Hi guys, I'm attempting a switchover to KDE4 from Gnome2 (which I've been using for years), and I've bumped into a couple of little things that are throwing me for a loop - and unfortunately the documentation I'm finding online is pretty barebones.

First off, I like having 2 panels - one at the bottom of the screen, and one a the top.
I've added an additional panel to the top of the screen, and can add the applets to it, however I'm getting frustrated with the icon placement. Is there a way to "free form" the placement rather than having everything left/right/center aligned? I want a few on the left side of the panel, and a few on the right, with nothing in the middle - I'm not finding a way to do this.

The second thing regarding panels is that Gnome has the ability to temporarily hide a panel out of the way if you just need to get rid of it for a moment (this is not "auto hide") - there doesn't appear to be a way to do this under KDE?

The other thing I'm confused about is the notifier in the system tray keeps telling me there are 400-some updates available.
Where is it pulling this number from? If there are 400+ updates available, how do I get them? I don't see a "KDE Updater" app or anything like that.

(If it comes into play, this is currently running on Mint Debian Edition, which originally defaulted to Gnome)

Thanks!

Shadoglare wrote:Is there a way to "free form" the placement rather than having everything left/right/center aligned? I want a few on the left side of the panel, and a few on the right, with nothing in the middle - I'm not finding a way to do this.

Have you tried adding a spacer? It is in the panel configuration bar

Shadoglare wrote:The second thing regarding panels is that Gnome has the ability to temporarily hide a panel out of the way if you just need to get rid of it for a moment (this is not "auto hide") - there doesn't appear to be a way to do this under KDE?

No, someone was working on this for 4.5 or 4.6 but it wasn't finished last time I checked.

Shadoglare wrote:The other thing I'm confused about is the notifier in the system tray keeps telling me there are 400-some updates available.
Where is it pulling this number from? If there are 400+ updates available, how do I get them? I don't see a "KDE Updater" app or anything like that.

That depends on which widget it is and what version of KDE you are using. Can you post a screenshot?

TheBlackCat wrote:That depends on which widget it is and what version of KDE you are using. Can you post a screenshot?

Yeah, here's the notification (clicking will show full size):



According to the About dialog I'm on 4.4.5.

It doesn't look like any icons I have. It may be a debian-specific thing.

Try that shield which has a tick on it.

If you are having difficulties it might be worth trying Mint KDE though.

rebecacaca wrote:Try that shield which has a tick on it.

Yeah, the shield is the Mint Updater, but it says I'm fully up to date - I assume because it came with the Gnome version.
I spose I can ask over at the Mint forums - I had assumed this was something that came with the base KDE package.

Doing a little tinkering this morning, it appears to be pulling from Synaptic.
I checked for upgradeable packages, ran an update and a few and the number it was notifying me about went down, as well as the notifier telling me I needed to reboot for one of the updates to take effect. Hmm.