Hey Penguinbait,

The more I play with KDE, the more inclined I am to go the way PCQ, and make KDE my exclusive 'environment'. It does eem to have everything I need and, indeed, includes most everything I wanted in the IT when I bought it.

Of course, the first place I started was customizing the desktop, so I quickly discovered the .jpg/.png issue, but almost as quickly, I was in Krita converting them to see if it worked. And it does, slowly but surely. What I thought was really cool was the fact that when I'm online, there's an option to download interesting new backgrounds! Making it possible to use .jpgs for the background would eliminate a step when getting new backgrounds this way.

Next I started messing with the themes, and found way more options than I know what to do with, which is a good thing! I settled on Atlas Green, I think, and proceeded to add all the bells and whistles like animated icons whne the app is opening, applet handles, etc. If there is a performance cost for enabling these bits o eye candy, I haven't noticed it.

Right away, I had the common issue with the window size and finding the buttons at the bottom, but with your and PCQ's guidance, figured out how to use the pager. It works, of course, but it would be nice if all windows were simply the right size.

Next I went to messing with the panels, adding one for applications at the top and removing things from the one on the bottom. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I accidentally 'locked' my panel and need a right-click to get i back, which I did via VNC, but it would be nice to use a mouse. This I know is imminent, if not already possible

I also removed the connection applet that was built-in, and when I figured out how to put it back using the 'add non-KDE app' function, I was successful in getting it to work, but the icon became a generic little 'cog'. It'd be nice to customize this the way you did.

The three apps I really want to use are Kword, Kspread and Krita, and of the three, two are working perfectly, albeit a bit slowly. Kspread is the one that doesn't work quite right yet, for me at least. I am able to open the app, but when I try to open my inventory files, stored as multiple sheet excel (.xls) files, the app simply 'hangs'. This is a key issue for me because spreadsheets are one of things I intend to use my tablet for, and so far, I haven't got a way to do it. In os07, I was using Gnumeric, but hasn't been adequately ported to the new OS (though Chelli is working on it.

Finally, till now, I have been using GPE as my PIM, with Erminig to snyc to my Google calendar, which is my primary interface. Do you know if there is a way to sync my Google calendar to my KDE calendar? If so, the coup is complete. I may never go back to Maemo!

That's my two cents for now. I hope this is helpful. PCQ is by far the more helpful in giving practical advice, but I will continue to test and report findings if that's useful to you.

For no apparent reason, they've removed Python as a stand-alone runtime.
apt-get install Python got me Python 2.4, which is of no use.
The Python 2.5 upgrade link at Maemo.org won't work on it.
You have to find an app that needs it,
and has the dependencies and whatever set right.
I tried a half dozen before I tried Canola, which gets Python.
Many apps will either refuse to install or install and not work,
because there's no Python.
Anyway, sorry for the rant.
Install Canola, install battery-status, and uninstall Canola.

Oy. So I just did that, ran battery-status, and it doesn't work.

Look at kitchensync

The google calendar sync is there, but it requires python

It may also require some help, I have never tried to use it before though.

Please let me know if its working, I may have to walk you through setting up again once python is installed in order to work, so let me know..

OK, Python is happening.
I must have just munged the install trying different things.

It's in maemo Extras.

gainroot
apt-get install python2.5-runtime

battery-status is in

Catalog name: Olya.com Maemo Repository
Web address: http://olya.com
Distribution:
Components: user

It works.

I'm about to check it out in more depth. In a quick check earlier today, I found a google 'piece' of the puzzle in the organizer/calendar but haven't got very far yet.

I have python runtime 2.5 installed, thanks to Erminig. Will that be sufficient, you think? Well, I'll soon find out. Thanks for the offer to help...I may well take you up on it tomorrow.

Cheers!

In case this is still an issue, I noticed in another thread
this magic spell. With root privileges, run this command:

renice 0 `pidof mmcqd`

Music and videos play *much* better for me now

(a little experimentation suggests that a nice value of +5
is even better, but it might just be the placebo effect )