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

Using other people's software is a lot like going exploring in the real world. You don't know what you might find and once you find it you don't know how you might use it productively.

...

I hope in making these posts to help others find ways to use software productively, just as I find hints on other sites. I also hope that maybe, occasionally, someone writing software I use will have a new, useful idea as the result of some comment I make.

So, I don't mean to be negative. And yet, pointing out features and bugs that are "deficiencies" in the context of my use of software can't help but come across negatively. Someone works mega, mega hours writing an application. Then I try it and say I don't like it. Ouch!

I tend to switch to the "latest" programs when I find out about them, because my experience over the years has been that older software is abandoned and newer software evolves to have the necessary features of the next gen. But ... the switch always involves giving up something, especially in the earliest iterations.

When Win95 came out, I was using Desqview and Lantastic. On the old, old, old hardware, that was cleaner and faster. And very shortly thereafter Desqview and Lantastic were irrelevant. The cludginess of Win95 was less apparent on newer, more capable computers. And, the built in tools solved memory management and networking problems with virtually no manual intervention.

The transition to KDE4 is proving to be a similar experience. This has become more obvious to me because (as mentioned in a prior post) I put an Arch/Chakra distro on an old computer. The old computer does not have enough juice to run plasma adequately. (As far as I can tell, this is mostly from the amount of paging that must take place because of the 256 meg. limitations of memory in the old machine -- I could not achieve any speed benefits using iceWM over plasma on my more capable computers.)

In any event, I've got this old, old computer running iceWM (along with all the kde 3.5 and kde 4.2 packages). It's reminding me that I don't really need the glitz of plasma for anything. In fact, as I've learned to customize iceWM, I find myself noticing features that are becoming obsolete and thinking, "hmmm...this is sort of more convenient."

I've got some nice desktop widgets via google gadget, I've got a cpu graph in the panel, courtesy of iceWM; I've got temperature and uptime overview via the Kima applet to KDE 3.5 kicker. I've got good menus and panel icons via KDE 3.5 kicker.

Since I have both KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.2 installed (and as necessary for features I want, Gnome apps.) I have the front line apps, such as Okular.

Lastly, using the infadel theme, I've got a window theme I like a lot -- and that added benefit that it has "window shade" and "hide" buttons for the windows.

I was just noticing that it is easier to move icons around on the kicker panel than on a plasma panel.

Hmmmm. The amazing thing is that I am successfully using a PIII computer with only 256 megs of ram -- and it is running adequately so that I don't immediately switch over to my "good" computer all the time. There is a bit of lag when I switch programs and the CPU maxes to 100%. The temps run pretty high when not idling -- but have been doing so on this computer for years, without cpu death.

And yet, despite high satisfaction with this setup, I'm running KDE 4.2 on my "good" computer. Because, I anticipate this is where the new features are going to appear.

Well, a big "thank you" to the programmers building the new apps; to the guys who have gotten tired of the hard work and moved on from maintaining the apps I have been using over the years; and thank you to the guys who build the apps I don't even use. Because all of this work contributes to moving forward our collective knowledge of how to achieve efficient computing results.

Thank you for visiting and have a pleasant tomorrow.