How is KDE4 supposed to be used ?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Saturday 04 October 2008 23:05, Craig White wrote:
> Mini-applications that were formally known as desk accessories like
> calculators and stuff were relegated to applications and thus required
> more effort to launch.
>
> KDE and it's plasmoids are returning these 'widgets' to a functional
> space on the desktop and interfere and clutter the desktop workspace.
> Their thinking is that the desktop workspace be spared of file clutter
> in favor of space for useful widgets, launchers and of course,
> application windows.

This is an interesting point. If I understood correctly, the intended usage of 
the desktop is to put widgets/plasmoids around to have easy access to, say, 
calculator, battery status, clock, weather report, and such stuff, in 
addition to the panels and app launchers. Hmm... now I also understand why 
would one wish to rotate/zoom any given widget --- to organize all the 
widgets to suit ones needs and geometry of the screen, it seems.

This reminds me of WindowMaker, where there are no icons on the desktop, but 
the dock and stuff, with appropriate controls. To be honest, I agree that 
files actually should not be kept on the desktop, but rather in home 
directory. If one has more than 100 or so files, the clutter on the desktop 
becomes too big.

I would like to read more on philosophy of usage of KDE4 as compared to KDE3, 
but so far noone has given any pointers to this topic (at least in this 
thread)...

Best, :-)
Marko