The quest for a pure KDE computer

[whatthefunk]

So Ive been trying lately to get all gnome programs off my computer and replace them with KDE programs. My thoughts:

- Kopete sucks. I hate it and cant for the life of me figure out how to get it to work. Ive tried several times to use it but have never managed to even set up my accounts. Why is this the Kubuntu default?? It is ALWAYS the first thing to get purged after a fresh install and Pidgin is one of the first things to get installed. Pidgin is, however, a gnome program so it doesnt integrate too well with KDE and pulls in all sorts of dependencies. Today, I tried Kmess. Wow...nice program. Set up was simple and it has some nice features, like a drawing pad, and looks great.

-Opera is still my number one web browser choice. Integrates well with KDE, works great, and is faster than anything else Ive tried.

-I love Dragon player, but there are still some times when I have to fall back on VLC which just kind of does its own thing. It doesnt follow the themes I set, it doesnt like the icons I choose, and it looks like crap at all times. If Dragon player advanced just a little more, VLC would be gone.

-Ive always used Guake as my primary terminal. I like the easy drop down functionality of it. But, its a gnome program so doesnt always integrate well. Ive been trying to like Yakuake, but it doesnt seem to support background transparency, which is a must for me. Konsole is a good backup terminal, but I dont like having my terminal in its own window. Hmmm....need to do some more exploring.

-Office programs. This one is a killer and it drives me fricking nuts. I need to make spreadsheets for work that show variable line size between cells on the screen. LibreOffice Calc for some idiotic reason doesnt do this. The lines are either normal, or massive, no in between. So Ive been using Gnumeric, again a Gnome program. I havent tried Caligra Sheets yet because it gets pretty aweful reviews. Any ideas??

If everything was KDE, life would be perfect!

[whatthefunk]

Update: Yakuake does support background transparency but sadly doesnt support stupid users who cant figure out the settings menu Goodbye Guake!

[Snowhog]

Yakuake supports transparency just fine.

[whatthefunk]

Yakuake supports transparency just fine.

Im having some trouble with it. It doesnt seem to be true transparency because if something changes behind the Yakuake window, it just blacks out that portion of the screen.

[Snowhog]

It doesn't here.

[whatthefunk]

Hmm....weird. How did you enable the transparency?

[Snowhog]

Launch/bring up yakuake.


Right-click on the word 'shell'
Click on Edit Current Profile...
Click the Appearance tab and Edit... and set the Background transparency percentage.


Yakuake uses the same settings that you have set for konsole.

[whatthefunk]

Launch/bring up yakuake.


Right-click on the word 'shell'
Click on Edit Current Profile...
Click the Appearance tab and Edit... and set the Background transparency percentage.


Yakuake uses the same settings that you have set for konsole.

Did that, but still dont get true transparency. Hmmm...

[blackpaw]

Maybe a driver issue - what video card/drivers are you using?

I'm not a spreadsheet man myself but the 2.5 release of Calligra suite is far and away the best yet. I now use Calligra words before OpenOffice word.

Messenger - looks like Telepathy will be the standard client, worth checking out.

[HalationEffect]

I love Dragon player, but there are still some times when I have to fall back on VLC which just kind of does its own thing. It doesnt follow the themes I set, it doesnt like the icons I choose, and it looks like crap at all times. If Dragon player advanced just a little more, VLC would be gone.

Give Bangarang a try. It's KDE-native, and looks rather nice.

[whatthefunk]

Maybe a driver issue - what video card/drivers are you using?

I'm not a spreadsheet man myself but the 2.5 release of Calligra suite is far and away the best yet. I now use Calligra words before OpenOffice word.

Messenger - looks like Telepathy will be the standard client, worth checking out.

Thanks for the suggestions. Ill give them a whirl!

[whatthefunk]

Give Bangarang a try. It's KDE-native, and looks rather nice.

Interesting. Havent heard of that one. Ill try it out next time I watch a movie.

[woodsmoke]

Hi whatthefunk, hope you are having a great day.

Well, I've espoused the merits of Koffice going waaay back to when I wrote an article for Linux Forums that suggested that Koffice(now Calligra) offers a paradigm shift in how one uses the suite. I was somewhat surprised that as of mylast look it has had over three thousand views, not to blow my horn, but hopefully, more people are giving it a once over.

Calligra is what I use for spreadsheets and if I have to provide something for the college it will open in LO to save in ms format.

Calligra is very ERGONOMICALLY designed in that one "sweeps the mouse to the right" instead of having to track it up and to the left etc. reduces wrist action massively, And for someone like me who lives in the office suite, um NOT the big office on the corner of the building with the glass walls! lol ....that is a wrist saver.

If one adds in all the restricted extras, and MAYBE has to fiddle with phonon, Amarok is now fully functional in terms of playing a .pls file, and playing a cd in the tray without having to move the furshlugginer tracks to the hard drive, it just plays the cd.

I posted elsewhere that the "KDE instant messenger" is now fully funtional, the proof of the pudding is that it hooks to Yahoo with no effort, except that, at this juncture, one cannot replace the little generic avatar with an image, but again, for the first time, KDE now has a fully functional IM client down in the nuts and bolts, the cosmetic stuff can come in time.

Rekonq works with just about anything that I've run into, except the menu item with Blackboard, to which I posted in another thread, but, if one does not do BB then not a problem.

Kontact is now fully functional with the exception, for me, of imap, send and google. I can send and receive in other imaps, so this is not a problem with Akonadai, per se, it is problem with the interaction of it with Google.

HOWEVER< OTHERS CAN GET IT TO WORK< so don't know, what the problem is, apparently something with my setup, don't know what

So, to send from my google account I use Thunderbird, but I do not like Tbirds calendar printout.

Also, Kontact produces a printable calendar that is in the normal week, month, format. The only caveat I have is that, as of now, one cannot place one's "name" such as "woodsmoke's week" on the top of it, but again, that is a quibble, in that the calendar, in and of itself, now works with Google.

Hmmm thinking now, since there used to be a problem with doing recurring events with Google, one can now do that....maybe the Akonadai team will get the send to work....hmmm

So, personally, I think that KDE is about as "there" as "there" can get.

woodsmoke

[sumski]

I posted elsewhere that the "KDE instant messenger" is now fully funtional, the proof of the pudding is that it hooks to Yahoo with no effort, except that, at this juncture, one cannot replace the little generic avatar with an image, but again, for the first time, KDE now has a fully functional IM client down in the nuts and bolts, the cosmetic stuff can come in time.

woodsmoke

woodsmoke, this works here (gmail and msn)
http://i.imgur.com/dhEFa.png
Only, one has to online to change the avatar. Could this be a yahoo only issue

[woodsmoke]

Hi sumski,
thanks for that, I agree that it is probably only a Yahoo thing, my IMing has declined greatly because of the increased capabilities at the college and the laws about IMing with students in an "off campus" manner. I used to IM with all of the various clients and Kopete had a real problem with Yahoo(one had to use Yahoo Asia as a workaround ! lol ),

So, thanks again, I'll check it out in a short while.

But to repeat for the OP, I think that Telepathy is going to be the cat's meow in the near future.

woodsmoke