Desktop Environments and Window Managers
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KDE Desktop
KDE4x series (current 4.2.2 in Mandriva 2009 Spring) is one of the most innovative and "exciting" deskop environments.KDE4 is known for being the bleeding edge, new, and a beautiful desktop that brings linux head to head with MAC and Windows in eye candy.In expense, some say KDE4 by design harder to use for many people who struggle with the computer due to its complexness.KDE4 has been criticized for stability problems (although as the new versions come more problems are solved) and been criticized for being a "system hog".
KDE Tip Tricks and Tweaks
One of the things I hated in Windows and Mac is that they have decided what looks good in a desktop and you have to live with it (barring color changes, wallpaper and 3rd party software that you have to purchase 6 times over 2 years to finally get something that doesn't make your box unstable and require a gig of ram to run.) To that end I've run KDE since the pre-1.0 days. (like about 0.1 when it was !FreeBSD only.) So here come some tricks. You can find user-contributed Tips & Tricks for KDE4 on the KDE4 Tips and Tricks page.
KDE 4.2.2 Power Management Tweaks Mandriva 2009 Spring
To save money on the power bill or to save battery on your laptop trip this may help you keep your computer "greener"
Open up "Configure your desktop" on the bottom panel, click on "display", then power control, enable power display management.I would leave standby alone on disabled, and turn Suspend to 10 minutes, and turn off at 30 minutes (don't do this if you are doing major downloads or installs and you leave the computer alone, otherwise leave it so) Then select "gamma" turn your gamma down, gamma is the brightness, and the more light coming out, the more power you are burning.
Next, go to Desktop in the control panel, turn off screen saver, screen saver doesn't "save" your screen in any way shape or form, it burns energy, its more of a presentation for mandriva.
Next, go to the "advanced" tab, select "power management" select "when on battery power" select "aggressive powersave" (if you are more for the save power no matter what, then select "powersave" for AC Adapter)
If you find your screen blanking within a few seconds or minutes without your having it set to, then follow these steps, then reboot:
- Start terminal or konsole.
- Type in: kwrite /home/youruser/.xinitrc - be sure to replace "youruser" with your actual user name.
- Insert a line at the end of the file, simply this: xset -dpms
- Save the file, and click off of it.
- Type exit in the konsole to exit it.
This could be due, in part, to 
Bug #50790, or could be also due to another bug for KDE4.
If your screen savers kick in even when you've set them to not run at all, or, if you just want to turn them off completely anyway, follow the steps above, except for the last line of the file, add xset s off .
Enjoy your "green" computer!
Changing to 12 hour clock from military time default
Mandriva out-of-box has kde configured to use military time, however many people are used to the 12 hour clock time.Simply go to "configure your computer" on the kde panel, regional and language, go to the time and dates tab, then select on time format to pH:MM:SS AMPM then click apply, log out, log back in, and there you go, the time you are used to.
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop for Linux/Un*x that puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things “just work”.
IceWM
This page contains info on the source files and links to the manual and FAQ. The manual is also available in /usr/share/doc if you have IceWM installed. And you should, as it is a very nice WM, especially in combination with ROX-Filer. Very customizable and very fast. Try it!
LXDE
LXDE is a very lightweight DE that has replaced iceWM in the light version of mandriva due to its ability to maintain attractiveness, ease of use, but still be very lightweight at the same time.
Other window managers
The other window managers in the Mandriva Linux distribution and 'contrib' include:
- AfterStep
- Enlightenment
- Blackbox
- Fluxbox
- Openbox
- Pekwm
- Ratpoison
- ROX
- Sawfish
- Waimea
- WindowMaker
- XFCE4
- Sugar
Support on Desktops and Window Managers
Login Managers
File Browse as Root
Sometimes there are files you need to alter but are in root permission, and in normal file browser it will give permission denied.Here is the fast way to bring up your root
KDE:Go to konsole or Gnome terminal
su -
type your password
for kde4
dolphin
for gnome
nautilus
Useful Links
- http://kde-look.org/: Themes and backgrounds for KDE users
- http://art.gnome.org/: Themes and backgrounds for GNOME users
- http://xphowto.lunarhub.com/: Using Xplanet as a desktop background (MDK 8.x/9.0)
