Attempting to change the photo in the ‘About Me’ Personal Settings control, I ran into the error above.

I found a good hint at http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=62046#p134788 but with one minor change. I don’t know why they felt they needed to put the terminal command- you open ‘Configure Desktop’, go to the ‘Advanced’ tab and click ‘Login Manager’.

While they used ‘User, System’, that didn’t work for me- I had to choose ‘User’.

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I recently got a great refurbished HP workstation from geeks.com. It’s got dual Xeon processors and 4 GB of RAM and I’m having a blast. It’s been top notch. I was happy to find some notes on HP’s site on their Linux hardware support- thanks HP. I got a 23″ monitor to go with it and it’s just shockingly good.

One think I really love about KDE and this new setup is that the screen is just wide enough to squeeze two windows side by side. What makes this so easily doable is a new feature in KWin, the KDE window manager. Just grab the title bar of the window and drag to an edge of the screen. You’ll see a heavy border wrap that half of the screen and let go and boom: sized to a half screen automatically.

Take a look at http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/4179 and give it a try. You may find that it’s right for you in providing a quick and easy way to access files.

And I again, kudos to the KDE crowd that made even the scrollbar super slick here (do this with a folder that has enough files that you have to scroll).

Amarok is not a simple media player and I don’t think it’s intended to be. I’ve said all along that KDE isn’t the ‘simple’ choice, but it is packed with powerful functionality. Amarok goes right along with that. I have some gripes with it, but I’ll wait to post about those after I’ve resolved them.

One thing I’ve started doing is rating my music within Amarok so that I can build a dynamic playlist that plays all my favorites. This presents a problem since like everyone it seems, I have a lot of music and no time to rate it. This is what I’ve done and maybe it will work for you.

Ratings

The most important thing when setting the ratings for your music is what you want it to mean. I think when it started I was hung up on putting how good I thought the music was. But really, I don’t care about that. My rating criteria was simple: how often do I want to hear it?

It makes it a lot easier to ‘decide’ what rating to give it. You can also rate in half stars but I don’t want that much granularity.

New Sounds

Next set up a dynamic playlist. Go to Playlists > Dynamic Playlists and add a Proportional Bias. I will say that the ‘Bias’ label is confusing but just don’t think about it. Set the Proportion to 100%, and Match ‘Rating’ With ‘equal to’ 0 stars. Now add more Proportional Biases for any genres you want to exclude- I excluded Audiobooks and a couple others. When you’re finished, save the new dynamic playlist. If you make changes, save them as a new playlist- saving over the old one didn’t actually save on my system.

Now while your music plays, use the global hotkeys to save the new rating as you listen. Like what you hear? Set the rating with Super (which is usually the Windows key) and 1/2/3/4/5 depending on the rating you want to give it. And don’t stress about it. If you miss rating because you were busy and didn’t think about it- don’t panic! It’ll come up again.

As I’ve started using KDE (alright- the KDE Software Compilation), one thing I’ve run into is that all the dialogs seem to default to certain folders. I ascribe to David Allen’s Getting Things Done and have tried to create a desktop environment that reinforces those habits. So I don’t use the ‘Documents’ folder. As it turns out if I had just deleted the folder the Documents path would have reverted to the home folder (supposedly).

But the better way is to adjust the paths the system looks for. You can find them under System Settings > About Me > Paths. That cleared up some of my problems. Say what you want about having too many options- it’s nice that there’s a nice UI to change those options.

You may have already heard (and here, here, here, and the announcement here) that KDE just changed their name to KDE. That’s right. What’s that? You don’t see the difference between KDE and KDE? Isn’t it obvious? Now it’s not an acronym. No, I know what you’re thinking, when you have something in all caps, by convention that means it’s an acronym- it stands for something. But KDE no longer stands for something- it’s just… KDE. My favorite part:

The expanded term “K Desktop Environment” has become ambiguous and obsolete, probably even misleading. Settling on “KDE” as a self-contained term makes it clear that we have made the shift from a limited set of software components to a community providing an ecosystem of free software applications and platforms for the end user on the desktop, mobile devices, and more.

Definitely clearer. I know I’ll be able to explain it to my mom now.

What’s really wrong with this? I mean beside naming yourself in a way that suggests your brand is an acronym even though it’s not.

Rebranding is a hard decision and I respect anyone that makes a change intended to make their product more obvious to the casual observer. I think there are a lot of open source projects that would do well to rename their project. To me, though the KDE community doesn’t deserve any notice, let alone applause, for this… decision.

If the community surrounding the GNOME desktop renamed themselves GNOME (no longer an acronym) I would be equally disdainful. But at least their acronym is also a word. Whether an acronym or not, you always have to spell out K-D-E to say KDE.

THIS WAS YOUR CHANCE!

Want to make it clear what you are or what you provide? Pick a catchy name that says something -anything- about what you’re providing so your explanation just clarifies your focus. I am not saying there’s not some good decisions and points in the repositioning document- a good read for anyone mulling a rebranding of their project. Just don’t do what they did.

At least they’re just ruining it for themselves and no one else, like app developers that develop using the KDE platform.

Oh, wait…

Software created by the KDE community is branded on its own under the umbrella brand of KDE. Use of “KDE” in the product name is optional and depending on the context. Especially for applications that are not well known as KDE applications and are not easily identified as such by a “K” prefix in their name, it is recommended to use “KDE” in the product name.

Well, at least it’s optional. One example on the announcement page mentions KDE Dolphin. Now, Dolphin as the name of a file manager (does the default file manager need a name?) is pretty questionable. I don’t see it. But KDE Dolphin? Seriously?

There are two real desktop environments for Linux: KDE and GNOME. Yes XFCE and others, I’m completely leaving you out. There are always people that defy convention or want to try something out there. I love BeOS and Haiku but I doubt I will ever push it as a viable option.

Having more than one desktop environment is stupid. It stems from KDE starting out with the QT framework which was not open source. That is why GNOME started. But QT long ago changed licenses and now there’s no “this one is more open” element of the debate. What has changed is that GNOME is completely dominant. I program for neither so I can’t speak to how easy one is over the other. But in general, industry has backed GNOME. I think that stems from the aforementioned open/closed dynamic that used to exist. Companies backed the more open one and gradually that made that an easier and easier choice because of so much investment in it. I think there was more of a push to get GNOME “business-ready” with usability work too.

Up till about a month ago, I would have said that KDE should be scrapped. I have always preferred GNOME. I have even have a Ximian hat. I am not one who thinks that Linux needs choices within it. I think Linux is the choice. It shouldn’t be the first choice in a gauntlet of other important decisions. That’s why distros have default setups instead of asking users to choose every single app they want to use. It’s crazy! Then there’s our community’s most precious resource: developer time. For every duplication that exists between apps we lose time that we could have spent making something new and wonderful, or refining what we had. Example: GTK engines for GNOME. That’s what draws the buttons and widgets you see in GNOME apps. Why are there so many engines? I don’t mean themes (don’t get me started), but the engines- I have about 10 installed! That’s 10 projects, who knows how many developers, that are duplicating what’s been done. Maybe pruning a bit, adding on a bit. But primarily duplicating.

In a project as huge as a desktop environment, the duplication is staggering. Underlying services, APIs, those little apps no one would ever write except as part of a desktop environment. So instead of having two desktops- why not just have one? The problem is that there’s no common base code there. You’d have one environment ‘win’ and the other have to rewrite apps if they wanted to integrate. And let’s face it, no developer that I know would just say “You’re right, that app is better so I’ll stop working on mine.” So my hope for a GNOME-KDE wedding seem hopeless. So barring that I want one of them to just go away. :) Since I’m a GNOME user, naturally I’d prefer that KDE went away.

However, I installed KDE 4.3 and really liked it. Not loved I think. But I really liked it. Enough that I’ve been using it for several days now. In an effort to clear it up in my own mind, I’m going to see if I can compare some things about the two- things that really matter:

And does anyone else see a KDE/Europe, GNOME/Elsewhere slant to this debate?

I want to recognize and congratulate Back in Time and any other app that go to the trouble of making both a KDE and GNOME front end for their app. We shouldn’t need to do that. Again, it’s a waste of resources. But thank you.

For me, I’m still a GNOME user. I really like what I see in KDE, but I will be working for ways to improve GNOME. I see it as not just a frontrunner but the right direction for Linux to become mainstream. But I will not seek KDE’s destruction. Power users can and maybe should use it. At the least it’s valuable as an option, or even a target. GNOME should be as cool but it shouldn’t sacrifice usability to get there. I wish the two would work harder to integrate so that if you’re running one, the apps from the other are skinned well.

I know that I am a technology snob. I dislike or don’t use some things just because I don’t ‘like’ them. KDE has been one of them- although in my defense I have tried it out at various times.

I tried it out again on Saturday, thinking that this would be a good opportunity since openSUSE provides what many consider to be the best KDE implementation. I was disappointed. There were some nice edges but I found the experience similar to Vista. There may have been an overhaul of the underlying code and cosmetics but it will be some time before the apps match that and provide a clean, uniform experience. There’s also something I just don’t… like about the UI. I can’t put my finger on it.

Anyway, I was willing to leave it installed but before I knew it, KDE had become my default session. I did not appreciate that. I logged out, chose GNOME in the GDM and logged in. Still KDE. That’s right. I refuse. I uninstalled everything with a K in it.