hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1862.txt

Episode: 1862
Title: HPR1862: The Awesomely Epic Guide To KDE Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1862/hpr1862.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:20:44

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This is HPR Episode 1862 entitled The Awesomely Epic Guide to KD Part 1.
It is hosted by Gens and is about 22 minutes long.
The summary is a tutorial on the KD desktop.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
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Hello, I'm Gedis and I'm from the UK and this is my first HPR show.
It's an audio voice over recording of a tutorial article entitled The Awesomely Epic Guide
to KDE.
I'll tell you more about its origins later in my introduction.
I suppose I should kick off by saying I've been a Linux user for around 10 years and
use Linux for all my day-to-day computing.
I've also been a regular listener of most of the popular Linux podcasts from both the
US and the UK that have been aired throughout this time and up to the present day.
My background is in IT education, which started when I entered the formal teaching profession
in 2000.
Before that, I was an independent IT consultant where part of my role is delivering Windows
OS and application training mainly to local authority and charity sector staff.
I've mainly taught adult students from the age of 18 upwards.
I've even taught seniors on a voluntary basis for the main UK charity that campaigns
for their welfare.
My only official IT education role now is as a tutor for a well-known UK distance learning
university where a tutor and supports students on two separate IT courses, one of which has
a Linux component.
I only ever use Windows in relation to this job, and it's for a small part of it, for
downloading and uploading student assignments.
As more and more of the university's tutoring, assessment and student interaction moves
to the web, I feel that Windows as an OS is becoming less relevant in online distance
learning.
OK, why have I decided at this time to post my first show for HPR?
Well, there's a number of reasons.
Plus one important issue I'm trying to address.
I'll try to keep my explanation short.
Reason one, HPR is short of shows at this time, and submitting an audio version of a written
article is the quickest way I felt like a tribute to show.
Reason two, I'm an amateur musician who wants to use Linux to make music.
The KDE portion of this show was originally recorded using RDoR 3.5 and a bunch of studio
1404.
This was done to give myself practical hands on project as a means of learning a few
of the basic features of the program.
While on that note, I'd like to give Tony Dent in a shout out and say how influential
to me, his series of Linux jazz shows were in deciding to switch my computer music
making and practice on my instrument, which happens to be keyboard, over to Linux.
Tony, when are we going to hear from you again?
Reason three is about diversity.
I wanted to use the making of the audio recording to address the issue of diversity within
the Linux community in my own way.
Although born and raised in the UK and without for a Caribbean descent, both my parents were
from Jamaica, I have listened to nearly all the various discussions on this topic over
the past year or so, including those from HPR.
It's an area I've been involved in before on a personal level, where my recruitment
into a government service at the time, that's the early 80s, was partly due to a policy
designed to correct the lack of diversity in that department's workforce.
My personal opinion is that the lack of diversity within any group in society is largely an
inherited situation, and blame or guilt should not be leveled at anyone.
The responsibility for addressing the issue lies equally in both sides.
Within the Linux community, the dominant participant group, and we know who that is, should
of course adopt strategies that encourage members from the more diverse groups to participate
and get involved, but if you're a member of that diverse group and are aware of your
lack of representation, my argument is why wait to be invited, do something, contribute
something, turn up a conference if you can.
This was part of my motivation for recording the KDE article I decided to take the simple
route first, and make a contribution based on my current skills and interests.
Fourth reason, accessibility.
The audio version of the awesomely epic guide to KDE article was originally recorded
for Linux Voice Magazine issue 2, and credit must go to all the guys at Linux Voice and
particularly Graham Morrison, who I believe wrote the original text version and gave
me the go ahead to use it here.
I believe one of the reasons for Linux Voice wanting to produce audio versions of the
older text issues of the magazine was to make them accessible to visually impaired and
blind Linux enthusiasts.
Obviously, I'm aware of all the great work Jonathan Nadu has done in this area, but
my motivation here draws on some real-world experience long before I discover Linux.
My first ever IT teaching post was as a support teacher for the Royal National Institute
for the Blind College in Red Hill Surrey in the UK.
This was back in 2000, when George, the proprietary screen reader, was at its height, Windows software
dominated, and blind users navigated their way around their PC's and applications by
learning and then memorizing hundreds of keystrokes.
For the time I worked there, I learnt much about the issues and day-to-day struggles blind
and partially sighted people face ordinarily, not just in the year of IT.
What I'm really getting at here is, could a voice recording not be a quick way to produce
shows for HPR particularly when stocks are low?
I know HPR prefer original content, and this should take priority, but could we not kill
two birds with one stone as the saying goes?
By grabbing a piece of Creative Commons text, be it an article, tutorial, or any other
topic of interest to the HPR community, and produce an audio version as an HPR show.
That way we keep the show stocks afloat and help the accessibility calls at the same time.
My fifth and last reason is that I actually use KD now as my main desktop.
I run the KD version of Linux Mint 17.1.
I wasn't always a KD user, only making the permanent switch when Mint 17 was released.
Yes, KD has its critics, and I've been a Linux user long enough to have heard about
most of its faults.
My main reason for switching to KDE, well not so much a reason, but more a realization,
is that for me, many of its core apps are better than the known equivalents.
DigiCam, KDN Live, KB3, Kriter, K Snapshot, Acooler, USB Image Writer, and Stick 4 matter
are amongst my favourites.
Also, you don't have to get lost in all the configuration options if you don't want
to.
I don't.
I only learn as much, or as goes deep into the desktop as I need to to get my work done.
I think more.
Anyway, that's enough of the introduction stuff.
Due to the length of the article, I'm going to split it into two separate HPR shows.
So here's part one of the awesomely epic guide to KDE.
Linux Voice, issue 2, pages 86-91, the awesome epic guide to KDE, written by Graham Morrison
and read by Gettyspeert.
Desktop's on Linux, they're a concept completely alien to users of other operating systems, because
they've never having to think about them.
Desktop's must feel like the abstract idea of time, to the Amadoa tribe, a thought that
doesn't have any use until you're of a different environment.
But here it is.
On Linux, you don't have to use the graphical environment, lurking beneath your mouse cursor.
You can change it for something completely different.
If you don't like Windows, switch to XMond.
If you don't like full screen apps, try to know.
And if you'd rather the most powerful and configurable point and click desktop, there's
KDE.
KDE is wonderful, as they all are in their own way.
But in our opinion, KDE in particular suffers from poor default configuration and a rather
elusive learning curve.
This is doubtably frustrating, first because it has been quietly growing more brilliant
over the last couple of years.
And secondly, because KDE should be the first choice for users unhappy with their old
desktop.
In particular, Windows 8 users pining for an interface that makes more sense.
But fear not, we're going to use a decades worth of KDE firefighting to bring you the
definitive guide to making KDE look and function slightly more like how you might expect it
to.
We're not going to look at KDE's applications other than perhaps dolphin.
We're instead going to look at the functionality in the desktop environment itself.
And while our guinea pig distribution is going to be mangeo4, as found on this month's
DVD, this guide will be equally applicable to any recent KDE desktop running from almost
any distribution.
So don't let the mangeo background put you off.
A great first target for getting your system looking good is its selection of fonts.
It used to be the case that many of us would routinely copy fonts across from a Windows
installation, getting the professional aerial and Helvertica font rendering that was missing
from Linux at the time.
But it's still worth finding a font you prefer, as there are now so many great alternatives
to choose between.
The best source of free fonts we've found is www.fontsquirrel.com.
It hosts a Roboto, Roboto's slab and Roboto condensed typefaces used throughout this magazine.
And also on the Nexus 5 smartphone, Roboto was developed for use in the ice cream sandwich
version of the Android mobile operating system.
Through type fonts, with their .tdf file extensions, I incredibly easy to install from KDE.
Download the zip file, right click and select something from the extract menu.
Now all you need to do is drag a selection across the true type fonts you want to install
and select install from the right click actions menu.
KDE will take care of the rest.
Another brilliant thing about KDE is that you can change all the fonts at once.
Open the system settings panel and click on application appearances, followed by the
fonts tab and click on adjust all fonts.
Now just select font from the selector.
Most KDE applications will update with your choice immediately, while other applications
such as Firefox will require a restart.
Either way, it's a quick and effective way of experimenting with your desktop's usability
and appearance.
I'd recommend either open sands or the thinner, all-er fonts.
I candy.
One of KDE's secret features is that backgrounds can be dynamic.
We don't find much use for this when it comes to the desktops that tell us the weather
from outside the window, but we do like backgrounds that dynamically grab images from the internet.
With most distributions, you'll need to install something for this to work.
This search for Plasma wallpaper in your distributions package manager.
Our favourite is PlasmaWallpaper.potd, as this installs easily across to updateable
wallpaper images from a variety of sources.
Changing the desktop background is easy with KDE, but it's not intuitive.
Magia, for example, defaults to using Fold of you as this is closer to the traditional
desktop, where files from the desktop folder in your home directory are displayed on
the background and a whole desktop works like a file manager.
Right-click and select Folder settings if this is the view you are using.
Alternatively, KDE defaults to desktop, where the background is clear, apart from any widgets
you add yourself, and files and folders are considered links to the sources.
The menu item in this mode is labeled desktop settings.
The View Configuration panel that changes the background is the same however, and you
need to make your changes in the wallpaper drop-down menu.
We'd recommend Picture of the Day as the wallpaper and the Astronomy Picture of the Day as
the image source.
Another default option we think is crazy is the blue glow that surrounds the active window.
While every other desktop uses a slightly deeper drop shadow, KDE's active window looks
like it's bathed in radioactive light.
The solution to this lies in the default theme, and this can be changed by going to KDE's
system settings, control panel, and selecting workspace appearance.
On the first page, which is labeled Window Decorations, you'll find that Oxygen is nearly
always selected, and it's the theme that contains the option to change the blue glow.
Just click on the Configure Decorations button, flip to the Shadows tab and disable active
window glow.
Alternatively, if you'd like active windows to have a more pronounced shadow, change the
inner and outer colors to black.
You may have seen the option to download wallpapers for example, from within a KDE window,
and you can see this now by clicking on the Get New Decorations button.
Themes are subjective, but our favourite combination is currently the Chrome Window Decoration.
It looks identical to Google's default theme for its browser, with the Aya desktop theme.
The term desktop theme is a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn't encapsulate every setting
as you might expect, instead it controls how generic desktop elements are rendered.
The most visible of these elements is the Launch Panel, and changing the desktop theme
will usually have a dramatic effect on its appearance, but you'll also notice a difference
in the Widget system.
The final graphical flourish we'd suggest is to change the icon set that KDE uses.
There's nothing wrong with the default Oxygen set, but there are better options.
Unfortunately, this is where the Get New Themes download option often fails, probably
because icon packages are large and can overwhelm the personal storage pace often reserved
for projects like this.
We'd suggest going to KDE-Fundlook.org and browsing its icon collections.
Open up the icons panel from KDE's system settings.
Click on the icons tab, followed by install theme file, and point to the requester at the
location of the archive you just downloaded.
KDE will take it from there and add the icon set to its list in the panel.
Try Kotenser for a flat theme, or keep an eye on Nitrux development.
The panel.
Our next target is going to be the panel at the bottom of the screen.
This has become a little dated, especially if you're using KDE on a large or higher resolution
display.
So our first suggestion is to re-scal and center it for your screen.
The key to move in screen components in KDE is making sure they're unlocked, and this
is accomplished by right-clicking on the plasma cashew in the top right of a display where
the current activity is listed.
Only when widgets are unlocked can you resize the panel and even add new applications
from the launch menu.
With widgets unlocked, click on the cashew on the side of the panel, followed by more
settings, and select center from panel alignment.
With this enabled, you can resize the panel using the sliders on either side, and the panel
itself will always stay in the middle of your screen.
Just pretend you're working on indentation on a word processor and you'll get the idea.
You can also change its height when the sliders are visible by dragging the center height
widget, and to the left of this you can drag the panel to a different edge on your
screen.
The top edge works quite well, but many of KDE's applets don't work well when stacked vertically
or on the left or right edges of the display.
There are two different kinds of task manager applets that come with KDE.
The default displays each running application as a title bar in the panel, but this takes
up quite a bit of space.
The alternative task manager displays only the icon of the application, which we think
is much more useful.
Magia defaults to the icon version, but most others, and KDE itself, prefer the title
bar applet.
To change this, click on the cache you're getting and hover over the old applets so that
the X appears.
Then click on this X to remove the applet from the panel.
Now click on add widgets, find the two task managers, and drag the icon version onto
your panel.
You can rearrange any other applets in this mode by dragging them to the left and right.
By default, the icon only task manager will only display icons for tasks running on the
current desktop, which we think is counterintuitive.
As it's more convenient to see all of the applications you may have running and to quickly
switch between whatever desktops on which they may be running with a single click.
To change this behavior, right click on the applet and select the settings menu option
and the behavior tab in the next window.
Deselect only show tasks from the current desktop, and perhaps only show tasks from the
current activity if you use KDE activities.
Another alteration we like to make is to reconfigure the virtual desktops applet from
showing four desktops as two times two, which doesn't look too good on a small panel
to four times one.
This can be done by right clicking on the applets, selecting paid settings, and then clicking
on the virtual desktops tab and changing the number of rows to one.
Finally, there's the launch menu.
Magia has switched this from the new style of application launcher to the old style
originally seen in Microsoft Windows.
We prefer the former because of its search field, and the two can be switched by right click
in the icon and selecting the switch to menu option.
If you find the hover selection action of this mode annoying, we are moving the mouse
over one of the categories automatically selects it.
You can disable it by right clicking on the launcher, selecting launcher settings from
the menu and disabling switch tabs on hover from the general settings page.
It's worth reiterating that many of these menu options are only available when the widgets
are unlocked, so don't despair if you don't see the correct menu entry at first.
Activities
No article on KDE would be complete without some discussion on what KDE calls activities.
In many ways activities are a solution waiting for a problem.
There are meta virtual desktops that allow you to group desktop configuration and applications
together.
You may have an activity for photo editing for example, or one for working and another
for the internet.
If you've got a touchscreen laptop, activities could be used to switch between an Android
style app launcher, that's the search and launch mode from the desktop settings panel,
and the regular desktop mode.
We use a single activity as a default for screenshots for instance, while another activity
switches everything to the file manager desktop mode.
But the truth is that you have to understand what they are before you can find a way of
using them.
Some installations of KDE will include the activity applets in the toolbar.
This red, blue and green dots can be clicked on to open the activity manager, or you can
click on the plasma cache you in the top right and select activities.
This will open the bar at the bottom of the screen, which lists activities installed and
primed on your system.
Clicking on any will switch between them as we're pressing the Meta key, usually the Windows
key and tab.
We'd suggest that finding a fast way to switch between activities, such as a keyboard shortcut
or with the activity bar widget, is the key to using them more.
With the activity manager open, clicking on create activity lets you either clone the
current desktop at a blank desktop or create a new activity from a list of templates.
Clone works well if you want to add some default applications to the desktop of your current
setup.
To remove an activity switch to another one and press the stop and delete buttons from
the activity manager, activities let you quickly switch between different desktop modes,
such as the search and launch mode, which is ideal for tablets.
And that's the end of part 1 of the awesomely epic guide to KDE.
Hope you join me again for part 2.
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