The drop shadow glitches from 4.2 are gone from Kwin, but it seems as though they fixed it by regressing back to their earlier unmodifiable shadows. Nevertheless, I can live with that for now, and that is not the topic of this blog post.

The issue that I have on my mind is the problem with certain plasmoids in KDE that seem to take Plasma to its knees. What is supposed to happen when you drop a bad plasmoid onto the desktop or your panel is that a big red box with an “X” appears informing you that the plasmoid does not work.

Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is plasma crashes completely. Usually it restarts itself, and everything is fine. Still, it is shocking for a user who is not familiar with KDE or, even worse, new to Linux, to have their entire desktop disappear — even if momentarily. I am not a programmer, so I cannot offer any concrete solutions.

What I believe needs to done, however, is to isolate plasmoids so that the plasmoid itself crashes rather than the entire plasma desktop. I would much rather have a widget literally disappear and even uninstall itself with prejudice, than to have my desktop go black.

You would be hard-pressed to go anywhere or even watch television without hearing some reference to “Twitter”, “tweets”, or “tweeting”.  From your cousin in Iowa to Shaquille O’Neal, all types of people from all walks of life have taking a liking to Twitter.

Whether or not Twitter will become a technological standard as email or just a passing fad, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that if you want to use Twitter while it is hot, you will probably want some type of client so that you do not always have to open your web browser and go to Twitter.com.

For KDE there are a few options, but there is one that I have found to be superior to them all.  Keep reading, or if Twitter has convinced you that you can only process 140 characters of information at one time, scroll to the end of this article.

Read the rest at Make Tech Easier

One of the most innovative and simultaneously controversial features of KDE 4 is the Plasma widget, Folderview. Simply put, it allows a user to display the contents of a file system folder within a widget on the desktop.

Beyond just displaying files on your computer, Folderview can be used to launch applications, display remote file systems, filter large folders for particular types of files, or serve as a traditional desktop.

Read the rest at Make Tech Easier

May 6th, 2009. The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.2.3, another bugfix and maintenance update for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop. This is a monthly update to KDE 4.2. It ships with desktop workspace and many cross-platform applications such as administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, multimedia software, games, artwork, development tools and more. KDE’s award-winning tools and applications are available in more than 50 languages.

See the full announcement.