i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

There is nothing special about my layout, but I'm putting up a screenshot for those who may not be using KDE 4.2, or who might see something new they haven't come across yet.

...

Okay, so I have an obsession with weather.

Not really, but I like having the weather snapshot right on the desktop, which is the widget at the left. The expanded one in the middle is from the cairo-dock, and it (and the entire dock) typically auto-hide, so I pulled them up solely for this screenshot. (Clicking on one of the weather icons will give a short weather report for that day ...)

There are some nice photo display tools available; and the "comics" widget has matured considerably. But, I don't have any of these on this desktop because I never know who might be looking over my shoulder at my work computer.

Also, there is a whole set of "Google gadgets." I'm not sure what I think about these. They may be useful -- but at the same time, I'm wary about having my lot in life tied at the hip to Google.

On the right and at the bottom, I have plasma panels. I've made them "expandable" and "centered" them, so the size adjusts a bit, depending upon what I have included on the panels. Because this is a screenshot from an external monitor, you will see that I have crunched things a bit toward the top 2/3ds of the screen. That's because my laptop screen is a different shape, so the screen shortens up when using laptop only.

I have an analog clock (in the image, it's under the expanded cairo-dock), and then the system monitor at the right. The system monitor has various tools -- I have cpu usage and temperature open.

I like the graph, since it shows the pattern of cpu usage and temp over time. Icewm has a nice tiny graph in the panel, which I like though -- and quite frankly, I much prefer Kima of KDE 3.5 for the amount of info it can display via text in the panel. (I'm still debating whether I want to put KDE 3.5 kicker back on the desktop -- I had it running at the top, but I was down to using "only" the Kima applet and it seemed a bit redundant.)

I like Superkaramba Easy Monitor -- but it uses about 9% cpu to run it. This current KDE 4.2 plasma install has kicked the temp. up about 4 degs. F from where the computer was running before I upgraded. Idle cpu usage is staying at between 5%-10% (compared to 2%-6% running GNOME on top of KWin).

The other widgets are a calculator, a dictionary interface, a wireless signal strength indicator and the proverbial trash can.

(Oddly, my 586 machine is running cooler with the same basic install. This one is an X64.)

I mentioned in my last post that I was having issues with compiz and fusion icon (for my "kdomows" desktop). Problem solved, I added the XGL repository to Yast. (I assume OpSu users know where to find the repository list, but I'll mention that if you go to the main download page at OpenSuse.org, the links to the repositories are on the the left side of the page.)

I made a passing effort at setting up Akonadi (the new PIM system), but I don't know if I have accomplished anything, since I don't know where Akonadi fits into the overall scheme of things. Conceptually, it links together various PIM elements, databases, etc. -- but where do they go? Is KMAIL linking to Akonadi? Some other GUI. I confess to being lost. It will be nice if/when it can link up with my online Phprojekt groupware, (or some other groupware with the features I need), but I am probably dreaming of a place long ago and galaxies far away. (OTOH, KMAIL has a new glossier interface I wasn't expecting when I started it up.)

So, that's about it for the 4.2 upgrade, though I will be sulking until I can get the wireless connection to run.

I'm rather puzzled that wlan0 will fire up from the GNOME desktop, since it won't work from the YAST manager, which should be desktop neutral. But, whatever, at least I can get online.

In an effort to test whether I had a corrupted wireless script file or something, I tried the root account. This wouldn't be a "brand new account" -- but I very seldom log into root and I don't customize the desktop much. So, my thought was that it wouldn't have any legacy screw-ups, or at least no legacy screw-ups created by me. No luck.

I was a bit surprised to discover that although Plasma/KDE 4.2 ran just fine in the root account, it didn't come up with any panels or widgets at all! Weird. I had panels in the 4.1 version. The desktop did have the new KDE 4.2 blue-with-white-dots (I imagine they have a cooler name for it) desktop image. Odds are you will have noted from my screenshot that desktop images aren't high on my wishlist, but I give KDE folks kudos for having good visual sensibilities.

In any event -- my wireless connection was just as dead in the root account as it is in my regular user account.

Still waaaah!