Whoa! Just found out something new!

[thelonegunmen]

Lol, I know that I'm going to sound like a lametard here, but I just found something new to me about KDE, I had no idea that you could have multiple activity desktops, I knew their were multiple desktops that you can use to sort out stuff, but now their are whole other... somethings? I have no idea what to call it, what's the purpose of the activity desktops? They're cool, but I don't get it really. Also found out that I can rotate widgets lol, not that I hardly ever use them other than to tell time and remind me what my hardware specs are and what my temperature is and my connection specs.

Are their any other little hidden gems that I may not know about?

[Snowhog]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

'Activities' are a whole new animal AFAIC. I have yet to see an understandable (to me) explanation on why/when you would use them, and more importantly (to me), how you use them that is 'different' than just using the virtual desktops.

[claydoh]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

'Activities' are a whole new animal AFAIC. I have yet to see an understandable (to me) explanation on why/when you would use them, and more importantly (to me), how you use them that is 'different' than just using the virtual desktops.

here's something to muddy the waters

But really, Activities have just become usable in 4.6 tbh. They do differ from virtual desktops in that they can have their own separate widgets, etc, as well as being able to turn them off and on - without loosing their settings. Ans applications can be assigned to specific activities. I never much used virtual desktops in all my years, but activities can make more sense. If it helps, you can kinda think of virtual desktops as a subset of an activity - or rather a group of virt desktops makes up one activity clear as mud. But for me an activity has its own personality (more muddy). Time will tell as new types of activities and uses come up.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

Hi Thelonggunman

Your discovery is rather congruent to my journeys of the last few years.

I DO.........a LOT of stuff with a computer...published books, long history there... , produced software for sale, do "powerpoints" by.....the hundreds....listen to music as stream, cd even converting VHS to you name it.. graphics, family history, billing, ...i mean...

But I really do "wring" just about everything that one can do on a computer.

To me.....the first great "sea change" was Compiz fusion....with the cube... I taught online for quite a few years.... I began in Windblows... but the cube...changed everything....the students's stuff was on one face with "the correct answers"... another face had the gradebook and the e-mail and chat with the students in real time...on another face.....

OH MY GAWD...... MUSIC....or..... listening to a video played in VLC and every once in a while flipping over there to watch the parts I didn't remember....

I mean.... MORTAL KOMBAT..... I almost know it by heart...

Or Monty Python and the Holy GRAIL......WHAT.......is your favourite colour!

The cube....was just a ...........revelation............

Then....came....Koffice.............

I know......this is WAY OFF THE FARM....

But ....if you have "wrist" problems....or even THINK you might have wrist problems....

Koffice..........somehow....has an office suite which MINIMIZES..... wrist problems....

But.....you had to get at least two laboratory assistants....and three people who have no clue....

To get the document from Koffice to Open Office....to Microsith

BUT............

Then I had the REAL TRUE........REVELATION......

If one is not REQUIRED.............ABSOLLUTELY REQUIRED.......

To interact with a microsith office suite product....

THEN WHAT THE HE DOUBLE HOCKY STICKS!!!!!!!

When I had that OVER ARCHING revelation.........

I do not ever USE a microsith product unless i have to reply to something ......

at work.....

So....the FEW times that I have to do that i go to the trouble to convert from ODF to OO to MS

and then get on with my life....

BUT....then came ....Kubuntu......

Ah yes....... that doof..........but so tres' KEWL..... folder on the desktop....

OH MY GAWD AGAIN.......

I can put what I want in that

ONE SIZE FITS A JILLION JOBS...... folder....

However....

Guess what....it turns out that that folder is really a thing of KDE....

So..........

You have no way to verify this...I could be LYING IN MY TEETH....

I have installed KDE on just about every kind of distro you could install it on....

and......

somehow....the Kubuntu team....

has it all done right....

DID YOU GET THAT......

I've installed "KDE" on top of Debian, Ubuntu the kitchen sink...

And NONE of it .........is as SMOOTH..........as Kubuntu....

so...to move on, or back, or sideways...

Instead of the cube being used for everything....

I have one face of the cube for music....

and those INSCRUTABLE ORIENTALS.....ahhhh yesss.....those INscrutable orientals....



oops....

sorry..... yes I "could" do the music in another "folder"....but.... since

It all requires COMPIZ or AWN OR SOMETHING....

I just go for compiz.....

and get a really nice Cairo dock to do things like keep track of no less than

FOUR...different Instant Messaging apps that my students use....

and ..... have a terminal ready at hand so I can restart Conky to keep track of the Last FM info....

but......

those FOLDERS....aaaahhhh yesssss....

aaaahhh sooooooo ooops... Charlie Chan there....

in addition to the folders....OH MY GOLLY.....

There is an RSS FEED that I can use to keep track of Google News environmental science, global warming, global cooling, climate change, recombinant DNA, stabilization of the polar bear population, receeding of the antarctic western side, growth of the antarctic eastern side, arctic going to water....

I mean.....

............

There is a saying from Hispanic people....I do English as Second Language....

Poco a poco, se va lejos.....One step at a time one goes a long way.....

So...I have arrived at......

The thing that, for moi........ is the most efficient way to GET ON WITH THINGS....

Is the "cube" and also..." the folder".....and other stuff.... maybe weather.... or RSS feeds...or what is going on with your kids ....or grandkids...

AND...... having, to moi...., the best "integration" with "free and open source" software(Koffice) ....

the combination of.....

a) the cube
b) Koffice and ESPECIALLY Kontact
c) the Plasma "folder" widget
d) other miscellaneous things that make life.....ummm ...enjoyable.....RSS feeds, a pic of the grandkids or girlfriend on the desktop, Rhythmbox in a nice cute little picture frame

the best "implementation" of "all that"....is...

Kubuntu.


So..... use Kubuntu.............

TO EXPLORE..........EXPLORE........EXPLORE........... ..!!!!

woodsmoke

[claydoh]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

ok, tha woodsmoke's, um, smokin' somethin again......

[woodsmoke]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

moi?!

wood....um run n' coke smoke

[thelonegunmen]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

but the cube...changed everything....

The cube....was just a ...........revelation............

Lol, yes, all bow before the mighty power of the cube. Seriously though, that cube is pretty awesome.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

I totally agree....

But....let me ask a question.

How many people reading this thread have read Marshall McLuhan's "Medium is the Massage"...it is spelled correctly btw.

The "cube" and the "folder" and the "layout of Koffice".....

are "paradigm changers".

They are the "massage" that McLuhan foresaw.....

They change how people INTERACT .....with the hardware....

They FORCE....one to consider alternate ways of interacting with the "computer screen" and THE MOUSE....

OR............the TOUCH PAD....


The Cairo Dock......AND THE PLASMA DESKTOP ....in my humble opinion.........

are what will be THE defining pieces of software in terms of the netbook and the tablet....

Yes....there will be many, many, many "iterations" of "Cairo dock".....

But.....think about that screen.... I walk behind my students in the lab....and have to ENDURE....the "tramp stamp" of the girls with the oh so European Frenchiefied "lowhugger" jeans......



And every one of them....has a laptop or a netbook.... a FEW...of them...have Kindles etc....

But.......... convenience is the coin of the realm now....

Cairo Dock.... the Plasma Interface..... the ability to "swipe" a picture of the BOY FRIEND.... across the netbook screen with a finger..... The RSS feed that

has all of the things that the DETESTED PROFESSOR wants because it will be HIS WAY in the classroom....and so gotta keep up so she can suck up....

Kubuntu is playing out "en gross(large)" what I think is going to be played out in a couple of years...

For all of it's irritations....... the plasma desktop....

is the "double ended funnel" that takes ALL THAT STUFFF IN THE COMPUTER.....

and puts a LITTLE OF IT on the desktop....

Plasma is an amazing thing....with all of it's crashes and faults...

and the distro that is enabling it best, in my humble opinion, is Kubuntu.

woodsmoke

[thelonegunmen]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

@woodsmoke What's the difference between a Windows Folder and a Kubuntu Folder? I don't see much of one honestly. What did you find so different about it?

[woodsmoke]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

Cashew
Add widgets
Categories
File system
Folder View

and be amazed....

At first...it is kind of a) unintelligible, b) WHAT is the use of THAT? c) huh?

This is NOT something that you can just say..."oh ok"... it will take some ........thought.....some....use... some looking at what you can do with a right click....

I'll give you a hint.

Change the default to a folder where you have some.....videos.....like download some videos of HALO Reach to downloads...five of them....get some coffee... and then put the folder on the desktop and change from the default of nothing to downloads and .....just look at the folder.....

how does that way of interacting with the file structure change how you would interact with the videos....

Think of those same videos...in the downloads folder.....and a LINK to the folder on the desktop in Windblows or say.....Ubuntu....I mean it is a link...you can't "see" what is in there....

Ok you say... I KNOW what is in there....why do I need to SEE it....

THAT...is not the point.....you are an experienced computer person...you can keep things in your head...but what if you had four different tasks to juggle in real time....

in Windblows.....all of those four tasks are in the "panel" at the bottom....

Can you squirrel this in Windows 7....yes...you can.....

But it is not "native" to Windows 7...it is an abstraction on top of the Vista system which was streamlined into Win 7 and was built on DOS....

The KDE "folder view" is a "native", integrated system which is upwardly .... interoperable....

Will "most" people ever care or need that? Absolutely not. But....that system...the Plasma desktop and the folder view....is just about the "easiest" way to deal with the MORASS of information with which we now deal...

Ok...next task...

do a folder view for music, and a folder view for documents....and think of how you could use them to easily make
a) a love letter to your better half
b) an assignment in school that allows multimedia
c) a post at the forum
d) just a fun way to watch videos while working on stuff you brought home from work

The folder view is very.....multifaceted.....

THEN combine that with the faces of the cube...

And then layer on...... Cairo Dock.... weather in real time....your other half instant messaging you, listening to a music stream....

THIS IS NOT A GOOD ILLUSTRATION:

[img width=400 height=299]http://jeelabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen_shot_2011_01_13_at_233509.png[/img]

But the Plasma Desktop is a DIFFERENT way of being the "central node" and the "folder view" is a subset of the plasma interface....

A DIFFERENT way of interacting with the information that is in the swamp of the file system of a normal overloaded and full computer.

there is no easy answer.

But when one FIDDLES WITH IT...for a while and has an "a-ha!" moment...



woodsmoke
woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

ok, tha woodsmoke's, um, smokin' somethin again......

Nice picture, though!

[el_koraco]

Re: Whoa! Just found out something new!

'Activities' are a whole new animal AFAIC. I have yet to see an understandable (to me) explanation on why/when you would use them, and more importantly (to me), how you use them that is 'different' than just using the virtual desktops.

You use your laptop or desktop for work and home tasks. You then set up one activity with a given number of desktops and widgets for work, and one for home. In the work activity you make folders and applications with all the files you usually use available by one click. Once you're done with work, you open up the home activity, which has you movies, music, bug tracking goodies. That's just one possible use. Activities are kind of like setting up various user accounts, but snappier.