Migration to KDE4
Once one gets all installed, the real fun begins. My experiences.
1. It is very tempting to copy ,kde to .kde4 (the new directory) to keep all
one's settings. DON'T DO IT. Kde needs to start squeaky clean. Anything
untoward in .kde4 and crash bang.
2. It is possible to copy share/config/myapprc files and certain
share/apps/myapp/stuff manually once a kde4 session has succeeded. Kmail (not
yet upgraded) is an example. Konqueror is another but it does not work in any
event. Kaddressbook and others as well.
It would have been nice had some script for taking care of all this been
provided!
3. COPY .kde4 often. A crash, usually in changing GUI stuff, can blow the
whole thing up.
4. Kde3 programs can run in kde4. One can use knemo from the now emaciated
contol-center. Kisa, kboincspy, the old kget (but why not use the new one?),
all work fine but since these are playing with dcop rather than the new dbus
scheme, there may be side-effects somewhere.
5. The new UI is intuitive but not obvious. Panel applets are
plasmoids/widgets. Using "add widget" will place them on the desktop. Drag
and drop to the panel. Right click on the app menu to place on desktop or on
the panel. Somewhere along the line, the older UI for this stuff will
probably be implemented as well.
6. Older themes may or may not work. Bmp's will no longer work as wallpapers.
Be very careful with the system settings because not everything plays well.
As I said, a crash here can blow the whole business. Get a set up you like
without being to picky and use it.
7. Oxygen window styles make it nigh impossible to know what window has focus.
Can select older styles, no problem.
8. Various desktop icons do not show--device and folder icons are an example.
One can set in the properties but the default gear will remain. Panel icons
work better. There is no refresh desktop and new icon sizes will appear on
next session.
9. If one is using both kde3.5.* and kde4 (and one must for now!), the two
startkde scripts may need to be modified to set env stuff like PATH, KDEDIR
and such for the two versions. /etc/profile will also need to be modified--a
posting showing how to do this in .bashrc may not work, /etc/profile will and
this is for all users. I can send you mine or request. Without this, most
stuff may work but oddities do occur.
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