My sweet desktop environment – KDE 4.2 RC
About a month ago I installed Gentoo Linux on my MacBook Pro as I’ve become really disappointed with OSX. Being a linux user for a few years it’s hard to get used to such a limited operating system like OSX…Anyway I just want to show you some screenshots of a just released KDE 4.2 RC that is totally amazing…
Main Desktop Activity
This is where I work. I have two “Folder Views” with my Home and Downloads folders. There’s also a trash plasmoid, a big one so I can easily drop files there even when I’m drunk 
Multimedia Activity
Here I have “Folder Views” of my Music and Video folders and a filtered Downloads “Folder View” where only multimedia files and folders are displayed. Those 2 icons in the upper-right corner are Amarok and SMPlayer shortcuts. Next to them is a “Now Playing” plasmoid. This is just the beginning of my Multimedia activity, but it’s already quite useful.
Tools Activity
When my Mac is on fire I go here to see the temperatures of the hardware, as well as the CPU load and system messages from the log file. I can also check out my disk usage. Oh, and there are also calendar, dictionary and calculator plasmoids.
File manager – Dolphin
I love this little yet powerful piece of an application. Dolphin is the best file manager I’ve ever used. It’s tiny, has all of the crucial features AND supports remote protocols. It also has “split view” which makes me so happy, that I don’t use Krusader (a twin panel file manager) anymore.
Music player – Amarok2
There are people whining about the new Amarok2. Personally I love it. Simplified playlist view, extended context view (with activity-like zooming!), fantastic collection browser and a decent integration with Last FM. I don’t need anything more.
Document viewer – Okular
Perfect for my needs and it doesn’t start 3 minutes like Adobe Reader.
Image viewer – Gwenview
Gwenview is terrible in KDE 3.x series, but in KDE4 it’s superior! It’s integrated with semantic desktop feature of KDE4 too so you can search and filter by tags and ratings.
Quick Access – KRunner
This is something like QuickSilver in OSX. I use KRunner to open applications or access files, but you can use it for many other tasks like calculations, spell checking, opening web bookmarks etc.
…it’s so good to use KDE again, I feel I can breath again.
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of Piotr Solnica
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- @josevalim maybe 201 as a user session is created...?
- @strzalekk dm-devise - works
- Does ActiveRecord support default values of model attributes?
- @josevalim cool! I'll try to get into fixing those tests when I have some free time
- @josevalim just sent a pull request although I tried running tests and some of them are red *but* it's not related to my changes
January 19th, 2009 - 03:54
I’m gonna try Gentoo and give life back to the KDE lover in me
January 19th, 2009 - 04:03
Forget KDE - I just want your wallpapers!
Cheers
January 19th, 2009 - 09:32
Beautiful. Could you link to the wallapers, please?
January 19th, 2009 - 12:59
All wallpapers are available on kde-look.org
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/NIGHTFeaR+4?content=25331
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Th_URch?content=37932
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/stOrmblue?content=37590
January 19th, 2009 - 16:12
I really love KDE….
January 19th, 2009 - 16:14
Hey why did u choose gentoo….
January 19th, 2009 - 17:42
Gentoo is my favorite linux distro, I chose it 5 years ago
January 19th, 2009 - 18:57
just curious if what you are showing in your screenshots is 3 different virtual desktops or is it 3 completely different configs? i.e. Desktop 1 is your Workspace Desktop 2 is your multimedia space and Desktop 3 is your Tools? If so I didn’t realize you could set up the desktops with different plasmoids and different wallpapers. Nice setups in any event.
January 19th, 2009 - 19:11
Yes, you can setup different activities with their own settings (wallpaper, plasmoids etc.). Currently it’s not fully supported by the KDE applications, but in the future we will be able to have different settings per activity. For instance you should be able to have “work” activity where you have all notifications turned off.
January 20th, 2009 - 09:57
Hi,
those are great looking screen shots – thanks.
I’m a Gnome/Ubuntu man but looking at those makes me a bit envious
I did try a KDE4.1 RC on Kubuntu a few months back but I think that lack of familiarisation made me switch back to Gnome pretty fast. Looking at your shots I might just take another stab when 4.2 is released…
Cheers
Alan
January 20th, 2009 - 22:18
What a mutant they created,looks nice but functionality sucks!The Vista of Linuxes!Sorry I’ll pass…Gnome still rules!!
January 20th, 2009 - 22:51
What do you mean by saying that functionality sucks? KDE is probably the most powerful desktop environment at the moment, highly integrated with a lot of options. It works great OOTB and it allows you to configure it the way you want.
I can understand that someone might say that it looks terrible as it’s just a matter of taste, but when it comes to functionality…? What’s wrong with it?
January 23rd, 2009 - 05:15
I agree with you, I really like kde 4, particularly about Dolphin – great app.
How did you put amarok, klipper, and knetwork manager in that docklet? That’s sweet! Do I need to install another package for it? I installed kdebase-meta which does a pretty good desktop but is missing a few things.
January 23rd, 2009 - 18:36
This is just the System Tray plasmoid, you should get it OOTB with @kdebase set installed
January 30th, 2009 - 01:33
I’ve been poking around trying to figure out how to get different wallpapers on the different desktops – how did you do this? Other than that, I’m also running 4.2 (Kubuntu) and liking it a lot, for the reasons you’ve already mentioned.
January 30th, 2009 - 12:24
I have 3 different activities there, you can add a new activity by zooming out and clicking on “add activity”, then you can configure it as you want