more quirks of lxde

By basd on Mar 27, 2010 | In linux, opensuse, lxde

My kde 4.4.1 install continues to exhibit weirdness -- such as ramping the cpu to near 100% at idle when the screen has shutdown in powersave mode.

...

Not acceptable.

So, I've been building lxde desktops on my computers that look as similar to my plasma layouts as possible, allowing me to use lxde desktops instead of plasma ones without having to re-learn where everything is.

The main annoyance, or time consumption, in this practice is getting the icons I need and assembling them on panels on the four edges of the screens. It's easy enough for applications with regular menu entries (just use an application bar and add the applications from the menu) but I have a number of customized scripts. What I have typically done is drag "desktop icons" I have created to launch the scripts to the panels.

This doesn't work in lxde, so I have to make custom menu items, which is time consuming, at least the first time out. The next problem is that icons don't always tanslate correctly to the panel. They will default to the gnome generic icon.

I solved some of my icon-aggravation by switching to the oxygen icon scheme. At least now I have familiar icons, at least for the most part. But, I'm still struggling to get my custom icons correct.

I also wanted drag'n'drop to the panel. Since I was already running kde 3 kicker at the top of the screen, I thought perhaps I could make a kicker panel for the left side of the screen, as opposed to an lxde panel, and drag'n'drop my custom icons here. This in fact works. But, then I realized I will have an extra kde3 panel when I log into the plasma desktop, which always has a left panel in my setup.

The other issue is that for some reason the kcontrol element for editing the panel has disappeared. Rather inconvenient, especially if I am creating new panels. The kickerrc can be edited manually, but I don't know the settings. So, if this is the state of the legacy on kicker, it appears that I will be losing kicker altogether shortly. Not too good to put my configuration in the hands of obsolete software.

With my 24 pixel panels, I found that 16x16 icons work best. Otherwise, I end up with random icons, such as the generic gnome launcher icon. Difficult then to differentiate which icon launches what...

At least the icons stay where I put them once I put them in the panel...