My Big Arch Move

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Also, Krusader is not only twin pane, but also supports tabs on each pane, so you can have a lot of folders open, which I like. Only other FM that does this is BSC (Beesoft commander), but the Arch package for that either doesn't work right, or it comes with no right-click context menu. Didn't look good at any rate. mc seems to be just twin pane, so I could use EmelFM2 for the same effect. Yet that doesn't seem to use Ctrl-C/V to copy and paste files, which bugs me, especially since it's limited to only two folders open (no tabs).

Twin-pane is actually less important to me than tabs - I just need a lot of folders open. So PCManFM isn't bad, but no user functions. I might try using the Open With... and using MIME to effectively create user functions in that. Otherwise I might try hacking its right-click menu.

Any any rate, I'm having a terrible time finding a replacement for Krusader. I wish they would drop its KDE dependency, but that's not likely to happen.

[toad]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@ lcorken

You need a second computer close by to read all that though.

I use lynx

@ IgnorantGuru
Keep us posted - I am missing a decent file manager for my openbox I do like tabs myself although I hardly ever use them in a file manager...

[GreyGeek]

Re: My Big Arch Move

I saw from .....
Since I always run KDE, the principal reasons why I switch distros is 1) better hardware detection & configuration & compatibility, and 2) to avoid contamination with unwanted proprietary software, especially that which has its roots in the Evil Empire.

That's the problem to me with Ubuntu, as well as KDE itself. KDE seems to be courting Windows now - perhaps the Qt relationship has something to do with this. It's not just proprietary software that has evil roots - don't fool yourself there. I think it will be very hard to avoid that with KDE, now and especially as they keep going in the direction they are.

"courting Windows"? I don't see that at the kdedevelopers blog. And, I haven't heard it from any other sources. Someone claimed that the "Locus OS" was a failed MS plasma, but that is not true. Qt itself is now owned by Nokia and is being developed by their subsidiary, Qt Software. They've moved Qt 4.5 and onward from a GPL license to an LGPL license. Before, there were only two choices: GPL or the Trolltech commercial license (one per developer at $3k for the first and $1.5K for annual renewal). I was the sole licensee where I worked. Licensing the other 15 developers was too expensive for the state agency I worked for. Now, there are still two license choices:


LGPL Commercial
Charge for development licensesNY
Changes to Qt source code must be sharedYN
Can create proprietary applicationYY
Technical support availableYY
Keep distribution licensing options openNY


This will level the playing field and remove the advantage the GNOME desktop gave to 3rd party developers but, unlike GNOME, what is NOT happening is making Qt4 or KDE4 dependent on proprietary software, from Microsoft or Nokia. The full license terms are explained here. From the LGPL v 2.1:

"When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General Public License permits more lax criteria for linking other code with the library.
...
the Lesser license provides advantages in certain special circumstances. For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library."

So, while it may not be possible, in the future, to have an Ubuntu/GNOME desktop without making the .NET dependent MONO API the dependent desktop (or even system) API, one will never be locked by KDE into using anyone's proprietary API because the KDE4 desktop is built totally with QT4, which EVERYONE has the source to and on which there are no IP or patent "strings" attached.

Re Qt, I'm thinking of writing a file manager and am pondering the IDE and GUI toolkit to use. I'm not up on the latest. What would you say are the advantages of Qt? It is associated in my mind with Windows now, and with the recent KDE, so I have a negative impression of it. Is that unwarranted? Is Qt 'true linux', or a Windows-Linux combo like MONO? I want to stay with a pure linux environment, preferably avoiding corporate-influenced tools. GTK is more appealing to me as a result, at least from that perspective.

I believe your fears are unwarranted. There is a dev group undertaking the task of creating a KDE desktop for Windows. How they'd remove the XP, VISTA or Win7 desktop, or interact with the Windows kernel without having to hand off requests to components of those desktops is not clear to me. But, if they succeed, and folks see the power, speed, beauty and functionality of KDE on Windows, the next question they are going to ask is "If I can get all this power and beauty from KDE4, for FREE, but I have to buy Windows in order to run KDE on it, WHY BUY WINDOWS when get KDE4 on Linux." But, that effort has nothing to do with Qt4 itself, of KDE4, either. Part of the freedom of the GPL/LGPL is the ability to fork projects.

There is a Qt4 SDK, which includes QtCreator 1.3.1, out on their site:
http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/qt-cre...nux-x11-32-bit
or
http://qt.nokia.com/downloads/qt-cre...nux-x11-64-bit

In the past, in order to program with Qt4 on Windows, I had to buy MS Visual Studio C++ and use the commercial version of Qt4, which included an MSVC plug-in to make the Qt4 toolkit function within MSVSC++. With the new Qt4-sdk, the developer who replaced me only had to download the Qt-SDK kit for Windows and he dumped MSVS. I was also able to demonstrate that the VS 8.0 Express (free) could edit and compile Qt4 source on Windows, but QtCreator IDE blows away MSVS C++. (Kubuntu has QtCreator 1.30 in the repository, 1.3.1 is in the qt-sdk at the website)
So, rather than making a developer MORE dependent on Microsoft tools and API, the Qt4 package REDUCES a developer's dependency on Microsoft tools. So, IMO, any detriment is to Microsoft, not KDE or the KDE desktop.

As far as why Qt4 should be considered a tool with which to write GPL software, as opposed to using the GTK+, I would say that you should use what ever is comfortable for you, for what ever reasons that comfort arises. An excellent comparison is give here. From my own experience the most compeling features of Qt4 are:

• VERY RICH visual controls with EXTENSIVE methods and properties for each control
• Excellent documentation, tutorials, examples, etc.
• Only ONE download, from ONE source, required to get everything. it's all in one file.
• QOBJECT, the first line in every derived class, gives garbage collection, pointer cleanup, etc..
• One can control naming of classes and methods, or let the designer name the action stubs
• The Signal & Slot technology, with the "connect()" function is more powerful and easier to control than a call back function

Download the binary, run it. it will install everything. Open QtCreator and then click on "Quick Tour". The quick tour features, among other things, an example called "Address Book", which is a classic gui programming example. There are over 100 other project examples with GUI user interfaces (*.ui), and full source code covering a wide range of programming topics. Perhaps even something you can use as a filemanager. Use F1 to get to them. You can cut & paste from the examples, or modify them to create a whole range of apps VERY QUICKLY. You can even start from scratch with main.cpp, someapp.h and someapp.cpp as empty files, run "qt4-qmake" in the directory, followed by "qt4-qmake project" to create a someapp.pro file, then open it with QtCreator. Or, you can use QtCreator to start a project from scratch, using any number of templates.

You can, with careful use of compiler defines, write a single set of source codes for your application and compile it without changes on either Linux or Windows. I've done that. The defines also controlled the intialization of PostgreSQl (on Linux) or Oracle (on Windows) and involved the insertion of appropriate SQL coding for the various QSql* API classes that were used. My only complaint about Qt and C++ is that I wish they had been available when i switched from coding console based apps using AREV to writing GUI apps using Borland's Turbo C++ 1.5, PowerBuilder, VB 3.0 and then Visual FoxPro 5.0 and following.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@GreyGeek
Thanks for all the info! I spent all day hacking PCManFM to add a user function - success! I really don't like C. I actually did try a little Qt app with Python bindings. It seemed okay but I'm not sure. I miss the likes of Visual Basic - nice IDE that handles so many of the details. What I really need to do is build a prototype in a few environments and see which I like. In the meantime I plan to use PCManFM, hacking it a little. By tomorrow I plan to remove Krusader, and with that all the KDE components left on my system.

I can't say I agree with your assessment of the direction KDE is going in, but time will tell. Already I see the name "Windows" is coming up in many KDE announcements. A few years from now you'll be heard to say, "There was this guy on Kubuntu Forums that told me this would happen!"

@toad
I'll share my PCManFM hack shortly on my blog. I hijacked the F4 Open Terminal function so that it runs a custom script, passing it all the selected files on the command line. I can do a lot with that - that way I can edit files by pressing F4 like in Krusader. The custom script can use MIME to determine the type of each file and do whatever I want with each type. PCManFM already has tabs that work pretty well. No twin pane but that's not too critical, and is probably beyond my ability to add in without years of work. I can add a few more user functions without too much difficultly I think, but after looking at the situation I don't think I need too many, if any. It's really not a bad FM. IMO it's one of the better-designed ones - they could just make it a little more capable.

[GreyGeek]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@GreyGeek
Thanks for all the info! I spent all day hacking PCManFM to add a user function - success! I really don't like C. I actually did try a little Qt app with Python bindings.

My pleasure! I love Python but it is not necessary when using Qt4 and QtCreator.

It seemed okay but I'm not sure. I miss the likes of Visual Basic - nice IDE that handles so many of the details. ...

I used to use VB 3.0 to make a living. If you liked it you'll LOVE QtDesigner and how it works. In VB (like in Visual FoxPro) your GUI window was your app. In Qt4 it can be but doesn't have to be. (That was the case with Qt3, however!) . It can be in several cpp and h files, or it can be all in one gigantic cpp file, if you are so inclined, leaving the ui file as just another component of the app. It's saved by the designer in xml format anyway. There are folks who write their ui file manually, without the designer! The code in VB was "behind the control". I prefer the code in one cpp/h file set for each form, for easy editing, but you can be as flexible as you want.

When you drop a button onto a form in Qt4 you have properties available in a side panel, as I've shown in the attached graphic of the "PersInfo" tab of the homestead 2008 application I wrote at work. You can see the "Edit" button, given the name "ui.btnEditPersInfo", is highlighted so that its settings can be set or altered in the right side panel. Besides the right panel there are a ton of dialogs activated by the mouse keys which are contex sensitive.

In the initialisation code for the homestead object I bound the form created using the QtDesigner, homestead.ui, to the "ui" object

ui.setupUi(this); // draw the gui interface object "ui" which was declared in homestead.h

and put the connect command:

connect(ui.btnEditPersInfo, SIGNAL(clicked()), this, SLOT(editPersInfo()));

which connects a clicked() signal on the "ui.btnEditPersInfo" button to the "editPersInfo()" function, which is shown below. I also set the label for that button in the same section:

ui.btnEditPersInfo->setText("&Edit"); // Alt+E is the hot key

void homestead::editPersInfo() {
    if (ui.btnEditPersInfo->text() == trUtf8("&Edit")){
        ui.leStatus->setText("PersInfo edits enabled!");
        enablePersInfo();
    } else {
        if (!persEditsOK()){
            return;
        }
        Recalculate();
        UpdatePersInfo();
        disablePersInfo();
    }
}

The edit button was declared in the homestead.h file as a private slot:

private slots:
     ....
	void editPersInfo();
    ....
just as the ui object was declared as a private var:

private:
	Ui::homesteadUi ui;

I can't say I agree with your assessment of the direction KDE is going in, but time will tell. Already I see the name "Windows" is coming up in many KDE announcements. A few years from now you'll be heard to say, "There was this guy on Kubuntu Forums that told me this would happen!"

The name "Windows" appears precisely because they are making a push to make Qt4 and QtCreator a competitive tool on the Windows desktop. How else could you do it without saying "Windows"?

I've been wrong about things before and I probably will be again, but about KDE turning to the Dark Side I can't see it. They don't have a "de Icaza" pied piper, they aren't pushing a tool that has closed source, proprietary components (like COM, ASP, etc...), so their "Free" really means FREE, not free with strings or hidden time bombs. The GTK+ is licensed under the GNU LGPL 2., too, so what has Qt4 done that GNOME/GTK+ hasn't done? You don't seem troubled with the idea of using the LGPL GTK+ toolkit, nor, apparently, do you think it is not contaminated by de Icaza's binding of the GTK+ to MONO, or the probability that de Icaza will carry through with his plans to rewrite GNOME using SilverLight (MoonLight). Now, THAT is REAL contamination with Windows. NOTHING like that is planned for KDE... the community wouldn't stand for it.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

You're stressing open source, non-proprietary, free license, and these are important qualities, but there are many more nuances to 'desirability'. Who is developing the code and why? At the behest of whom, and why? WHY is Qt4 so comfortable on both Windows and Linux? Who made it so and why? What did that accomplish? The fact is, many Linux/KDE developers are also Windows developers, and they get paid as each. It's natural for them to create bridges between the two - that doesn't necessarily make it good for Linux. Some very high percentage, like 85%?, of the linux kernel is now developed by paid developers working for corporations with various agendas. These developers aren't doing this for the 'linux community' as whole, open source or not. Further, even if some developers are 'good guys', there is a hierarchy there, and many of the top devs on major corporate-influenced projects like KDE are simply not working for you or I, IMO.

You seem to be 'in the business', and like the devs use both Windows and Linux, so you may not notice this merging the same as I. What it comes down to is that KDE is becoming increasingly Windows-like. Almost all their major decisions lately go against my instincts - they are the opposite of what I would have liked. Bloat, tangled dependencies, poor handling of user's data, unnecessarily required servers, very questionable choices of servers... the list is long. Do I really need nepomuk, akonadi, soprano, virtuoso, phonon and other servers bogging down my CPU, consuming large amounts of RAM, and introducing security issues just to run KMail? According to KDE, I do, even though I can stop all of these 'required servers' and KMail runs fine (even better) without them. That is just one example of how KDE is doing Microsoft-like things.

Their quality control is very poor too - another MS-like symptom. Almost none of the bug reports I submitted were addressed. With the recent KDE 4.4, KMail users found KMail consuming an amount of RAM equal to the amount of mail files they had. Others found Nepomuk taking over 1G of RAM.

At any rate, I realize this is a KDE forum - not trying to upset everyone. I used to think very highly of KDE and I've used it for years. But it's changing, and IMO not for the better.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Also thanks for the snapshot and discussion. VB was one of the few things I thought MS did well. And you're right that Qt has some similarities. I can't say it's my dream IDE though. But I may look at it some more.

[GreyGeek]

Re: My Big Arch Move

You're stressing open source, non-proprietary, free license, and these are important qualities, but there are many more nuances to 'desirability'. Who is developing the code and why? At the behest of whom, and why? WHY is Qt4 so comfortable on both Windows and Linux? Who made it so and why? What did that accomplish?

There is no sinister agenda, like the one de Icaza has. Qt4 has always been designed as a cross-platform tool. Were it not for that fact I would not have heard about it and been able to use it in place of Microsoft's MFC toolkit. Previous to Nokia buying it one had to install minGW in order to avoid MS tools. Now one doesn't. I used to be against porting KDE or KDE apps to Windows, but after I saw how it helped my replacement avoid the MS tools that I had to use I changed my mind. KDE on Windows will, IMO, do more to move Windows users to Linux than it will move Linux users to Windows.

The fact is, many Linux/KDE developers are also Windows developers, and they get paid as each. It's natural for them to create bridges between the two - that doesn't necessarily make it good for Linux. Some very high percentage, like 85%?, of the linux kernel is now developed by paid developers working for corporations with various agendas. These developers aren't doing this for the 'linux community' as whole, open source or not. Further, even if some developers are 'good guys', there is a hierarchy there, and many of the top devs on major corporate-influenced projects like KDE are simply not working for you or I, IMO.

I disagree. There is no crime in being paid by a corporation to developer GPL software, even if it is to help the corporation make Linux more useful for them, AS LONG AS their contributions REMAIN under the GPL. The exact breakdown for the 2.6.30 kernel is given here. Coders employed by Red Hat signed off on 42% of the changes that went into the 2.6.30 kernel. Unfortunately, Novell was at 13%, Intel at 10% and the rest were half that or much less. Frankly, I appreciate Intel's contribution to the kernel, which enabled by GM45 video chip to perform well. Without their GPL contributions this notebook would have had to stay with VISTA if I wanted to use it.

You seem to be 'in the business', and like the devs use both Windows and Linux, so you may not notice this merging the same as I.

Actually, I have been retired for about 18 months. For the last 5 years of my working career I wrote software using Qt4 exclusively, and primarily under a Linux system, and this in a place which was essentially a Microsoft shop. After I'd develop and test under Linux against PostgreSQL I'd copy the source to my XP side and compile to create an EXE that was published to the network server.

What it comes down to is that KDE is becoming increasingly Windows-like. Almost all their major decisions lately go against my instincts - they are the opposite of what I would have liked. Bloat, tangled dependencies, poor handling of user's data, unnecessarily required servers, very questionable choices of servers... the list is long.

Since I began useing it 11 years ago I have always liked the "Windows" format. Even GNOME is "windowy" in its approach. In fact, ALL linux desktops use the "Windows" (or Mac) approach that was pioneered at Xerox's Palo Alto research center. As far as who is copying whom, I've noticed that features appear in KDE4 FIRST, then showed up in VISTA and then Win7. Folks are calling Win7 a KDE4 knockoff.

BTW, there is no "bloat" in KDE, any more than there is bloat in GNOME or XFCE, etc. Bloat implies that unused crufty legacy code is lying around, as it is in Windows, making the executables larger than they need to be. Such is not the case. In fact, it was to avoid crufty code that Trolltech designed Qt4 from the ground up instead of starting with the Qt3 code base. And, coders do not write in code which isn't used. Some code may be included but commented out, but the compiler removes comments from compiled code anyway. That you don't use a particular feature doesn't mean that it is bloat and should be remove. In any particular app folks probably use less than half the features, but different folks use different features and probably all of them end up getting used by some one, some time.

Do I really need nepomuk, akonadi, soprano, virtuoso, phonon and other servers bogging down my CPU, consuming large amounts of RAM, and introducing security issues just to run KMail? According to KDE, I do, even though I can stop all of these 'required servers' and KMail runs fine (even better) without them. That is just one example of how KDE is doing Microsoft-like things.

I don't know. Do you? If you do they are there. If you don't, remove them. Having them available isn't a "Microsoftian" thing. They are options you can chose or ignore.

Their quality control is very poor too - another MS-like symptom. Almost none of the bug reports I submitted were addressed. With the recent KDE 4.4, KMail users found KMail consuming an amount of RAM equal to the amount of mail files they had. Others found Nepomuk taking over 1G of RAM.

At any rate, I realize this is a KDE forum - not trying to upset everyone. I used to think very highly of KDE and I've used it for years. But it's changing, and IMO not for the better.

Quality control is, in many cases, dependent on the eye of the beholder and the hardware being used. The long standing FOSS dictum is "publish early, publish often". Why? Because most coders (save for the kernel) are NOT paid by corporations to write GPL code. They do it in their spare time, on their equiment, at their expense. They can't afford "beta testers" to hammer the app on a wide variety of equipment and report bugs directly to them. They depend on the Linux community for that in a quid pro quo exchange -- you get to use free software if you will help the developer to find the bugs he or she misses. I like that agreement. Even though some bugs I report on don't get acted on I know why. The coder has a list of bugs and a limited amount of time, so he fixes the highest priority bugs first. The LAST thing I should do is rag on him or her because he or she did not fix the bug I reported ASAP or didn't add the feature I wished for, etc... That happened a lot with the release of KDE4, and most of it was undeserved.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Okay toad and others interested can check out my mod of PCManFM which adds user-definable functions via a script. The script makes it highly customizable.

I've switched over to this from Krusader and I'm actually very pleased with it. In fact in some ways I like it better. This is a good file manager with this addition. Let me know how it works for you. I'll probably polish it a little more but it's very time-consuming working with this code.

I included a script which does the building and installation automatically. I tested it on Arch but it should work on Ubuntu as well. Or you can do a manual build - it's easy.

http://igurublog.wordpress.com/downloads/mod-pcmanfm/

[toad]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Great, have you considered doing a couple of screenshots, starting an arch thread and putting it in the AUR?

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Great, have you considered doing a couple of screenshots, starting an arch thread and putting it in the AUR?

Screenshots wouldn't amount to much - just the Tools menu shows a few extra items. And I may add them to the right-click menu as well. You can see PCManFM screenshots here...
http://pcmanfm.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
(Of course appearance varies depending on your GTK theme.)

Arch threads are here and here.

As for the AUR, I may look at that once I'm done tinkering with it. I don't want to hijack the original program name on the AUR though, so I'm not sure what to do about that. Any idea what the convention is? For now the installmod script I included is very much like a PKGBUILD.

[toad]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Any idea what the convention is?

I'm a frayed knot...

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

I'm glad to report my system is KDE free now. I thought I would share my list of apps I used to replace my favorite KDE apps...
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/kde-free/

[GreyGeek]

Re: My Big Arch Move

With these changes, I was finally able to remove kdelibs and all its junk – soprano, nepomuk, akonadi, strigi, phonon, etc. I am KDE free. To give you an idea of just how bloated and over-dependent KDE has become look what I would have to install just to install a simple file manager like Krusader:

Targets (17): clucene-0.9.21b-1 strigi-0.7.2-1 libiodbc-3.52.7-3
virtuoso-6.1.0-1 soprano-2.4.0.1-1 qca-2.0.2-2
polkit-qt-0.95.1-1 phonon-gstreamer-4.3.80-2 phonon-4.3.80-2
shared-desktop-ontologies-0.2-1 attica-0.1.2-1 kdelibs-4.4.0-4
oxygen-icons-4.4.0-1 rarian-0.8.1-1 libssh-0.4.1-1
kdebase-runtime-4.4.0-3 krusader-2.0.0-3

Total Download Size: 73.75 MB
Total Installed Size: 205.80 MB

Proceed with installation? [Y/n] NO THANKS

So long KDE… have a nice trip becoming a Windows 7 clone.

That's really hitting below the belt, IgnorantGuru...

What you call "bloat" I call Libraries. You remember those, don't you ... small collections of functions that more than one program can access at the same time WITHOUT having multiple copies of it in memory at the same time? libiodbc, for example, may have been part of Krusader's requirements but that doesn't mean that it will be used ONLY by Krusader, or that another copy will be downloaded by another app. That same can be said for ssh, oxygen icons, kdelibs, etc. Those libraries may already be on the system and don't have to be downloaded, and certainly most are used by other applications and utilities. You write as though they are something "extra" that no other program needs and thus imply the Krusader is "bloated". Really unfair.

To avoid multiple installation of libraries is why why programs are usually compiled as dynamic, not static, binaries. However, a decade ago most folks had only 512KB of RAM, or 1 MB tops. Running dynamic binaries was important to avoid "bloat" -- eating up RAM with multiple copies of the same library. Now, with dual and quad core, Gigabytes of RAM and Terrabytes of HD, program size is not so important, so even that kind of "bloat" is unimportant for most folks running machines less than 2 or 3 years old.

So long, IgnorantGuru. Hope you enjoy Arch.


BTW: I visited Arch to give it a look-see. I also visited the forum. It would be interesting for folks to browse the Arch forum and this one, and compare the nature of the problems posted on each, and what solutions are necessary. I thought about installing Arch as a guest OS, but decided against it. It is very obvious that these two distros are targeted at different audiences, as are the desktops.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

That's really hitting below the belt, IgnorantGuru

I don't think so - it's how I see it honestly. It wasn't so much a jab as a note to KDE that I'd don't like their direction. Of course the trouble I went through to remove all KDE components from my system should be a clue that I'm no fan of KDE4.

You write as though they are something "extra" that no other program needs and thus imply the Krusader is "bloated". Really unfair.

Simply put, if I want to run Krusader on my system now, I have to install all of that. And many of those components aren't even required by Krusader- they are merely listed as dependencies of kdelibs even though Krusader runs fine without them. To me this is bloat. You can avoid that reality semantically, but the fact is I'm not going to install 225MB to run a file manager. And with what that 225MB consists of - namely servers I DON'T want running on my system, I'm not going to install it for that reason either, even though I like Krusader. This is bloat-happy design intrinsic in KDE4.

But it's their desktop, their rules. I didn't like the new rules so I moved on. And it's safe to say you and I see things differently, so we're not going to agree at this point. You'll come around.

So long, IgnorantGuru. Hope you enjoy Arch.

Thanks. KDE aside I think this is a great forum and a great group of people. In fact Kubuntu Forums is one of the best Linux forums on the net IMO. It's the only part of KDE I'll really miss. And I still intend to make my stuff as (K)Ubuntu-friendly as possible. I try to keep things generic Linux when possible.

BTW: I visited Arch to give it a look-see. I also visited the forum. It would be interesting for folks to browse the Arch forum and this one, and compare the nature of the problems posted on each, and what solutions are necessary. I thought about installing Arch as a guest OS, but decided against it. It is very obvious that these two distros are targeted at different audiences, as are the desktops.

It is a different world in some ways. Hard to judge it just by problems, though. Archers tends to be bold and thus get themselves in deeper trouble. I've actually encountered fewer problems using Arch than I did using Kubuntu, FWIW. And the solutions were pretty much on par with what I had to do to resolve hiccups on Kubuntu. One difference is the Arch updates tend to break things a little more, so you have to be prepared to do a little when you choose to do an update. Usually there's no problem. And the solutions are usually already being discussed. The good news is you don't have to go through the 'new release' thing. You fix little breakages as the software changes. It's a different model, but it works well. The one bug I submitted to Arch was addressed, fixed, and in the repos in a day! I was shocked after having reports ignored for so long.

So I'd recommend trying it yourself and getting a feel for it, maybe on a spare partition. But to each his own - I'm certainly not saying everyone should use Arch just because I changed. I think a little cross-distro discussion like this is healthy - keeps us on our toes.

Thanks for all your info again. I un-rusted my C skills a little patching PCManFM, so I might give QT a try a some point and see how I like the IDE. I'm no great fan of GTK either, BTW. We'll see what develops.