I just last week installed openSUSE 12.3, and KDE 4.1 on to an Acer Aspire netbook.
I did this as training to make myself familiar with Linux and KDE both in how to install it and how to use the various software tools.
The final install will be on a full sized desktop and coexist with Windows 7.

My most important app is KMyMoney and they recommended openSUSE and KDE as the best platform.
So here I am trying to learn what KDE can and will do. I think that I have Linux installed good enough to the point that I want to improve my skills with KDE.
I have been reading a lot of tutorials and stories about KDE and am getting confused.
I come from a Windows environment and being able to have multiple desktops (?) sounds appealing.
Or are they desktops, or workspaces or activities ? I am not clear on the nomenclature. And then you throw in a plasma, whatever that is.

I like the idea of being able to organize and isolate the desktops? according to the work process and it sounds like KDE does that somewhat.
Basically, each work process would be standard with Firefox, Libre Office, and a folder or two with the individual work files.
So, can you point me to some tutorials or lesson plans that could help me get started, recognizing that I will no doubt, pester you with a lot of questions.
Ideally, the tutorial would have hands on exercises to do the type of stuff I have talked about.

Thanks,
Hex, aka George

Hi!

I don't have links to good resources handy, but I can explain some nomenclature:

A virtual desktop is basically just a set of windows displayed at once. The rest of the desktop (panel, desktop background, widgets) is not usually affected by this. I personally make excessive use of this concept; I rarely move or switch windows, but I have collections of windows on virtual desktops and switch between them. For example I have one desktop with my email client, one with my web browser, one with various chat programs, one with my development tools etc.
Virtual desktops are designed to be very lightweight and simple. They exist in almost every Unix window manager since the very beginning.

An activity, on the other hand, is a concept from the KDE land; such an activity can contain various configuration options, such as desktop/panel layout, energy settings ("do not suspend computer when lid is closed"), programs always running on that activity (for example photo viewer/editor), ...
I personally do not find myself using them much, but I imagine they can be very useful depending on what you're doing.

A workspace is something different again; it's a variant of plasma (see next paragraph) tailored for a specific device form factor (desktop, netbook, tablet, ...). You usually do not care about this since your device form factor doesn't change and the correct one should be pre-configured.

Plasma is the "desktop shell", i.e. it's the program which provides the panel, the desktop background, and the widgets on your desktop. It does not take care of e.g. window management (e.g. window decorations).

Greetings,
Sven

Probably a good way to start getting into using multiple desktops + activities is to use multiple desktops to spread your windows out so that you don't have overlapping or minimized windows. You probably want certain windows be visible together so those should be on the same desktop, but other applications could be moved to their own desktop.

Play with that for a few days to get used to the idea of organizing your windows in different desktops and switching between them (and adding different widgets to the desktop that are relevant to the different tasks). Then you may notice certain patterns show up as you divide your work into different tasks/work processes that when you are working on one task you switch between a couple specific desktops, and when you are working on another task you switch between a couple other desktops.
This is where KDE's activities would come into play: you can divide up the desktops between Activities where each activity has the windows, widgets, documents, folders, etc. associated with a particular task (maybe spread between a couple desktops). It'll take a bit of work to move your windows around between activities and reorganize the desktops (you'll probably end up with 1-3 desktops per activity with a handful of activities, as opposed to having 4-8 or more desktops under typical single-activity setup), and it takes a bit to get used to switching between activities vs. switching between desktops, but hopefully your work flow will be more streamlined and focused.

In the end, it takes an investment to get to know all of the ins and outs of KDE and the plasma desktop; but in the end you'll be able to bend the desktop to how you want to work.

Of course if you try it and it doesn't work out for you, you can always just use a single desktop and/or a single activity and still make use of all of the other features that KDE's desktop provides (or you could always try out the other desktop options like Gnome Shell, XFCE, LXDE, Ubuntu's Unity, Enlightenment (or E17), Linux Mint's Cinnamon, etc... and find the one that works best for you - you can always use KDE apps on the other desktops).

This is link complete tutorial KDE for basic user.

http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials

you can learn it step by step.
good luck guys.

hermantowawan wrote:This is link complete tutorial KDE for basic user.

http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials

you can learn it step by step.
good luck guys.

any indian language guys?
i from india

Note that this thread is almost 3 years old. Your help is appreciated, but will probably not be seen any more by the original author

Again, your help is appreciated, but watch the date of the thread. Let's just let it slumber

Now you're digging it out again, yet another half year later!