You guys still grousing should bite the bullet, upgrade to 4.5 for the improvements and take on the learning curve.

No I should not do anything even if you (or anybody else) is trying to convince me I should. Especially this stump-desktop which was made by pathological destructors.

Anixx wrote:

You guys still grousing should bite the bullet, upgrade to 4.5 for the improvements and take on the learning curve.

No I should not do anything even if you (or anybody else) is trying to convince me I should. Especially this stump-desktop which was made by pathological destructors.

Well, I must say that I feel much more relaxed with KDE3. Even after disabling almost everything in v4 it feels so much like a toy. Even worse, today I had a look on a Windoze 7 desktop and thought "huh, looks like KDE4". Was that the goal?! Then I don't need it at all.
With KDE3 I get WLAN after login or resume, all applications are back,
no popups or other toys on the screen...I can just concentrate on my work.

I still wonder what the benefit of the widgets could be. The funniest example was the world clock which now shows the entire world map in about 100 pixels including text...and not more. Unusable. 2nd ranked: what can I do with the strange icon box on the desktop? It keeps me from arranging the icons where I can access them if I have the usual amount of windows open. In CDE (Solaris) there was a real window doing the same. That window you could bring up to the front and move it where ever you want it. In KDE4 this seems not possible. The widget is part of the desktop...which is in the background...so I don't see anything. I have to minimize all windows to see the icons. I guess that's what this funny nut in the corner is good for? But... by default it's in the corner where I usually never have the mouse. So I moved it to the lower left. But now...when I click it, all windows get minimized, but I still can't access the desktop icons because this nut drives me nuts! A HUGE menu pops up, overlaying the program icons. When I try to get rid of the menu I already have all other windows back... Sorry...I have enough real problems to solve.
Nothing against evolution and some new toys...if it helps against Bill. But why was it not possible to keep an option "look like KDE3, do like KDE3"?
Even more...I installed a couple of programs which came with the KDE3 repo. I guess they would all still work in KDE4...especially if they are not widgets but just regular programs. If 3 vs. 4 is a matter of resources, doesn't that mean that tight integration to a particular desktop is an ugly thing? And shouldn't I be able to run gnome programs (I think gimp is an example) also in KDE? So why did so many working things disappear just because of a change to KDE4? This is sad.

I relaxed a little with KDE3 but not completely. It turned out that a couple of problems I'm still fighting with are not KDE issues because they remain the same after returning to v3. It's more an issue of suse 10.0 vs. 11.3. At least: the option of running KDE3 allowed me to nail these problems down to other parts of the system. Before that I was completely lost! Too many changes, too many problems, too many open ends. It would have helped me A LOT if the KDE3 would have been still available from scratch, or a predefined repo in a list which I can't overlook when searching for updates or packets.

The biggest remaining problems are:

- mounting of USB disks changed. After years of mounting FAT drives (e.g. camera card) with small characters now everything is in UGLY CAPITALS. I wonder where to change that In addition, all removable drives now got new names.

- remote login to Nomachines NX is sometimes a nightmare. Every time I think I figured out a systematic behind the unstable keyboard layout it will change its habits. To have some options I installed DE and US keyboard settings on both local and remote desktops. When working from a suse11 machine, logging in to another 10.0 machine, everything is fine until I press Alt-gr. It will change the mapping to something strange. Toggling the keyboard mapping in the taskbar gives me the right (german) mapping back, no matter which one is now active (just the local kbd is nuts). It must be some crazy change in the suse11 settings, but I can't figure out why the kbd mapping should change at all after pressing alt-gr. Or what can be the great change between these systems which I should know about...

guu wrote:Even worse, today I had a look on a Windoze 7 desktop and thought "huh, looks like KDE4". Was that the goal?!

Windows 7 came out after KDE 4. There has been some speculation that Microsoft intentionally copied aspects of KDE 4 for Windows 7.

guu wrote:I still wonder what the benefit of the widgets could be.

There are a lot of really useful widgets. For instance I keep several folderview widgets on my desktop, some pointing to standard folders, others points to folders I am currently working on. I have an advanced calculator widget that lets me do pretty sophisticated calculations easily Another widget lets me easily launch consoles with particular properties, or kate sessions containing what I am working on. Another lets me define words easily. Another shows the 4-day forecast at a glance. Another lets me control the volume of individual applications. I personally use widgets all the time for various purposes.

guu wrote:The funniest example was the world clock which now shows the entire world map in about 100 pixels including text...and not more. Unusable.

You can resize almost all widgets (unless the developer specifically forbade it, which is very rare if it has happened at all). Just hover your mouse over it, a bar will appear on the side. Then click the rectangle near the top of the bar and drag to resize to whatever you want. You can make it as large or as small as you want (many widgets have a minimum size, but these tend to be useleslly small).

guu wrote:2nd ranked: what can I do with the strange icon box on the desktop? It keeps me from arranging the icons where I can access them if I have the usual amount of windows open.

You mean folder view? You can move it to wherever you want it, resize it to any size you want, have as many of them wherever you want. If the icons aren't where you want them, you can move the whole widget to a better location.

guu wrote:In CDE (Solaris) there was a real window doing the same. That window you could bring up to the front and move it where ever you want it. In KDE4 this seems not possible.

Try hitting ctrl+f12 (you can change this if you want). This pulls up the widget dashboard, which lets you get easy access to the widgets. You can also set a shortcut to minimize all windows. You can also put in your panel either the "show desktop" or "show dashboard" widgets, the first of which minimizes all windows while the second pulls up the dashboard I mentioned. You can also set the pager (the thing that shows your virtual desktops) to either minimize all windows or show the dashboard when you click on the current desktop. You can also put the folder view widget in your panel, or the quick access widget (which I prefer), both of which can let you view a folder over other windows (and you can set a keyboard shortcut for either or both).

guu wrote:Nothing against evolution and some new toys...if it helps against Bill. But why was it not possible to keep an option "look like KDE3, do like KDE3"?

You can set it to behave very similarly to KDE 3. You can change the desktop type to "folder view", which puts the icons right on the desktop instead of in a widget. You can use many of the standard themes from KDE 3, as well as the KDE 3 icon set. There is no single option to make everything like KDE 3, but you can make a lot of it pretty similar.

guu wrote:Even more...I installed a couple of programs which came with the KDE3 repo. I guess they would all still work in KDE4...especially if they are not widgets but just regular programs. If 3 vs. 4 is a matter of resources, doesn't that mean that tight integration to a particular desktop is an ugly thing? And shouldn't I be able to run gnome programs (I think gimp is an example) also in KDE? So why did so many working things disappear just because of a change to KDE4? This is sad.

KDE 3 and Gnome programs work just fine under KDE 4. I use gimp all the time myself, as well as a number of other gnome programs (like inkscape).

guu wrote:It's more an issue of suse 10.0 vs. 11.3. At least: the option of running KDE3 allowed me to nail these problems down to other parts of the system. Before that I was completely lost! Too many changes, too many problems, too many open ends. It would have helped me A LOT if the KDE3 would have been still available from scratch, or a predefined repo in a list which I can't overlook when searching for updates or packets.

It was, for quite a while (several releases of openSUSE). But eventually there didn't seem to be enough interest, so they stopped. The problem is that you missed this window by not upgrading for such a long time. When you wait to do an upgrade for many years, a lot is going to change. That is just a fact of life in the Linux world.

With KDE3 I get WLAN after login or resume, all applications are back,

I have packaged kwlan for KDE3 yesterday, so you can test it.

By the way, I suggest you to join the opensuse-kde3@opensuse.org mailing list.

After years of mounting FAT drives (e.g. camera card) with small characters now everything is in UGLY CAPITALS. I wonder where to change that

This is how it appears on my computer:



Maybe you see the name in capitals because the USB drive has a volume label?

There has been some speculation that Microsoft intentionally copied aspects of KDE 4 for Windows 7

Just two examples.

- Plastic glass-like looking selection of icons on the desktop - definitely copied from Windows (at the time of KDE4 release it had no folderview)

- Main menu with scrollers without expansion - definitely copied from Windows (on Linux there is no need for such measure because the applications are categorized, on Windows in became inevitable because too many apps were put in one menu)

Also black slick theme for the panel was copied from Vista, plasmoids are also from Vista widgets (the notorious clock even appeared in the previews).

You can also trace back that KDE heavily borrowed from Windows: the textured controls appeared in KDE2 after textured IE3 layout were later removed after removed from IE4, thick blue window headers appeared after Win XP, 3D toolbars were removed from KDE3 after removed from Win98 and so on.

Borrowing from Windows is not necessary bad. But borrowing bad things is of course bad. Also note that Windows still keeps compatibility and possibility to customize appearance like in the very old Windows versions.

You can set it to behave very similarly to KDE 3. You can change the desktop type to "folder view", which puts the icons right on the desktop instead of in a widget. You can use many of the standard themes from KDE 3, as well as the KDE 3 icon set. There is no single option to make everything like KDE 3, but you can make a lot of it pretty similar.

Please tell me how to do two things

- How to get a spatial mode in file manager. Konq in KDE3 was an universal file manager with different modes: navigational, spatial and multi-panel. Dolphin is a narrow-purpose file manager with only navigational mode. It is possible to use Konq in KDE4 as a file manager, but they broke the spatial mode even there. It is an essential function for me

- How to set up the taskbar to use the same style as other Qt4 controls.

Just two simple questions. I can add many others: how to remove that enema icon from the desktop, how to get the same style K menu as in KDE3, how to have the same context menu for the icons on the desktop, as in file manager, like in KDE3, how to have the Storage Media, Trash and Network icons on the desktop etc etc etc.

Anixx wrote:- Plastic glass-like looking selection of icons on the desktop - definitely copied from Windows (at the time of KDE4 release it had no folderview)

Not sure I am following, do you have a screenshot of this?

Anixx wrote:- Main menu with scrollers without expansion - definitely copied from Windows (on Linux there is no need for such measure because the applications are categorized, on Windows in became inevitable because too many apps were put in one menu)

The application launcher was developed by openSUSE during the KDE 3 days based on extensive usability studies. It has nothing to do with windows, in fact it was designed to avoid flaws found in the existing KDE and windows menus.

Anixx wrote:Also black slick theme for the panel was copied from Vista,

Source please. The fact that they are both black does not prove one was copied from the other.

Anixx wrote:plasmoids are also from Vista widgets (the notorious clock even appeared in the previews).

Desktop widgets long predate Vista, just look at superkaramba and it wasn't even the first. There were at least 3 other popular examples of desktop widgets before vista, including from google, yahoo, and apple. Do you have any basis for the claim that, out of all the existing widget implementations, vista was the one they copied?

And the widgets in KDE 4 are nothing like those in vista. No where else is there a desktop widget implementation as extensive, as flexible, or as integrated as KDE 4.

Anixx wrote:You can also trace back that KDE heavily borrowed from Windows: the textured controls appeared in KDE2 after textured IE3 layout were later removed after removed from IE4, thick blue window headers appeared after Win XP, 3D toolbars were removed from KDE3 after removed from Win98 and so on.

Yes, KDE tries to combine the best of their own ideas and ideas from others. I don't know whether those specific instances are copies, coincidences, or due to general changes in technology, ideas about usability, or ideas about user preferences. But that doesn't have much to do with the fact that KDE 4 came out before Window 7.

Anixx wrote:Borrowing from Windows is not necessary bad. But borrowing bad things is of course bad.

Yes, by definition bad things are bad. Do you have any examples that were copied from windows and are bad?

Anixx wrote:Also note that Windows still keeps compatibility and possibility to customize appearance like in the very old Windows versions.

Not completely, but to an extent yes. But you can't run several versions of windows on the same computer at the same time, while you can with KDE. If you want to run KDE 3 programs, then just install KDE 3.

Anixx wrote:- How to get a spatial mode in file manager. Konq in KDE3 was an universal file manager with different modes: navigational, spatial and multi-panel. Dolphin is a narrow-purpose file manager with only navigational mode. It is possible to use Konq in KDE4 as a file manager, but they broke the spatial mode even there. It is an essential function for me

What do you mean by "spatial mode", and what is broken about it in KDE 4?

Anixx wrote:- How to set up the taskbar to use the same style as other Qt4 controls.

I also don't follow. Are you asking for a task bar that looks like the rest of KDE? There is probably a theme for that, although I haven't checked.

Anixx wrote:how to remove that enema icon from the desktop

I am not sure what this is. Do you mean the cashew? There is a scripted widget that can do this called "Stealth Cashew".

Anixx wrote:how to get the same style K menu as in KDE3

Right-click -> classic mode

Anixx wrote:how to have the same context menu for the icons on the desktop, as in file manager

Works for me, although this may be new in KDE 4.6.

Anixx wrote:how to have the Storage Media

Add "device notifier" widget to the desktop, or add the "shelf" widget and add "removable devices" to the shelf.

Anixx wrote:Trash

Add the "trashcan" widget to the desktop.

Anixx wrote:and Network icons on the desktop

Do you mean network drives, or network management? If the former, you can add a folder view and point it the folder "network://". If the latter, you can add the networkmanager plasmoid to the desktop.

Not sure I am following, do you have a screenshot of this?

The thing around "SAAHE" folder.
http://www.mrowe.co.za/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/desktop_expanding_folders.png

Source please. The fact that they are both black does not prove one was copied from the other.

It is evident, sorry. Or do you expect the devs to say "we stealed this and this"?

But that doesn't have much to do with the fact that KDE 4 came out before Window 7.[/quote]
Yes. KDE4.0 was more like Vista. But unlike Vista it does not provide a possibility tyo choose the classical appearance.

What do you mean by "spatial mode"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager

and what is broken about it in KDE 4?

They simply removed all modes except their own beloved one.

I also don't follow. Are you asking for a task bar that looks like the rest of KDE? There is probably a theme for that, although I haven't checked.

No there is not.

There is a scripted widget that can do this called "Stealth Cashew".

It does not remove it.

Right-click -> classic mode

And removes icons from the menu.

Add "device notifier" widget to the desktop, or add the "shelf" widget and add "removable devices" to the shelf.

In that case it is impossible to stretch folder view to the whole desktop. It is impossible to put such icon, not widget in the desktop.

Add the "trashcan" widget to the desktop.

[/quote]
In that case it is impossible to stretch folder view to the whole desktop. It is impossible to put such icon, not widget in the desktop.

And again. I do not want to use plasma widgets. Plasma looks ugly, does not match the Qt4 style, shows resize/manipulation widgets on mouse hover which grabs attention and creates possibility of an accidental action. It looks like candy wrappers laying on your desktop.

Besides this, plasma is unreliable by desind, making a huge gap in stablity.

Anixx wrote:

After years of mounting FAT drives (e.g. camera card) with small characters now everything is in UGLY CAPITALS. I wonder where to change that

This is how it appears on my computer:



Maybe you see the name in capitals because the USB drive has a volume label?

I was talking about the file names themselves. For example the CF-card of my camera is labeled and the drive is mounted under this label. But the file system is FAT. When I copy the images to another disk I used to get files and folders like 256canon/img_5555.cr2 which is now 256CANON/IMG_5555.CR2. If my 50 scripts can handle this or not I can't completely tell today, and if they fail it is certainly also my fault to be careless about spelling. But in fact I don't expect such changes after a version upgrade of an OS.

For unlabeled disks the naming scheme has changed. A particular (ext2) drive is mounted as /media/usbdisk on 10 machines but became /media/disk on the new one. I think there must be a rule file somewhere, but so far I didn't find it.

For the GUI actions there is also something funny. If I insert a labeled disk, e.g. called "friday", it will open in a konqueror folder as system:/media/sdc1. I'd use df to verify that if I need it. If I go to the drive folder myself I'll end at /media/friday which is much more intuitive.

Maybe you can tell me how to stop any notification about plugged in hardware? For example, I usually plug and unplug backup drives. I have no interaction with them because cron jobs will check their presence and do all the rest. If I have only one desktop on the machine the single popup is ok. But since there are several people working on some machines (even I have a 2nd desktop for remote login which is always active so that I can continue with a task from different locations) a single event causes 7 windows to pop up, some of them you may find a couple of days later. Looks especially funny after burning a couple of DVDs.
A disk is mounted anyway and k3b I start either from command line or it is already running. So, personally I never feel comfortable with the popups (in suse11.3/KDE4 default this was initially opposite. By default nothing happened and the GUI was a chance to mount without doing it the hard way).

In the personal settings, system notification, I don't see hardware related things, and under hardware I can apparently modify the content of the notification window but I can't disable it. Actually I'd like to do disable the popups system-wide and not by user. Is that possible?

One small step further
NoMachine keyboard problems seem to be solved. After searching for the Alt-gr toggling problem I found the relevant note. I changed my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

- in the ServerLayout section add
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
to enable the InputDevice sections of the file
- it now needs an InputDevice section which was still present in my file

This fixed the keyboard but activated the ugly mousepad tapping. Thus next part is
- in the InputSection "mouse" change
Driver "synaptics"
and add
Option "Tapping" "false"
Option "MaxTapTime" "0"

In my new VM install the xorg.conf no longer exists. Looks it is now splitted into a bunch of smaller files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. I hope the content is still the same. Thus this problem was not KDE related but X11 related.

I wonder if there's a GUI tool to configure the display/kbd/mouse stuff? Yast2 didn't show me anything relevant and sax2 is history.

Anixx wrote:

Not sure I am following, do you have a screenshot of this?

The thing around "SAAHE" folder.
http://www.mrowe.co.za/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/desktop_expanding_folders.png

Wait, seriously? Just putting an outline around a folder makes it a copy of windows? Could you ever consider the possibility that people just think it looks good, and has nothing at all to do with windows?

This is present in Dolphin and konqueror as well, as well as many other programs in KDE and Qt. It seems to be a standard part of the Qt 4 icon view. Of course they changed the appearance so it worked with the plasma theme, but it is the same outline found throughout the rest of Qt 4.

Anixx wrote:

Source please. The fact that they are both black does not prove one was copied from the other.

It is evident, sorry. Or do you expect the devs to say "we stealed this and this"?

Black is a popular color, the fact that they both just happened to use black does not indicate one was copied from the other. Just look at the themes available, a huge number of them use black panels of various sorts, apparently because people like it.

Anixx wrote:Yes. KDE4.0 was more like Vista. But unlike Vista it does not provide a possibility tyo choose the classical appearance.

You can set a classic widget style, classic window decoration, classic icon set, and classic (klassik) desktop theme. You can make it much more similar to KDE 3 than windows 7 programs look to Windows XP (there have been a lot of changes to, for instance, the window decoration than cannot be changed in windows but can be in KDE).

Anixx wrote:

What do you mean by "spatial mode"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager

and what is broken about it in KDE 4?

They simply removed all modes except their own beloved one.

settings->configure konqueror->file management->open folders in separate windows

Anixx wrote:

I also don't follow. Are you asking for a task bar that looks like the rest of KDE? There is probably a theme for that, although I haven't checked.

No there is not.

Have you tried oxywin, specifically the opaque, not dark version without background pattern?

Anixx wrote:

There is a scripted widget that can do this called "Stealth Cashew".

It does not remove it.

It makes it invisible. Is it really that big a deal whether it is invisible or removed as long as it isn't bothering you anymore?

If it is really that big a deal, get an opaque theme and put the cashew underneath a panel. It will no longer be visible, no longer be touchable. Problem solved.

Anixx wrote:

Right-click -> classic mode

And removes icons from the menu.

You really want to remove icons from the application launcher? Why? I suppose you could submit a feature request on bugs.kde.org, I doubt it occurred to developers that anyone would want this (they may even reject it as bad usability, but you can try).

Anixx wrote:

Add "device notifier" widget to the desktop, or add the "shelf" widget and add "removable devices" to the shelf.

In that case it is impossible to stretch folder view to the whole desktop. It is impossible to put such icon, not widget in the desktop.

No it isn't, you can set a folderview to the entire desktop, and still add other widgets to the desktop.

And if you just want icons, you can use one of the many fully transparent themes.

Anixx wrote:

Add the "trashcan" widget to the desktop.

In that case it is impossible to stretch folder view to the whole desktop.

Yes, it is possible. You can still use the folderview desktop with other widgets.

Anixx wrote:It is impossible to put such icon, not widget in the desktop.

And the widget is an icon, one single icon, nothing more. No border, no background, it even has the same hover effect as icons in folderview. Are you so against widgets that you refuse to use them even when they look identical to any other icon?

If you are really so hung up about it, you can open dolphin, open the folder your folderview points to, right-click and select new->link to location, and enter whatever you want as the name and "trash://" as the location, then set the icon to be the same as the trash can. Now you have an icon pointing to the trash can.

Anixx wrote:And again. I do not want to use plasma widgets.

You need to be reasonable here, everything in KDE 4 is a widget, even the panel and desktop itself.

You can't just say "I am never going to use widgets under any circumstances", and then complain when you can't get the old functionality back. The old functionality is provided by widgets, which lets you have much of the same functionality as before, but generally provide a lot of additional functionality and flexibility as well.

The functionality you want is there, but you arbitrarily decide you aren't going to use it, then complain that you can't get the functionality back. Of course you can't get the functionality back if you refuse to use the features that provide the functionality.

Anixx wrote:Plasma looks ugly,

There isn't a single theme that you find acceptable?

Anixx wrote:does not match the Qt4 style,

I already mentioned a theme that does this, which you claim didn't exist. So you can't have looked at the themes too closely. It took me about 10 seconds to find it, too.

Anixx wrote:shows resize/manipulation widgets on mouse hover which grabs attention and creates possibility of an accidental action.

Lock the widgets. That is the whole reason the lock/unlock functionality is there in the first place.

Anixx wrote:It looks like candy wrappers laying on your desktop.

Perhaps you think the default theme does, but there are countless other themes, including many without transparency or with simpler styles. It doesn't have to look fancy if you don't want it to. You can even use a fully transparent theme to remove all the borders and backgrounds.

Anixx wrote:Besides this, plasma is unreliable by desind, making a huge gap in stablity.

What aspect of the design is unreliable? It is far more stable then, say, the Windows 7 desktop, which freezes constantly.

Could you ever consider the possibility that people just think it looks good, and has nothing at all to do with windows?

Yes, they probably think this looks good. And it is copied from Windows. And it is impossible to disable, unfortunately.

Black is a popular color, the fact that they both just happened to use black does not indicate one was copied from the other. Just look at the themes available, a huge number of them use black panels of various sorts, apparently because people like it.

Not only black but black with pseudo-blink. Completely same appearance.

You can set a classic widget style

Which? They removed nearly all great styles which were in KDE3. In KDE3 there are multiple styles that satisfy me, in KDE4 - none.
Not to say, you cannot find a similar Plasma style.

classic icon set

Oh, that from KDE2? Thank you

settings->configure konqueror->file management->open folders in separate windows

Which does not work because the code was already removed. There is a checkbox still there left from KDE3 for turning on the spatial mode, but it does not affect anything. They simply missed it when they were in their rage of destruction.

Have you tried oxywin, specifically the opaque, not dark version without background pattern?

At best this can emulate colors, not widget style.

It will no longer be visible, no longer be touchable.

It is bigger than the panel.

You really want to remove icons from the application launcher?

No. KDE4 removes the icons in classic mode.

Yes, it is possible. You can still use the folderview desktop with other widgets.

No, it's not possible. I want icons on desktop, not widgets.

Now you have an icon pointing to the trash can.

It will not show if the trash is empty.

What storage media folder? You'd advise to make a shortcut to /media?

Besides all this, in KDE4 it is impossible to move desktop to another location. I use separate desktops for Gnome and KDE3, but KDE4 requires the desktop to be in ~/Desktop. You can set up folder view to show any folder obn the desktop, but the .desktop files in this case will be shown with .desktop extension.

You need to be reasonable here, everything in KDE 4 is a widget, even the panel and desktop itself.

That's why I do not use it.

There isn't a single theme that you find acceptable?

None. Besides this if such theme existed I'd require it to follow the style of non-polasma controls. No such plasma theme exist.

I already mentioned a theme that does this, which you claim didn't exist. So you can't have looked at the themes too closely. It took me about 10 seconds to find it, too.

At best it can emulate only colors. It is like trying to emulate Qt with GTK application. Besides, the name of the theme you pointed suggests it is similar to Oxygen, which I hate.

What aspect of the design is unreliable?

- Any plasmoid can crash Plasma

- The desktop is combined with the panel

You know there is such thing as Reliability theory. Some people do not know it, 'improve' some things and wonder why they work worser after the improvement.


For example, in my block there are two elevators which were made for reliability: if one does not work, the other still can be used. After a reconstruction last year they had united the control block of the two and instead of two calling buttons on each floor made one which calls the both elevators. It seemed for them it was an improvement: instead of pressing the both buttons you can press only one and the control block automatically determines which elevator is closer to you and redirects it to your floor.

The only thing they did not account for was that now if one elevator is broken, the other is too so people have to use stairs.

Anixx wrote:And it is copied from Windows.

You keep asserting this, but have provided nothing whatsoever to back it up other than "I think it looks similar". Just because two things happen to look similar does not mean one was copied from the other. Qt 4.0 was release a year and a half before windows vista. I am not sure this was in the original Qt 4.0 release, but I suspect it is.

Anixx wrote:And it is impossible to disable, unfortunately.

That is because it is part of Qt, not KDE.

Anixx wrote:Not only black but black with pseudo-blink. Completely same appearance.

No, they aren't "completely same appearance". In fact it is hard to imagine making two black panels look more different. For example, the KDE 4.0 panel has a border around it, is fairly flat in color, and is a strong black. The windows vista panel has no border, a strong gradient, and much less intense black.

Anixx wrote:Which? They removed nearly all great styles which were in KDE3. In KDE3 there are multiple styles that satisfy me, in KDE4 - none.
Not to say, you cannot find a similar Plasma style.

Which style do you want? I assumed you were talking about the default style, which is available. If someone wants to port a third-party style to KDE 4 they are free to do so, but you cannot blame KDE developers for third-party styles not being available.

Anixx wrote:Oh, that from KDE2? Thank you

No, I don't mean the one called "classic", I mean the crystal icon set that was the default one for KDE 3.

Anixx wrote:

settings->configure konqueror->file management->open folders in separate windows

Which does not work because the code was already removed. There is a checkbox still there left from KDE3 for turning on the spatial mode, but it does not affect anything. They simply missed it when they were in their rage of destruction.

[/quote]
So I'm sure you submitted a bug report about this, right?

And please stop with the rhetoric, it does not help anything.

Anixx wrote:

Have you tried oxywin, specifically the opaque, not dark version without background pattern?

At best this can emulate colors, not widget style.

Have you tried?

Anixx wrote:

It will no longer be visible, no longer be touchable.

It is bigger than the panel.

Not if you put it on a screen edge instead of the corner (unless you make the panel really small).

Anixx wrote:

You really want to remove icons from the application launcher?

No. KDE4 removes the icons in classic mode.

Not for me.

Anixx wrote:

Yes, it is possible. You can still use the folderview desktop with other widgets.

No, it's not possible. I want icons on desktop, not widgets.

So set the desktop to folder view mode.

Anixx wrote:

Now you have an icon pointing to the trash can.

It will not show if the trash is empty.

It does for me.

Anixx wrote:Besides all this, in KDE4 it is impossible to move desktop to another location. I use separate desktops for Gnome and KDE3, but KDE4 requires the desktop to be in ~/Desktop. You can set up folder view to show any folder obn the desktop, but the .desktop files in this case will be shown with .desktop extension.

Not if you do right click->create new->link to location

Anixx wrote:That's why I do not use it.

I can't really help you with your arbitrary rejection of anything called a "widget". What does it matter what it is as long as you can get the same functionality?

Anixx wrote:

I already mentioned a theme that does this, which you claim didn't exist. So you can't have looked at the themes too closely. It took me about 10 seconds to find it, too.

At best it can emulate only colors. It is like trying to emulate Qt with GTK application. Besides, the name of the theme you pointed suggests it is similar to Oxygen, which I hate.

You asked for something that was like the rest of KDE, then reject it because it looks like the rest of KDE?

Anixx wrote:- Any plasmoid can crash Plasma

Not entirely accurate, javascript plasmoids cannot. But it would be impossible for it to do otherwise, and plasma handles this well. This has been explained repeatedly. It wasn't an arbitrary decision, it was necessary to make things operate.

Anixx wrote:- The desktop is combined with the panel

Why is this unreliable, independent of your previous objection?

Anixx wrote:For example, in my block there are two elevators which were made for reliability: if one does not work, the other still can be used. After a reconstruction last year they had united the control block of the two and instead of two calling buttons on each floor made one which calls the both elevators. It seemed for them it was an improvement: instead of pressing the both buttons you can press only one and the control block automatically determines which elevator is closer to you and redirects it to your floor.

The only thing they did not account for was that now if one elevator is broken, the other is too so people have to use stairs.

Unfortunately, unlike plasma elevators won't detect when there is a problem,then remove whatever led to the problem, then start up again as plasma generally does.

And this is not two separate elevators running independently. It more like one elevator. All the buttons are connected to one circuit board. Therefore, a short in the door close buttons is very likely going to wreck the floor buttons as well.

Even if the panel and desktop were independent (which would have a significant performance penalty and make a number of features of plasma impossible), a crash in the desktop still crashes the desktop.