Re: Some questions regarding kde4

[David Baron <d_baron@012.net.il>]

> some questions:
> (1) Somehow my desktop lost it's ability to display or store icons.
> Did I break something? And if, what?

If you are referring to the change from kde3 to kde4: There has been a 
paradigm shift!

In kde3 as a windows-like desktop environment, placing something in the 
Desktop directory, an icon can appear on the screen "desktop". Drag an email 
attachment to the desktop, get an icon, and the file in the Desktop directory. 
Creating an icon from the desktop GUI produces a file.desktop in the Desktop 
directory. Intuitively obvious and very familiar. The boss can place work on 
an employee's desktop by simply saving a file in the Desktop directory. No 
more.

Kde4 is divorced from the Desktop folder. You do not even need one. Icons are 
entries to one rc file, and may or may not refer to real files stored 
somewhere. No longer Windows-like or familiar. And no longer intuitive.

OK, you can drag a file to the desktop and get an icon referencing it. An 
email attachment is in some volatile temp location so one can no longer drag 
that to the desktop (It used to let you do it and the icon  referenced air).

I still have .desktop files in my Desktop directory. I can drag those to the 
desktop and have the  layout I had in kde3. They do not act quite the same 
right now but they are there.