How is KDE4 supposed to be used ?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Saturday 04 October 2008 18:32, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is and has been a lot of grumbling about KDE4 from a number of
> > people including myself.  On the other hand, some people think its
> > great.
> >
> > I can't help but wonder if I am missing something on how its supposed to
> > be used.  Is there a guide or website that has a little tutorial
> > somewhere ?
>
> What exactly are you trying to do that you can't do?

How about auto-hiding the panel? It takes precious space on my 12" notebook 
screen. :-)

But I believe the OP's question is more on the lines of "what can KDE4 do that 
KDE3 cannot", ie. what is the precise benefit of this major rewrite of the 
code and a paradigm shift? I was tempted to ask this myself, but Linuxguy 
beat me to it. :-)

It is obvious that KDE4 is meant to be used with a different mindset (no icons 
on the desktop, desktop is not a folder, everything you can see is a window 
or a widget, etc...), but the question is actually *why* is it different and 
*how* is one supposed to think in order to make optimum usage of it. I 
believe some users are trying to forcibly configure it to behave like KDE3, 
and are frustrated by the process and the results. The "why" question is 
obvious somehow...

Note, I did some reading on the sugested websites that explain this in some 
sense, but I still fail to see the actual benefit of this paradigm shift. So 
I'd be grateful if someone explained this in a nutshell, and I believe this 
is what OP also wants. I also like it and use it on a daily basis, but 
somehow feel that I am missing the idea of how it is intended to be used.

Best, :-)
Marko