Why, Oh Why Can't Gnome Run Superkaramba?

[coldstatue]

I don't want to insult the many hard-working people who develop the free software that I use. I am sure that 99.9% do it in their spare time, and the remaining .1% Squeeze these projects into their University-funded research. I am a huge Gnome fan. It's comfortable and natural for me. It's light, smooth, and solid. Today, i spent about 5 hours setting KDE up to operate as close as possible to the way Gnome works. The reason? Superkaramba. Currently, in Gnome, I use screenlets and gkrelim. I have tried adesklets, gdesklets, and have looked at conky. None of them compare in style and functionality to SK. I probably would have stuck with KDE forever, had there not been so many strange bugs with Beryl - loading my Gnome wallpaper and icons, randomly switching to the default Gnome iconset, etc. I realize a removal of Gnome would probably straighten this out, but it's not worth it too me. I love Gnome too much. I have found threads (very few) where people speak of Superkaramba in Gnome, but even the SK Handbook states that there is a known bug regarding transparencies. I can load SK with errors, but the themes aren't visible anyway. With rumors of MAC and Yahoo! widget support in a future release, I think Gnome-loving developers have an opportunity screaming out to them. Until Jackfield is ready, I guess I'll just have to wait. Man, would I love to have liquid Weather with a webcam background on my Gnome desktop, and auto-updating full-screen movie previews are so nice.. I'll get by, but I'll be secretly thinking about KDE while interfacing with Gnome.

[kidders]

Hi there,

The answer to your question is that Superkaramba is (as its name suggests) written for KDE, not Gnome. It's a little like asking why Firefox themes won't work in Opera.

[justin whitaker]

Heh. I have no real interest in widgets, but I love KDE. Come over to the....well, obsessively bright and cheery side. :p

[coldstatue]

I'll miss Superkaramba, but Gnome is HOME for me!

[mjpoetic]

Superkaramba is nice but screenlets does the trick for me in Gnome! Wish there were more available but it is a new project.

[greymongrey]

Gnome has gdesklets, which is basically the same thing as Superkaramba.

[diatribe]

he specifically stated he tried gdesklets and it didnt compare, did you read the post?

[sokairyk]

Well actually you can run superkaramba in Gnome but the problem is that the background of themes is not transparent but black and also themes don't refresh themselves which makes them useless.

Now to solve these issues you just need to run:

kdesktop &

This will only load the KDE desktop above Gnome desktop and superkaramba will run just perfectly.

It's good idea to run kcontrol to modify your KDE desktop settings. If you prefer your Gnome desktop you can just disable KDE icons from Desktop Behaviour settings and doing so, I don't know why, but gets Gnome desktop on top of KDE desktop.

Some themes of superkaramba require kicker to be running, but running kicker will mess up your system tray. Personally I haven't found any theme that requires kicker yet.

If you intend to use beryl is best to load beryl first and then superkaramba after.

[loneowais]

i love Gnome too......GNOME is the best.....


dun worry about superkaaramba.....there is project called jackfield..which is better than superkaramba...its like a MAC OS X(10) Dashboard clone...........it aint complete yet,, but is a promising project.

It also supports google, yahoo, MAC OS X widgets too.....

[airtonix]

Last time i checked jackfield....( as great as it promises to be )

well jack had been done.

What you want to look out for and support is the low-fat project. or the topaz project.

[revertex]

who said gnome can't run superkaramba?
i'm running debian sid with a stripped down gnome with openbox, compiz-fusion and kdesktop, superkaramba works flawlessly.

[coldstatue]

Thanks for the suggestions - low-fat and topaz will have my attention. I looked at jackfield quite a while ago.. doesn't look like it's coming along.

Running KDE under gnome sounds like an interesting plan. i might give that a shot.

I have managed to get pretty much what I want with gdesklets and conky. Not quite as slick as some of the karamba themes, but it is good.


Thanks for all the suggestions.

[revertex]

Thanks for the suggestions - low-fat and topaz will have my attention. I looked at jackfield quite a while ago.. doesn't look like it's coming along.

Running KDE under gnome sounds like an interesting plan. i might give that a shot.

I have managed to get pretty much what I want with gdesklets and conky. Not quite as slick as some of the karamba themes, but it is good.


Thanks for all the suggestions.

to be clear, i'm not talking about running kde under gnome, but running kdesktop.

I don't have kde nor gnome installed, just kdesktop on top of openbox with gnome-session.

I decide to go to superkaramba because it's pretty stable, it's cool, have tons of widgets, and there is nothing like liquid weather++.

screenlets seems to be a great engine, very cool, but don't have much widgets avaliabe at the moment.

gdesklets and adesklets seems a little "abandoned".

[coldstatue]

to be clear, i'm not talking about running kde under gnome, but running kdesktop.

I don't have kde nor gnome installed, just kdesktop on top of openbox with gnome-session.

I decide to go to superkaramba because it's pretty stable, it's cool, have tons of widgets, and there is nothing like liquid weather++.

screenlets seems to be a great engine, very cool, but don't have much widgets avaliabe at the moment.

gdesklets and adesklets seems a little "abandoned".

Actually, I installed opensuse again for a class, with the default KDE. I am starting to use it more and more. If I get the NFS and printer sharing issues resolved, I might spend most time in here. Still, I will try the kdesktop option in Ubuntu. Thanks for the great input. I would never figure these odd things out on my own.

[coldstatue]

Let me clarify that Ubuntu is still the greatest OS on the planet, as far as I am concerned. I cannot betray it. Tracking down dependencies of dependencies for openSUSE, and messing wtih YaST is a PAIN. It is nice to try something different once in a while though. I still come to the Ubuntu forums for openSUSE support. What does that tell you?

[revertex]

Despide the package management some config files and init scripts, there is not much differences between Ubuntu and SUSE, at the end both are Linux.

Everything you can do with Ubuntu you also can with SUSE, just a different way to install packages.

Since my Gentoo days i used to stolen several config files from other distros, especially SUSE.

I remember that all bootsplash stuff that Gentoo used are ripped from SUSE.

I don't thing it's a betrayal, since you don't ask about yast here:)