Thoughts on KDE and a small tutorial
Long post warning!
Probably I will never get tired of tweaking my system :) I’ve installed Xubuntu week ago, then I broke it (yes - I like to wander around my system and tweak it). In the meantime I’ve checked the KDE4 Live CD (build with openSuse distro builder). And well… KDE still rocks (even in 3.5.8 version). For me it’s complete solution like Mac OS X - after installation you got all software you need to keep you goin’.
KDE includes one of the best editors ever - Kate, great GTD suite - Kontact - consisting of mail module [Kmail], to-do, calendar and rss reader - each one of the modules can be used as a stand alone application. Another KDE-app worth mentioning is Amarok - full featured music player/organiser/whatever you want. In my opinion KDE provides better app integration than Gnome - if you want to have the same functionality (i.e. notes and contacts sharing) you need to install Gimmie to provide the same functionality. In K you got it straight outta box. Of course - it’s just matter of your own preference. The situation is similar to what we have in RTS games (or Transformers :)) - each side has it’s equal counterpart:
| Gnome | KDE |
| Pidgin | Kopete |
| Nautlius | Dolphin (or Konqueror) |
| Evolution | Kmail/Kontact |
| Rhythmbox | Amarok |
…and so on. Of course there are some differences. KDE is build upon the QT library (opposing to GTK based Gnome). Also the development differs - Gnome guys prefer to achieve their goals in small steps with little improvements. On the other hand we have the KGuys who recently released 4th version of the K Desktop Environment that features some neat functionality. However it’s still to early to use it - despite the fact that this is a stable release. I’m waiting for 4.1 - it’s due to be released in near future :)
KDE is sometimes blamed to be bloated and slow - to be honest - it feels to be more faster and responsive than current Gnome - I use Ubuntu and Kubuntu distros so they can be easly compared.
KDE is kinda integrated like Windows © ® &tm; Explorer &tm; © ® £ - Konqueror (or Dolphin) can be used to browse files, network directories (ftp or webdav) and web sites. At first I didn’t like the ide - I’m more of a UNIX guy - one app - one task but it’s time to change the way of thinking and be more productive :) For example - using a webdav as a regular drive/directory in KDE is dead easy - for this example I will use webdav provided by box.net, other thing is - that mounting box.net as a drive differs in KDE comparing to GNOME’s Nautlius of Mac OS X:
- Go to Network or add Network Folders applet to the Panel
- Using the Wizard choose WebDav:
- Now (that’s the difference :)) enter the following:
- Sadly - you can’t use the encryption - box.net messed up something with the ssl certificates; but for everyday acces from your own computer at home network it should be enough (always use encryption in wireless networks!)
- Confirm and enter your credentials in next window. et viola! Konqueror/Dolphin window will appear showing your stuff
- The webdav dir will be accessible from Network directory (I hate the word folder - it’s so microsoft-ish) or the Kicker applet mentioned before
In the similar way you can mount Window Shares (using Samba) and ftp. This allows me to use 250GB drive from my Wife’s iMac :P. And keep all the animes there (and watch them on 21” screen ^_^)
