can someone recommend some KDE setup tips, or a guide?

[ice60]

hi, i've decided to try out KDE properly for the first time. in the past i have only tried it very, very briefly before giving up :|

so, does anyone have any good setup tips, or know a really good setup guide so perhaps i might even end up really liking KDE? i have seen some really nice KDE desktops in the past :)

[ComplexNumber]

do you want the full length version, or just the 2000 page abridged version?



so, does anyone have any good setup tips, or know a really good setup guide so perhaps i might even end up really liking KDE? i have seen some really nice KDE desktops in the pastseriously now, thats most of the fun of kde. digging around and finding all the options you can change. why would you want anyone to take the fun away? superkaramba is nice. other things incclude kooldock, yakuake(not eye candy, but a cool idea anyway), etc.

[mips]

Hard to say, you can customise it in many ways but it might not be a way you would like.

Some people prefer a kde-base install while other go the whole hog and do a full kubuntu-desktop install.

If you like minimal then maybe look at a thread called ´an ode to kde-core' or something to that effect.

[ice60]

do you want the full length version, or just the 2000 page abridged version?


seriously now, thats most of the fun of kde. digging around and finding all the options you can change. why would you want anyone to take the fun away? superkaramba is nice. other things incclude kooldock, yakuake(not eye candy, but a cool idea anyway), etc.

i know what you mean and i have done that with all the other DEs and WMs i've used, but for some reason i have never been able to do that with KDE.

to tell the truth i just don't like it very much, but i haven't used it enough to have a valid opinion. i can't think why i shouldn't be able to come up with a KDE setup i like, i just need some ideas i suppose.

i had a PC-BSD iso on a magazine i just bought (Linux Format) and as i just decided to start using BSD (freeBSD) i ended up installing it, and it comes with KDE pre-installed.

Mips, thanks for the thread you suggested i'll have a look for it now :)

[ComplexNumber]

to tell the truth i just don't like it very much, but i haven't used it enough to have a valid opinion.from what i've been reading, the "My 30 Days with <insert DE here>" experiences seem to be all the rage these days. you could do that and post a summary at the end.

[kerry_s]

I'll usually just do this-> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=kde+tips+tweaks+tricks
to see whats out there.

[hal10000]

This is a link to the KDE User Guide: http://docs.kde.org/userguide/index.html

[fuscia]

create a new user account and use it to experiment on. things you like, use on your regular account. if it gets too forked up, just delete that profile and start over.

[ComplexNumber]

create a new user account and use it to experiment on. things you like, use on your regular account. if it gets too forked up, just delete that profile and start over.
i'd recommend that too!

[Omnios]

Super Karamba in KDE is really nice and has a very small resource footprint compared to Gnome candy.

[GameManK]

Super Karamba in KDE is really nice and has a very small resource footprint compared to Gnome candy.

Wow gnome candy must be crazy resource hogs! :p Super Karamba is nice but I always found it too unstable.

I usually start by making kicker (the panel) transparent. I also set it to be the right height so it can fit three rows in the taskbar (it has to be at least 54 pixels) and make the pager (desktop selector) be small and vertical in 3 rows and transparent. The clock is customizable. You can lock the panel to get rid of handles that waste space. You should try out the various kicker applets.

Some stuff to try out: Yakuake is a very useful program. Katapult is pretty cool, I just started using it but haven't actually used it in practice yet. Konsole has some transparency settings. In the appearance settings you can customise just about everything about your window decorations. Most applications have some sort of tabs. If you like MacOS, kxdocker and the feature to put the menu bar in a kicker panel might be things to try. You can set a slideshow for your desktop wallpaper.

You can customise the window border and behavior for specific windows. For example, I don't move my gaim buddy list around or close or minimize it, so I turn the border off. Various mouse actions on title bars do different things.

[ice60]

thanks everyone for the help, it seems i can use something from every post, so i'll try and get a few things done each time i use PC-BSD. here's how it looks right now, all i've done is make the panel transparent and added konsole to it too, oh and firefox as well.

[ComplexNumber]

thanks everyone for the help, it seems i can use something from every post, so i'll try and get a few things done each time i use PC-BSD. here's how it looks right now, all i've done is make the panel transparent and added konsole to it too, oh and firefox as well.
nice, but not my cup'o'tea (especially the icons and the menu, but i suppose you have yet to configure the theme properly).

btw i hope you set up another account to try out kde. if you do things that way, you can install the whole of kde from your new account and, when your eventually come to the end of your 'testing' of kde, you can go back to your old account and still have everything as you left it (ie if you had have used only one account to install kde, you would have had all the kde crap floating around your home directory, and this can sometimes prove to interfere with the workings of gnome in a subtle way).

btw 2 i can point you in the drection of an excellent superkaramba that i installed once that is small, yet attractive and includes system monitor, clock/calendar, network monitor, cpu monitor, filesytem usage, etc. i'll just look for it now.
this (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=24626) is it. its actually about 8 monitors all in one (in that 2nd screenshot, it doesn't look exactly like that - all those monitors are all in one, but you select the icon on the bottom and it switches to the relevant monitor). it goes well with liquid weather and aero digiclock, i found, because they all have the aero theme.

[ice60]

thanks, ComplexNumber. the point of the screenshot was to show how it looks now, not how good i've made it look.

i haven't made a new account yet, that was the thing i'm not sure about mainly because the whole install is only to test things out - it's on an old PC and my main BSD install right now is freeBSD on a better/faster/newer PC, so it's really not a problem if i screw anything up, in afew months i'll probably install something else on that partition :)

i just had a look at the widgets, they're quite nice. i've turned off the other computer now though, it rebooted by itself, it was doing that once before and it turned out to be the plug extension after i'd taken the whole thing to pieces afew times :rolleyes:

[bionnaki]

your desktop is similiar to mine.

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/1438/snapshot2dx6.jpg