Posts Tagged ‘ kde ’

What I miss of gnu/linux while forced to use MS windows XP

I will not compare windows (any version) to kde because that would be unfair, fluxbox is sufficient for this little confrontation.
1.A single desktop means that l waste a lot of time moving windows around.
2. I can‘t press Alt+F2 to launch programs, and windows menu is simply a mess.
3. It seems that there is no way to keep a window above the others when it looses focus, this is a very useful feature when you need to have important information at hand. Every widows manager that I know on linux has a list of options that you can use to customize windows behaviour.
4. No linux shell. Windows shell is no match and I would work much faster with a command line, especially on those tedious tasks that you could automate with some scripts.
5. No mid-button copy paste.
6. It get viruses.

And the most funny thing is that people still say “XP is better than vista/seven“. Well I‘m afraid that most of the arguments I have used are still valid for the new Microsoft OS.

Enabling effects on KDE 4.4.x

KDE on my Debian testing has suddenly lost the ability to activate desktop effects. On systemsettings the message displayed was the following:

compositing is not supported on your system

I’m not a big fan of special effects like exploding windows, but plasma themes are often ugly without effects and I like to have shadows surrounding windows.
So, I have found that this is a known bug and can be solved by simply editing .kde/share/config/kwinrc. You will find this line:
CheckIsSafe=false
which you should change into:
CheckIsSafe=true
This will make you able to enable desktop effects in systemsettings again.

This experience allowed me to switch back to fluxbox again, which has been a most pleasant diversion.

For the sake of completeness, I have the following video card:
VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV710 [Radeon HD 4350]
and I am using proprietary drivers, but I have read about people having the same problems with other gpus too.