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I'm sick of fighting with Gnome's stupid configuration headaches and would like to migrate my wife's computer over to KDE. There's only one show-stopper and I'm wondering if there are any plans to address it. It's this:

She wants to be able to pop in a CD, a DVD, or any other kind of external media and have it automatically open with an application she preselects. Actually she doesn't just want it... she won't run anything that doesn't have it. I'm guessing that she probably represents the average user in that regard; in fact that's the biggest single thing I still miss from KDE 3. I want to be able to pop in a DVD and have it open in Kaffeine without my having to click, and my wife demands it.

This is basic functionality in this day and age. I was under the impression that it would be a part of KDE 4.4 (which is why I haven't brought it up till now), but it seems I was mistaken. Is this ever going to be dealt with?

I don't know if this helps, but the Device Notifier is very helpful.

http://www.thelins.se/johan/uploaded_im ... 771033.png

This is an older version of it in the picture, but it will pop up when something new is plugged in and you can decide what to do with it from there. I personally prefer this to any window popping up, the notifications in Windows always annoyed me that I had to dig through and close them. I suppose your idea makes sense to have as an option though for audio and video CD and DVDs, but I definitely do not want my games autorunning fullscreen if I'm just putting the disk on the tray to get it off my desk.

I agree... but it should be an option. Do you remember in KDE 3 how the popup would give you the option to always perform an action for a certain device type? That's what I'm talking about. And yes, I'm mostly talking about DVDs; all movie-watching in our house is done on the computer. My wife still uses physical CDs (I don't know why; she has more than enough hard drive to rip them all) and wants them to open automatically in Rhythmbox. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if flash sticks would automatically open a file manager, either.

I was sadly still stuck on Windows XP back when KDE3 was around, although I did have a tiny bit of KDE2 or 3 experience on a computer that Windows 98 got corrupted on. I've been active with KDE since the very beginning of 4.2, being sick of Gnome after using Ubuntu for 3 months.

But now that you mention that, every version of Windows I have used has had the option to "automatically do this", so I don't know why KDE doesn't.

KDE 3.5 is still around... it's still the default KDE in the current stable version of Debian (Lenny) and a few others as well. My main desktop box is using Debian testing (Squeeze) with KDE 4.3, but I'm still running some stuff with Lenny and KDE 3.5. I didn't start using KDE 4 until just a couple of months ago.

I've seen it... although I've been very pleased with 4.x so far. I suppose I jumped in 3 days before 4.2 was released, so I was watching progress evolve amazingly fast. Honestly at this point with having 4.4, I hope they work out a couple random crashes (mostly due to using Kubuntu daily builds) and focus more on KOffice at this point

I'm running the Debian KDE 4.4 (which is still in an semi-official experimental repository) on a spare machine and have experienced no crashes or problems of any kind. To be honest I've never had anything but bad luck with Ubuntu. What version of Koffice are you running? I'm using 2.1 right now and I think once it matures it's going to be really hot. Wish there were more devs for it; I'm helping with the manual but I'm not a good enough programmer to help out with coding.

Ubuntu kinda sucks... Kubuntu has, in my opinion, gotten better, although I'm often told that Mandriva and Suse are better. I just love the .deb system though, but dislike the slow release of Debian. But overall I don't find the same annoyingness as I did with Ubuntu. I don't mind a few harmless crashes every so often, the only ones that have taken my computer down are the pre-alpha builds

I was running KOffice 2.1, but since installing a clean Kubuntu beta, I don't have it. I didn't use it much anyways, but it was easily the most responsive office suite I've ever used... when it responded or worked at all. If they can give a couple devs over to KOffice once they hit KDE4.5, I think that'd be awesome.

Try running Debian testing or unstable. Testing is actually VERY stable and gets new packages usually within a few weeks of release. Unstable is at least as stable as Ubuntu and gets new packages almost immediately (although it still doesn't have KDE 4.4).

Me, I can't stand crashes. I'd rather run outdated stuff than stuff I can't count on.

The only issue I have with that is my netbook, which has a fairly new wifi card that I've only gotten to work with Ubuntu/Kubuntu so far because the 10.04 release has the kernel and firmware for it. My main laptop I may give a try, but I've always been relatively happy with Kubuntu, so I see little need to switch.

10.04 has the 2.26.32 kernel, doesn't it? I think most distros are using that now; I know Debian testing and unstable are. That said, wifi support is still a bit of a problem in Linux. It doesn't affect me much; I don't go mobile often and refuse to use wireless on my home network.

Being a college kid in an engineering major makes wifi a must And most have the kernel, just not the firmware at this point.

I started this thread a long time ago a feel the need to revive it, because it's more of an issue than I myself realized at the time. I've recently been in the position of installing/configuring desktop Linux for a number of new users. For many this has been a complete show-stopper; I've had to install Gnome on a number of occasions because of this specific feature. This is not an esoteric, advanced feature; it's basic, expected functionality.

Someone is implementing this, although I don't know if it is done or not.