As far as i know Plasma will be Windows' shell replacement eventually. Not sure when, though it's powerfull enough for that already. It just has too many glitches and as i already told - KDE can't deal with registered (in Windows) filetypes - it is just not aware of them. It may even happen that some piece of code could be borrowed from Emerge Desktop project and SystemSettings modules will be somewhere in Windows' Control Panel. But it's just for the perspective - i guess we'll have that by KDE4.3.
By the way, i found the way to restore that space that stays after killed plasma panel and you can't move/maximize windows over it's space. After you killed Plasma just move the windows' native panel to the respective screen border and leave it. Then you may move it back - No more buggy space left. Even without killing explorer.exe!

Ok, about the plasma plans:
I hope I can fix current trunk's problems and then I can provide a kcmshell4 module to switch between the installed desktop shells. This is already done by emerge desktop and so I think we can use it this way as well. stay tuned.

SaroEngels wrote:Ok, about the plasma plans:
I hope I can fix current trunk's problems and then I can provide a kcmshell4 module to switch between the installed desktop shells. This is already done by emerge desktop and so I think we can use it this way as well. stay tuned.

Does this mean that plasma.exe will become an explorer.exe replacement?

jrick wrote:

SaroEngels wrote:Ok, about the plasma plans:
I hope I can fix current trunk's problems and then I can provide a kcmshell4 module to switch between the installed desktop shells. This is already done by emerge desktop and so I think we can use it this way as well. stay tuned.

Does this mean that plasma.exe will become an explorer.exe replacement?

One could say so.

hm.. But in contrary to Emerge desktop users could easily switch between the two shells. Issuing "kquitapp plasma" and "explorer.exe" doesn't require reboot (at most - relogin to get rid of the space reserved by Plasma panels).
Though, it's only my guess. The finished implementation might be done in another way.