Work with Userbase is progressing nicely. I wrote some suggestions based on user feedback and my own opinions, and a few days ago there was a small discussion about the future of Userbase on IRC.
However, this post isn’t about Userbase – I hope I’ll find some time to summarize the plans for the wiki here in a few days. Today I want to share another tip that I’ve found and need to remember to add to Userbase: Borderless Maximized Windows.
Mostly as a reminder to myself, here’s how to show remaining battery time in the Battery Monitor widget shipped with KDE Software Compilation >= 4.3:
Remaining time in the Battery Monitor
With the release of KDE Software Compilation 4.4, many may feel tempted to give KDE Plasma Desktop (previously known as just “KDE”, see Repositioning the KDE Brand) a try. Plasma Desktop introduced in KDE SC 4 behaves quite differently from other popular desktop workspaces, and without doubt many new users will feel slightly lost and confused the first time.
I’ve gathered some tips for new users to get a more familiar desktop, based on frequently asked questions I’ve seen in various places. This is in no way a “10 things you should do” list – it’s up to you to decide which way you like better.
The post is mainly aimed at those who are new to Plasma Desktop, but even experienced users might learn something new.
KDE Plasma Desktop
Just a short note before we begin: the images with a play button are linked to short screencasts – just click to watch them. The screencasts are encoded in GIF and can therefore be played in most web browsers without any additional plugins. The downside is that the quality is quite poor, hope you can bear with it.
Without further ado, here are 10 things you might want to do in KDE SC 4.4:
Note: This isn’t directly related to KDE. However, since there isn’t such a tool for KDE at the moment, I figured some KDE users might find it interesting as well.
I recently bought a new mouse for my desktop computer, more specifically a Logitech Corded Mouse M500. Up until then I had been using an old mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel. Now I suddenly have two extra mouse buttons, and a scroll wheel that you can tilt to the left and right. Let’s see how to take advantage of this.
Some time ago, a person on identi.ca asked in the KDE group which weather plasmoid people preferred. He seemed to like my suggestion, so I figured, why not share it here too?
The end result will look like this:
(but hopefully with less rain…)
As you can see, it’s an hourly forecast. It reports the weather, temperature, wind speed and direction and – most important for me – precipitation.
The new desktop in KDE4 works quite differently from what many are used to. One thing many new users wonder is, “How does the desktop icons work?” In this post I’ll share my experience with icons in Plasma-desktop.
Note: I use the latest development version of KDE4, which means that some things may look slightly different on your computer.
Let’s start with the most simple icon. If you just want a “normal” desktop with icons, see the section “Traditional Desktop”.
One of the major complaints of Plasma is that you can’t remove the annoying icon from your panels or desktop. Oh yes, I’m talking about the infamous Cashew of Plasma.
Before
This is a small guide on how to get rid of the cashews. You probably need version 4.1 of KDE or higher and know a little bit about how to use the terminal.
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