Hello, I've been using KDE practically ever since it was available in debian. I used to use gnome a long time ago, but I wasn't pleased with the direction they were taking, and after gnome 2.4, I decided to use kde instead, which was sometime around the end of 2003. I have been using kde exclusively since then, which was around the early part of 2004, when I was able to reconfigure kde to match as close as possible the configuration that I was used to with gnome. I would've just used the default kde configuration, and started from there, except I thought that the default configuration really stinks. I still don't like the defaults, but this isn't meant as an insult, as I do really like the ability to fine tune the configuration to the point where I'm happy with it. This was something I couldn't do with gnome, at least I couldn't back when I stopped using it. I don't know what shape it's in now. Seeing that lenny will be the last release that will have KDE3 available, I have been looking into what it will take to convert my configuration to work with KDE4. I've been using ubuntu (jaunty) to test kde4 with. I would be using debian, but I've been unable to get all the packages to install. My copy of the repository is from the 15th of April, so I don't know how much has changed since then. I won't be able to update my repository until May, due to a newly placed monthly cap on my internet connection. My ISP, Comcast, has a policy where you get exactly one warning, then instant termination for a year. On top of this, there is no way for you to determine how much you've transferred until it's too late, which leaves the customer scared to utilize the connection. I haven't tried to move my entire configuration over at once and test that, partly since most of my configuration is in ~/ , but part of the configuration is in /etc/kde3. I put some of the configuration in /etc, because I have friends who like how I've configured my desktop, and they wanted to configure theirs in a similar manner. I found that placing some of the more important (or noticeable) parts of the configuration in /etc made it easier to share a default configuration, and leave the other details to them. Anyway, from a preliminary inspection, it looks likes the upstream developers have dropped kde3 like it was a hot potato. I haven't focused as much on the behavior yet, but on the appearance. There are a few things that I would've expected upstream to handle for me that hasn't been handled. One of these things is the color schemes. It seems that all of my color schemes don't transfer from kde3, and there doesn't seem to be any migration tools that help with these. As a result, I have written a short python script that helps migrate these schemes to the new format. I have gotten most of the colors in the .kcsrc file to their proper place in the new .colors file, but there are still a few colors that aren't being handled by the script. These options are marked in the write_config() function of the script as unhandled. If there is anybody who reads this list, and knows where they should belong in the new .colors file, I'd really appreciate if they'd let me know, and I'll handle them. I am probably going to be writing a similar script for my konsole schemas next. It seems that the newer ones look more like actual kde configuration files, while the older ones were simple text files. Regarding konsole, it seems that I'm unable to set a size for the windows. It looks like konsole starts with the size that the last window was using. This is undesirable, as if the last terminal has been maximized, then next one that appears will also be the same size, instead of a preset size. I dug around the configuration the best I could, but I couldn't find an option that pertains to this. BTW, when I tested kde4 on debian, I couldn't find the control center. This also reminds me of something else, it seems that I could install most of the kde packages prior to April 15, but after that they've been broken due to unsatisfied dependencies. Another thing that seems wrong is that my kde3 applications aren't taking on the colors that have been set for kde4. I expect the styles to be different, but I would expect that the kde developers would at least make arrangements to tell qt3 about the color scheme that's currently being used. This is one of the reasons that I refer to kde3 being dropped like a hot potato. I think that it's strange that while the colors settings will transfer to gtk and xresources, they won't transfer to kde3/qt3, especially since kde4 should be an upgrade to kde3, yet in ways it seems like an altogether different creature. Also, my comments on the broken packages in sid are just there to let y'all know about my experience, and why I've been using kubuntu to test kde4. I know that y'all are in a transition, and I expect things to broken from time to time. On top of that, I don't upgrade to sid, rather I install straight from sid in virtualbox, so that makes the unsatisfied dependencies show up better, as there isn't any upgrade, so nothing currently on the system I'm installing to satisfy a dependency. Since around the same time that I switched to kde, I also started keeping my configuration in a subversion repository. This should hopefully help me test the changes in the configuration and determine what needs to be done to make the upgrading process more pleasant. I'm planning to keep y'all notified of my progress, and attaching the scripts that I write that help me migrate my configuration. Migrating my configuration is only half of the battle (probably less than half the battle). I have an awful lot of code written in pykde, and I feel that converting that will take much more effort. There doesn't seem to be a python-kde4 package available for lenny. With ubuntu, the package is tied to python2.6, and at first glance doesn't appear to be able to be backported to python2.5. This is only a first, quick glance, so I'm not really sure. Does anybody here have a recommendation of the best way that I can migrate my code? I can't really use python-qt4, as all of my code uses python-kde3 and only uses qt3 for the widgets that aren't in kde3, like QLabel, and layout widgets. I prefer to use the kde widgets, as they have the nice features that qt doesn't have. Well, this letter has gotten much longer than I originally anticipated, so I'm stopping here. :) -- Thanks: Joseph Rawson
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