KDE mod 4.1 on Arch Linux…
Finally, after listening to all the babbling about kde mod on arch linux, the one that would have left the Donkey ( The legendary donkey in Shrek, played (given voice to) by Eddie Murphy ) feeling like a complete newbie, I decided to install KDE 4.1 on arch linux.
The first time I ever used linux was when I used the LIVE CD of knoppix. It was version 3.2 and I had liked KDE a lot at that time. I played with and used KDE for some time and then moved to Gnome. Then I liked the simplicity of Gnome and the fast execution speed. KDE 3.5 used to hog a lot on my system. I had almost stopped using it until I came across the KDE in openSUSE 10.3. I used that for a few months and then again backed off and used Gnome. It still ran very slow on my system. In openSUSE 11.0, I used KDE 4.0 and I liked it a lot. (Well, once the initial excitement wears off… it is YADE -> Yet Another Desktop Environment). It still was a lot buggy but surprisingly faster than KDE 3.5. I decided to use 4.x when it would become stable… And in the darkness of Gnome I waited (Am I reading too many fantasy stories these days?). In the mean while, I moved to Arch linux for some time and heard about KDEmod. KDEmod is a modular and tweaked package set of the K Desktop Environment that has been optimized for Arch Linux. Being modular, it is very fast as compared to the normal version. I can feel the difference. Another reason might be that now I am using 4.1 which is supposed to be a lot stable than 4.0.
So, I probed around and got many replied that KDEmod is faster than the normal (vanilla) KDE you get. This much speed with all the eye candy and heavy graphics. So, I am loving it…
One problem that I found with KDE 4 was that the GTK applications all looked as if they were from the Charles Babage era… Okay, maybe not so back in time, but certainly something like win 95 apps. It looked so bad. So I probed around and found the answer. The answer is, gtk-qt-engine-kde4. That application can make GTK applications look a little good on KDE than what they do by default.
You’ll need to log out of KDE for the new options to appear. Once you’re logged back in, open System Settings and select Appearance and then GTK Styles and Fonts. Select the Use my KDE style in GTK applications option. Click Apply, and log out to make the changes take effect. And you are done. Still the applications do not look anywhere close to what the qt applications look, but it is a significant (very) improvement.
So, I am off to enjoying KDE 4 as for now… Will dig more and more, deeper and deeper and see if it really can be a replacement of Gnome for me…
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Arch, Linux, openSUSE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
