Both these are temporary measures. Automounting may be restored in a later release.

Auto-hide Panels

To achieve this click on the plasma configurations icon (yellow curvy thing at the right hand side of the panel) and select configure panel. Then under more options enable "autohide". Manual hiding, as in KDE3, is currently not possible.

Move applets on the panel

In KDE SC 4 you have to bring up panel control (use the plasma toolbox icon, the yellow curvy thing at the right hand end of the panel). If you lock your widgets (or your distro does by default) you will first need to unlock widgets. This can be done from the right-click menu on the desktop. When your cursor moves over a widget (or plasmoid) it changes to a diamond shape. Use that cursor to drag each widget to its new place.

Finish by clicking on the X in a red circle on the configuration panel, and lock your widgets again if you wish, (right click menu, as before).

Show the application name instead of the description in the K - menu

KDE3 used to let you configure whether you wanted to see the application name (e.g. amarok) or the description (e.g. media player). KDE SC 4 always shows only the description and this makes it very hard to find applications.

If you use 'Kickoff Menu Style', you can easily find an application by typing the first few letters of its name in the "Search" line of the Application Launcher. Once you have found it you can choose to add it to Favorites or to add a launcher icon into the panel or on the desktop.

If you dislike the 'click on everything' style of Kickoff you may like to try Lancelot which has most of the advantages of Kickoff and some nice tricks of its own.

If you prefer the old K menu, then right click the K menu icon and choose Switch to Classic Menu Style. Now you can configure how to show applications in the menu: Right click on the K icon -> Application Launcher settings. Check the Show applications by name option, click OK. Done.

Information

A collection of screencasts help you adjust to many of the tasks you meet daily

Bluetooth

Kbluetooth is in active development.