(New to this series? Read from DAY ONE)

Right, day two of this seven day series.

It is fortuitous that I started this series on Saturday instead of my normal Monday start. This gave me a chance to set up all my necessary programs and stuff like SSH keys etc before starting work Monday. Previously I would start Monday at the deep end with a new interface and wing it from there.

Being Sunday I did not do much else, so today will be a short writeup.

Kmail

I have been using Evolution for a while now as my default mail client for work mail – going on two years of solid use. Before that I had used Thunderbird. (The new Thunderbird is awesome by the way, I use it for my @sageek adresses…) and so switching to a new mail client for work is a bit intimidating.

Kmail is okay. Setting up my mail address and login details went smoothly, until first reboot when it promptly forgot the pop login details, yet remembered the SMTP login details.

At first I thought I never entered them, but I had mail in my inbox, so that could not have been the case. I am still unsure what happened there – Kmail simply complained that I needed to enter account details or I would not be able to download mail. Go figure.

KDE wallet…

…is a pain in the rear. I am sorry if I step on toes but I don’t like it. Gnome had something similar way back, and I am not sure if Ubuntu just killed it off or what, but I don’t see it around anymore. Every time I boot and login, or log out and login KDE Wallet wants to authenticate.

Plasma keeps asking to authenticate when I log in and every time I create an account on a program it asks for access to KDE Wallet.

I am certain it has a proper reason for being here, I will explore that more during the week.

Plasmoids

One of the killer features of KDE 4, or at least one of the most talked up features.

What they have going for them:

  • They are pretty
  • They area a convenient way to stick certain information services and programs (like rss readers or microblogging utilities) to the desktop where they are easily accessible.
  • They allow you to turn your desktop into a information center or even a custom utility that suits your needs.

Downside

  • They are often the reason that KDE4 crashes (Thankfully Mandriva Spring has been totally devoid of this so far.)
  • As soon as you open a window or program they are no longer useful as information providers.

That last point is critical. I noted this in my Windows 7 Challenge almost a year ago – Plasmoids or desktop widgets have a very limited functionality. If you want to use things like RSS readers they are good because you can access them on your desktop when you want to read your feeds. If you want to use them as information utilities like system load then they are useless unless you are okay with having to minimize your windows to see what is going on.

Konsole

Konsole behaves rather differently than Gnome Terminal does. There is nothing wrong with it per se, but I can see it will take a little getting used to – getting out of the habit of working with Gnome Terminal and into the habit of working with something that behaves more like Xterm.

Summary Day 2

Nothing groundbreaking to report today. Also no screenshots. Screenshots will follow during the week when I get down to actually using KDE as my day to day Desktop Environment. I love how KDE is easy on the eyes, it really makes for a pleasant “office.” I also realized that the Gnome way of having two panels (one on top and one at the bottom) makes less sense on a widescreen laptop than a single panel does – KDE gives me more screen real estate to play with.

That is that for today then! On to tomorrow and doing my daily chores using KDE…

(Read on for DAY THREE)

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