KDE/Ideas/11.1

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openSUSE provides a solid KDE desktop experience, but there is certainly room for improvement. Please share your ideas how to improve our KDE desktop in upcoming releases with us.

Keep the entries short and sign them (pre-last editor icon). Packages wishes (except for default setup inclusion) belong to the KDE packages wishlist.

Entries should get a priority assigned after discussion, similarly like in the Bugzilla (in short: P1 - important, P2 - should be in the next release, P3 - normal, P4 - low priority).

General

• DONE Target KDE 4.1.2 and KDE 3.5.10 releases. As with the 11.0 release, both versions should get some love.
• There needs to be some discussion as whether or not to include KDE 4 apps in the KDE 3 release. This really needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis. The new release of digiKam has many new features, in the KDE 4 version for instance.
• WIP Make it very easy and automatic for the user to send useful crash reports. For example, at the first crash of an application, try to install the -debug package from the repository. Then, at the next crash, generate the report and just ask the user "Send" "Don't send". Nothing more, the user should not be annoyed with a more complicated procedure. Packages in the UNSTABLE repositories should include -debug packages by default.
• Consolidate and reorganize KDE repositories. Not only are there too many repositories, but the organizational structure needs some rethinking. At the top level we have Backports, Community, Playground and Support. Yet these structures are then mimiced under KDE 3 and KDE 4. Why have both KDE:/KDE4:/UNSTABLE:/Desktop/openSUSE_Factory/ and KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop/openSUSE_Factory/ Why have KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop/openSUSE_11.0/ ? This is confusing. Apparently Factory here doesn't mean Factory.
• (P5 - needs more input) There are many popular and useful service menu additions I find myself installing from kde-look.org and there should be some discussion on including some of these.
• KDE's bugzilla already includes a list of the most requested features. The KDE community has already spoken out on what they'd most like to see in future versions. Any discussion on KDE ideas should involve going over such lists.
• Examine the patches and work in KDEMod which is a very impressive KDE desktop implementation (Note: It is a collection of various patches and we already ship at least some of those. Also, they seem to be all KDE3 related, so many of these should be upstreamed for KDE4.)
• If possible, help develop a failsafe element into KDM like GDM's failsafe mode.
• Make it easier to share your own "userdata" like (new/saved) mail, address data, bookmarks data, music/photo and film data between various concurrent openSUSE installations like 10.3-kde, 11.0-kde3.5.9 and 11.0-kde4.0.4. E.g via a shared "userdata" partition and easy set up via PersonalSettings/SystemAdmin/Path/e.g DocumentPath or via user related application configuration like it is done for Amarok and Digikam

KDE3 Desktop

• Domino widgets with custom gradients to complement openSUSE color scheme.
• Improved icons in KDE3. There are several quality icon sets out there like Crystal, Vista-Inspirate and Breathless. Oxygen for KDE3 would prove consistent with the KDE4 offering, but perhaps with better folder icons.
• Consistent color scheme. The bright blue colors contrast with the serene greens. I'd love to see a consistent soft color scheme featuring green, light green, cream and perhaps some earthy suede or tan colors.
• Better theming for kicker/panel. Kicker supports backgrounds and textures.
• Ktux screensaver for KDE3.
• What about an openSUSE specific screensaver?
• (?? it is the same like the KDE4 one) Improved KDE 3 splash, though all the best ones require ksplash-engine-moodin. Edit/Update: packman packagers package ksplash-engine-moodin

Plasma

• WIP (P1) Native kde4 knetworkmanager / plasma applet. It seems the plasmoid has seen more work recently, and may be the way to go.
• (P2) Native kde4 kpowersave / plasma applet
• (P3) Work on kickoff a bit, like item reorganisation in "Favorites" using drag and drop
• (P2 - needs more input) Try pushing the plasma team to do get on par with 3.5 first, the taskbar still is in a sorry state, but insane features and plasmoids get added every day (in answer to "needs more input": tasks should be displayed in more than one row if the panel is height enough, grouping of tasks in the taskbar)
• DONE (P3) Include a spacer widget that will take up all available space in the panel, e.g. create a panel with a menu button and a system tray. There is no current way of getting the menu button on the left and the system tray on the right without introducing something like the pretty task manager to fill the gap between them. --scottn 08:21, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[scottn]
• Better handling of multiple displays, whether using xinerama, twinview, separate screens. Afaik only Xinerama is currently somewhat supported, other setups should be supported too - like twinview, or two seperate screens/desktops cb400f
• (P1) Consider a different default plasma theme, maybe even a custom plasma theme. Aya recognizes the system color scheme which is rather nice, but it is rather thick, and dull. Looking over the popular/highly-rated themes on kde-look.org I see a trend of either heavily translucent themes, thin themes, and sharp accents. These concepts could be applied to the base of Aya, so that a sharp looking theme could be produced that still recognizes the system color scheme. Arezzo looks promising. The reflection effect in Silicon is pretty nice as well.
• DONE (P1) Option to have panels hide automatically until mouse touches some border of the screen.cb400f
• DONE (P3) Decide a gameplan for folder view. The folderview-as-a-containment is not slated to support full theming and wallpaper until 4.2.
• DONE The inclusion of something along the lines of the branded kmenu icon from KDE 3.5.x in KDE 4.
• DONE Enlarge the panel height resize handle and make it more obvious - put a triangle on it so people know to try dragging it (Bille,Eknuf,cgoncalves)
• DONE Tooltip showing panel height in pixels (Eknuf)
• Digital clock applet: tooltip showing time for multiple timezone, configurable fontsize, width of the applet adjusts to width of the text to not waste space (cb400f)
• Taskbar: Configurable when it goes to two rows instead of one, default behaviour is not satisfactory (cb400f)
• Systray: Option to configure the order of systray icons, option to hide systray icon (even if the apps don't have the option)(cb400f)

Fonts

• Integration of liberation (or similiar) fonts to improve interoperability between openSUSE and Microsoft. Being able to migrate documents is a major threshold in converting users, not only in their existing documents, but also sharing documents both ways with Windows users.
• Sub-pixel hinting.

KWin

• DONE (P3) Cube effect for KWin cb400f
• DONE (P1) Option to have windows cover the panel benJIman

File management

• Better Ark integration with konq/dolphin context-menus (like kde3) cb400f Service Menu can be found here, but it looks like it is being developed upstream officially as well. Has been packaged in Packman here: http://packman.links2linux.de/package/kde4-ExtractAndCompress
• Rar, Ace and 7z support.
• Phonon-based preview/thumbnails for video files in konq/dolphin cb400f
• Preview of PO-files in konq/dolphin - displaying a nice pie diagram, (like in kde3 konq) cb400f

PIM

• openSUSE has roots in SLED which aims to be a premiere enterprise desktop. To that end, outstanding PIM tools are a vital component of the desktop experience.
• Integrate sync functions out of the box with popular hardware like iPhones and Blackberry devices.
• Improve integration with Exchange out of the box.
• I'm not sure what state Sonnet was in, but it promised some interesting features such as language detection. This could be incredibly useful in communication applications like kopete, kmail, etc.

Apps

• Help port major apps like KOffice, Digikam, Kaffeine, K3b, BasKet if they need it to be ready for 11.1 cb400f
• (P3) Does any respectable xesam(strigi) ui exist yet? cb400f
• (P4 - unless somebody manages to make it actually work reliably) gtk-qt-engine installed and activated by default for both KDE3 and KDE4.
• yakuake installed and configured as default terminal.
• KSynaptics or TouchFreeze

Other

• Firefox-integration (useful file dialog, understand about KDE apps, Oxygen theme, or KDE4 + Firefox3 ) and check-out/experiment with the new mozilla-qt branch of Firefox.
• (P4) Update YaST to use the Oxygen theme on KDE4
• Get Klash (Konq plugin for Gnash) packaged, it's absent in 11.0 gnash package for some reason.
• KDE4 integration for OOo (filedialog, Oxygen icons)
• (needs more input) Improve remote desktop implementation in KDE. There are configuration options available both in KDE and Yast, and neither provide much info nor fully implement a good remote solution. There are plenty out there (SSH, NX, VNC, etc).
• Compiz-fusion out of the box. Sabayon has an acceleration-manager app that starts on the first boot to allow the user to choose if they want the effects and enable them.
• (P4) At present it is possible to uninstall/upgrade applications from the gnome slab menu in opensuse 11.0. Will it be possible to add the same functionality to the KDE4 Kicker? This will enable users to right click on an application in the menu and select uninstall, and the packagemanager should open and uninstall the corresponding application.

Applications missing on KDE4

applications where the kde3 equivalent is better or the kde4 one is missing

Default Installation

• Amarok - 2.0 Beta 1 exists
• DigiKam - 0.10 is currently in beta
• K3b
• Kaffeine (Dragonplayer not quite same level)
• KNetworkManager
• Konversation
• KPowersave
• Kerry

In Distribution

• BasKet (Kelvie started porting it, see http://github.com/kelvie/basket/tree/master)
• KBabel (LoKalize is getting good, but still lacks some features)
• Kdesvn
• KDVI (Okular has no inverse search, only tested with 4.0.4)
• KDevelop
• Kile
• Kopete-OTR
• KOffice - only 2.0 Beta 1 exists
• Quanta+ (is splitted of from kdewebdev3)
• q/ksynaptics - possibly replace with touchfreeze (qt4 systray thingy), see http://qsynaptics.sourceforge.net

Not in Distribution

• Apollon