Hello,

I just loaded kubuntu 8.10 on my laptop and immediately feel the difference, it looks much better but I am a little bit confused about a few questions.

1: Why nothing shows up on the desktop? it seems the only way I see and open files and dirs I downloaded or created is throught "file manger". I can not see anything directly on desktop without using file manager, what is going on?

2:I can not just click desktop and create directory or files?

3:From file manager, it seems all the files have either a "+" or "-" icon when I mouse over, what exactly are these things?

THanks!

1. That is the plasma desktop concept. Add the Folder view widget and set it to show the desktop. To do that, click on the cashew on top right, select "Add Widgets" and from the list, add "Folder View". You can right click on Folder view and select "Folder view settings" to change the default displayed folder. You may also drag and drop icons on the desktop to have the classic desktop feeling.

2. No, but on the folder view widget, you can.

3. Those icons select the files on single clicking. Clicking at around the (+) area would select the file while clicking elsewhere on the icon would open/launch it. You can change the behaviour to "single click to select and double click to open) under Kmenu -> System Settings -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Mouse

Note that Plasma will support the old "Files are the desktop" paradigm in KDE 4.2, however it will not be the default.

thanks a lot, I guess I need a while to get use to the new kde

Once you get used to it, you'll find this new concept a lot better than the conventional one.
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