Hello,

I am new to kde4 (I was just switched to it from version 3.something). There are enough differences that it is making my life a little difficult.

1) One of the biggest issues I am having is with the pager. First off, I can no longer rename the desktops in place. I now have to open the "Configure Desktops..." dialog and then rename. Is there any way to go back to the old method of renaming desktops in place? I rename my desktops with some regularity.

2) The pager *always* seems to want to show small icons of my open windows. Is there any way to stop this? This is mostly relevant with regard to:

3) I can hardly read the name of the desktop. Between the fake gloss on top of the control, the faint icons underneath the desktop name, and a font/color choice that is just a hair darker than the default color, it is nearly impossible to read the desktop name. Is there a way to change the theme so that I get the old kde3 style buttons vs. the new shiny but difficult to use controls? I tried changing the "Pager" setting in the Desktop Theme Details under System Settings but nothing seems to get updated (plus I only have two options: Air and Oxygen - both of which suffer from the same issues).

4) I can hardly tell which desktop is active. Again, it only slightly darkens the current desktop and I really have to look carefully to see whether a particular desktop is selected vs. just has a larger, darker icon in it.


Sorry for the length of the post/newbie-ness of the post, but I am not a power configurator of kde. I just use it on a day to day basis and the new version is different enough to be perplexing.

1. Can you remind us how the old renaming works?
2. Right click on Pager -> Pager Settings -> uncheck "Display icons".
3. You can get more themes by clicking on "Get New Themes..." under the Theme tab. Make sure you have the (Customized) theme selected when you've made your changes in the Details tab.
4. Again, try a different theme.

Hans,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The old pager allowed me to right-click on a desktop and select "rename" to rename it. (It *might* have even allowed me to just double click on the name itself but I can't honestly remember if that is true or I am just making it up)

I did turn off "Display icons" a while back but it does not do what I was hoping it would do. Perhaps I am using the wrong term. Right now, the pager shows me a small preview of all my windows on a particular desktop. I just want a button with a name on it, no little preview.

Alas the "Get new themes" button is not working (or, rather, it is most likely not set up to get past our proxy). I will talk to the IT guys.



In the mean time, I downloaded a theme from kde-look.org and unzipped it here:

~/.kde/share/apps/desktoptheme/<theme-name>

there were two other directories here:

default
oxygen

but they only have empty "wallpaper" directories in them.

Alas, the theme manager does not see it (I am running red hat linux, but no idea which version).


Poking around, I found the following directory:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme

which has a number of themes in it (Aya, default, Elegance, heron, oxygen, Silicon, slim-glow) but none of these themes (except oxygen) show up in my theme manager.


Is there some config file some place I need to edit to point my theme manager to these themes? Or is there a place where I should be unzipping my downloaded theme files?

Thanks for you help so far.

Ok, managed to get the proxy configured and now I can download themes!

Yay! The first theme already makes a big difference in the look. Thanks for your help on that.

bvz wrote:Ok, managed to get the proxy configured and now I can download themes!

Yay! The first theme already makes a big difference in the look. Thanks for your help on that.

Great to hear!

The old pager allowed me to right-click on a desktop and select "rename" to rename it. (It *might* have even allowed me to just double click on the name itself but I can't honestly remember if that is true or I am just making it up)

Unfortunately this seems to have been removed, you'll have to rename them in the pager settings.

Just curious, why do you regularly rename your virtual desktops? Have you tried activities? Which version of KDE Plasma Desktop do you use?

I did turn off "Display icons" a while back but it does not do what I was hoping it would do. Perhaps I am using the wrong term. Right now, the pager shows me a small preview of all my windows on a particular desktop. I just want a button with a name on it, no little preview.

Seems like it'll display the outlines of the windows if the pager is of a certain size. Unchecking "Display icons" at least hides the icons. I don't know a way to disable the window outlines, however.

I have not tried "activities". I'll check it out.

I don't know which version of kde I am using (other than that it is of the 4.x variety). Not sure how to tell either. I basically just use what is given to me at work. For the longest time we were on 3.x and I had managed to wear it smooth after years of use. Now ver 4 has a number of "rough" edges (basically changes from how I worked before) that I have to slowly smooth down again over time.

I work at a vfx studio and am working multiple shots at once. Each shot gets its own desktop (otherwise I would go mad trying to keep them all straight). Sometimes I am working on as many as 10 or 11 shots at once, but they may change from day to day or week to week.

Thanks again for your help.

You can check the version in any KDE application by going to Help -> About KDE. It will say something like "Platform Version 4.7.2 (4.7.2)".

I find activities to be nice to separate between your computer activities, which sounds like what you're doing with virtual desktops. However, personally I think the feature still is immature, especially in earlier KDE4 versions.

apparently I am running 4.3.4

Activities seems interesting. Thusfar I have been fairly happy with the individual desktops, especially since I have a number of command line tools that automatically set my tools up once I'm inside a desktop. I just needed to tweak the default kde4 settings a bit.