Hari's Corner - KDE 4 migration - whew!

Tue, 26 May 2009

KDE 4 migration - whew!

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted at 08:52 IST (last updated: Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 09:03 IST)

Well, I finally upgraded to KDE 4 (4.2 from Debian testing repositories). It wasn't exactly a smooth upgrade. The standard dist-upgrade borked KDE because I think a few essential KDE 4 components weren't installed. It's a novel experience on Debian to find so many essential components broken, but the fix was reasonably painless and automated. Bearing in mind that KDE 4.2 is a big jump from 3.5, I think that it's excusable.

I then installed fluxbox just to get a working desktop and then used the Synaptic package manager to remove each and every KDE related package manually before reinstalling KDE 4 from scratch. Now everything works as expected, but unfortunately I've lost Quanta Plus because it hasn't been ported over to KDE 4.x yet.

KDE 4 is strongly reminiscent of Vista with its special desktop effects and the new "application launcher", desktop widgets and other fancy goodies. It also borrows some GUI effects from OS X, so finally Linux users have something to show off; even if it's a poor cousin :-P

:-P

Here's the obligatory screenshot:

KDE 4 on my system

Yes, I changed the desktop defaults to make it a bit more familiar to a long time KDE 3.5 user. Personally I take objection to the "Vista-ization" of KDE and I almost ditched it in favour of Gnome, but then I have a lot of things tied to KDE on my system and removing it would mean I have to find the equivalent Gnome programs which would be a tedious and lengthy process.

8 comment(s)

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I hope that KDE continues to work for you. I "left" it when I stopped on Ubuntu 7.04 and have been content with Gnome since. You know, the only thing that bugs me about KDE (and this still is a problem with 4.x) is the menu. Why subcategorize so much? Its as if the KDE project took a lesson from the Debian Menu and applied all that it learned. Some of us don't like to hunt for ann app.

Comment by MrCorey (visitor) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 11:17 IST #
Hi MrCorey. I hope so too. The Debian menu by itself is not so annoying, and in a way useful because it shows up non-KDE apps as well, but what is annoying is having to click through each category in the "Vista-like" interface.
The main reason switching to Gnome will be painful for me is that I've stored all my contacts and e-mail in Kontact and Kmail. Talk about tying oneself down.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 18:54 IST #
Meh, I haven't switched to anything in Linux, though I'm quite familiar with Debian. I'm still on Windows XP (and never plan to upgrade).
Perhaps the netbook I finally choose (probably in July during the Independence Day sale) will run Ubuntu, but it will probably still be Windows XP if it's the one I'm thinking of getting.

Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 20:53 IST #
What's this netbook all about? A lot of people seem extremely excited about this, but all I see is a stripped down laptop-type device you can carry around with less weight?

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 20:57 IST #
That's what it is, but some are better than others. I plan to have one on hand as both a backup and for when I need to take a trip to the US in a hurry. Since it wouldn't be my primary computer, I don't want something more expensive.

Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 21:12 IST #
These machines sound like a great candidate to install Linux on. I hope you get one without XP or Vista as it can save you the "Microsoft Tax" as well as give you plenty of options to choose any other Operating System which would work just as well for the simple purposes that a netbook is good for.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 21:18 IST #
hari, I was actually thinking of the pre-4.x menu. You can still get that functionality by reverting to the old style menu, apparently. The new one just makes the experience even slower, more frustrating, and just plain worse.
I wonder if you can export your data to a file that Evolution would understand. One thing that I liked, of course, about Kontact is how well its parts are integrated and interdependent. Its better than Microsoft's Office, IMO.

Comment by MrCorey (visitor) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 21:34 IST #
MrCorey, I preferred the old-style myself, even if the menu was organized into too many sections. You got used to it over a period of time. Also I know that the old-style menu is still available, but for some strange reason I don't prefer it on KDE 4 as there is some kind of intermediate flicker when it appears, rendering it quite irritating.
For the second part, it's easy enough to export the contacts as a CSV file and then re-import into another mail client. But I have more than 500 POP downloaded mail messages in the Kmail format. I don't know if any other mail client can export this content. I'm not sure what the format is (maildir?)
Of course, the thing is that the old mail is there in gmail account as I chose not to delete downloaded messages, but I'd prefer not to download the whole lot again in another client.
Luckily in configuring my literaryforums mail account I chose to use cached IMAP in the client as it's far easier to keep the mail server and the client in sync.

Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 26 May 2009 @ 21:45 IST #

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