KDE-Forum.org

What an interesting thread - thanks mshelby1.
One thing it shows, and this really goes to the defense of how the KDE team have gone about the project, is the vast array of different needs of its userbase.

For me the most important lack is different wallpapers on different desktops. Interestingly enough, when searching to find out if this is in the pipeline, I did discover a couple of other users who also miss this feature a lot, with still others responding in amazement at why we should find it so important.
I don't conceptualise things in spacial terms much at all (in fact I'd guess my spacial intelligence quotient is room temperature at best). So cubes, giant walls and so on are, for me, merely eye candy. But different desktops with iconic values really help me to keep organised.

Browsers and other research tools sit on the turtle desk; Word processing and similar tools on the New England lake, Gimp on a plain pastel background so as not to distract from whatever visual I'm working on, Konqueror on the baby seals; and system tools on the root bomb and exclamation mark to remind me to be extra careful.
The good news for me, and others like me, is that this is listed for inclusion on KDE 4.2 (see http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4…ebase-workspace for details of plans and progress). Even better is that it appears to be part of much greater individualising of desktops. The bad news is that work hasn't started yet.

So if anyone from the KDE team is monitoring this thread, there are at least three users out here who would greatly appreciate making individualised desktops a priority.
By the way, I suppose this is cheating a bit, but several of the problems noted in this thread can be avoided simply by using the KDE3 version of Konqueror in KDE4.

Cheers

Definatly that the new system tray does not have the option to hide icons like the 3.5 one does,

there are 9 icons in my tray at the moment taking up a large chunk of the panel its on, i only need to be able to see 3 of thease most of the time,
the rest could be hidden giving me more space for the system tray...

also if i remove the panel and have separate floating widgets for things like system tray every time i log in they are in different places and differnt sizes, often the system tray has nothing in it untill i moove it when all the icons follow it about 2 minutes later

1. The ability to add submenus to panels. I can drag icons for single apps to it, but I've got some logically-grouped icons (for example different radio stations to tune my DAB tuner to) which I need easily accessible. As things are, I can only add them individually.

2. The return of the Kasbar. One of the most useful extensions I've found in KDE3.

3. Configurable ways to handle new devices as they're attached. All I get now is the dialogue offering me the opportunity to open them with Dolphin. Previously it was possible to run scripts, for example. So when I plugged my camera in, it was automatically mounted, all the pictures were transferred onto my hard drive and gwenview opened up so I could browse them (all done via a script.)

Also, I'm sure there's a point to the little foot in the top-right corner that looks like it's running Gnome, but I haven't worked out what it is yet...

It may be the slowness my old computer, but those "handles" that sprout up on either side of the widgets are elusive. They spring up when I approach the wiget with the cursor, but they disappear as I get closer. I can get writer's cramp chasing them around. Personally, I'd like it better if all the handles simply popped out when the Desktop was unlocked, and were pulled in again when the desktop was locked. It feels like the autodetection itself slows things down a little.

Quoted from "beermad"

2. The return of the Kasbar. One of the most useful extensions I've found in KDE3.

Update, in case anybody else wants to use Kasbar. I've found it can be run as a standalone command, so can be run at startup by It doesn't embed in a panel, but apart from that, works OK.

kde 4.1 is very stable but, of course, theres some stuff missing; well, first of all, for me, there's no limit for tranparency; if I make a window so transparent so i can't see it, How I gonna to modify, resize, etc? To guess I must.
In compiz you cannot make a window so transparent that you might'not see it.
Oneself should be able to modify transparency of a specific windows from taskbar.

Some plasmoids does not work very well because the constant actualization, some only work with old versions of kde 4.1.X or kde 4.0.X, but not with the most new kde 4.1.1

sound mixer: what happend to this? Now I have to click on KMix to get the volume slider
aRts control
taskbar with window list: I liked clicking the arrow and being able to find my app no matter what desktop its on
the old clock
Konsole restoring with bash already cd'd to the directory I last left it in, with the tab name preserved

panel hiding: I sometimes want the whole screen to dedicated to my app window. What happened to this?
Those little handles to drag things around the panel. When I wanted to configure Task Manager to only list windows on the current desktop it was really hard, because windows took up all the space and there wasn't any place to right click. In KDE 3 I could at least click on the handle to get the config menu. It also took me a while to figure out how to drag things around the new taskbar.

Right clicking in general: I'm used to being able to right click and being able to configure something. Now I'm pretty lost. Does anyone know how to get rid of an Activity after you've added it?

The kranrr icon: Now its just a blue box that could be anything. The old icon theme had a much better icon. That blue box with the arrows was much more recognizable. Ditto for the klipper and knotes icons.

A real desktop: I liked my file icons the way I arranged them. Now I have to make do with the Desktop folder view, which doesn't have previews

DigiKam: now nothing happens when I plug in my camera and I have no way of getting my pictures off.

Device icons: when I plugged in my mp3 player or a usb stick i'd get a handy icon on the desktop I could use to mount/umount and view the directory with Konqueror. Having the device notifier applet is nice but less functional.

Sound: There is something in KDE 4.1 on Fedora 9 that kills my sound. I'm not sure if its a KDE thing or a Fedora thing (in Ubuntu 8.04 my volume control was busted; again I'm not sure whose fault that is).

I have to say the only thing I like in KDE 4 is Ksensors, but I'd rather have the cpu speed applet from Gnome.

Testing out Kubuntu with KDE4 right now, and what I miss the most is the regular desktop. Folder view just doesn't cut it (aside from crashing, that is). The desktop should just be a directory like any other, and in this regard the Windows solution is much neater, it makes the most sense if you know your way around computers. The same with the start menu.

The launcher is actually pretty nice, but it really needs to be down-sized! Those tabs are a lot bigger than they need to be, and they bloat the whole menu. Perhaps putting them in two rows (with smaller icons!) will help? The same with icons in the menu, they don't need to be that large. The less I need to drag the mouse to get to where I want, the better. And dump the animations (or let me disable them), I hate that stuff.

Another thing I'd like to see, and it kinda goes hand in hand with the above, is a more precise mouse pointer. It's really unprecise like it is, and perhaps that is why the menu has become bloated like that, it's too hard to get the pointer to a small area fast without missing. The sensitivity should go down with the velocity I'm moving the mouse with, or somesuch.

(This forum editor is just crap, at least in Opera)

Edit: Just found out about the new AdaptiveDeceleration option (among others) in X.org. KDE really need to make this option adjustable in KDE, the mouse feel is day and night with it enabled. The only problem I have now is it's decelerating a bit too far when I move very slightly. But there's probably a fix to that aswell. :-)

http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Docume…terAcceleration

Missing Features
1. Desktop Icons (except folder view)
1.1 Arrange/Lock desktop icons

2. Panel Hiding/Autohiding

3. The ability on adding applets on panel, everywhere you want (like in gnome)

4. When someone resizes a panel, he should see the size of panel in pixels

5. Kickoff menu should follow plasma theme

6. The ability on changing the preferable app for file management (dolphin/konqueror/etc)

7. Theme manager with complete themes that they include plasma theme, icons, style, kwin decoration, sound theme, fonts, ksplash theme, color theme

8. Sound themes

9. Drag 'n Drop application links/files from kmenu/dolphin/konqueror to plasma panels/workspace and vice versa

10. System tray custom/auto hiding icons

Missing Plasma applets
1. Quick start apps

2. Multi row task manager

3. Sub menus with custom apps

I believe that, with the above features, KDE4 will become a Killer Desktop Environment!

I personally cannot move to the 4.x branch until this bug is resolved:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165402

I need Kuickshow coz it can control movements of pics with scroll button and was very simple
I know that it is in KDE extragears but i need it to be with more important packages so that it is available by default.

I am using KDE 4.1.2 which works great but needs more.
Few other Feature requests:
1. Panel should not have remove or add widgets/panel options, these should be available only on clicking the button (as they are now) at bottom right corner, as it is too easy to mess up with default set of widgets on the panel.
2. Desktop settings should be able to set more features as this is the only option directly available even if all widgets including the panel are removed.
3. Want to browse in folder view. I request just browsing folders in this gadget and nothing else.
4. After splash shows the desktop, It should not load anything. It is very annoying that after few seconds of splash when we see the desktop, it is still loading some icons or widgets. This should be done while splash is still there.
5. There should be an option to set default applications for doing things. Like I should be able to configure defaults for web browser, mail client and even the file browser (choose between konqueror or dolphin).
6. Improve the looks of Lancelot, and try to make it repkace rhe standard launcher.
7. And the zoom out option o desktop i think is useless.

Rest, the KDE works great, In starting i was trying to figure things out, frustrated, decided to switch to Gnome, but now I am way too comfortable with it.

A couple of things for me versus 3.5 (versus KDE 4.2 RC1):

1. KDEBluetooth4 is missing KIO file browsing for OBEX-FTP. It maketh browsing files on my cell phone over bluetooth impossible. I'm right now using KDEBluetooth for KDE 3.5 for that KDEBluetooth4 is not done yet.

2. An Administrator (root) button for editing the Login Manager (KDM) like was available with KDE 3.5. It is very difficult to edit the Login Manager on Debian for that root logins from KDM not allowed. One hath to select a console from KDM, login as root, and start the desktop with "startx", which is very inconvenient.

KDE 4 seems to lack several useful functions that were in 3.5.
In 3.5 Konqueror -
- Image file previews worked properly.
- There were buttons to control the icon / preview size.
- There was a "quick browser" widget that worked.

In 3.5 Panel -
- you could add program shortcuts, quick and simple.
- you could adjust the panel size - ditto
- you could move shortcuts and widgets easily and they stayed put

In 3.5 desktop -
- you couold middle button click in the background and get a pager
- you could add a pager to the taskbar

In 3.5 you could chande the spell checking language

I could go on. KDE 4 is supposed to be better. I have yet to see any great advantage. Quite the reverse.

I am using KDE 4 as supplied in SUSE 11.1

Anny comments?

This was never really a KDE feature, but one of my favorite features of Compiz's "Scale" plugin was the ability to close a window by middle clicking on it when in the windows are scaled and presented.

I used "Scale" as my primary window management utility, because it was (for me) much quicker and easier to slap the mouse into a corner and then middle click all the windows i wanted to close, then left click the one I want to switch to.

It's really the only feature I really miss from Compiz, but I use Kwin because it works so much more smoothly on my machine and I love how integrated it is.

Could this maybe make it into 4.3?