KDE is a great desktop environment suite, with two big assets from the start:

it's free sofware
it's based on the wonderful Qt toolkit

The current generation, kde4, is however full of irritating flaws, ludicrous loss of functionalities as compared to previous versions, pompous and useless design.

A typical atrocity is that instead of konqueror as a universal browser (a sort of emacs for whatever goes beyond text-editing), konqueror is now relegated to mere internet browsing and an atrocious so-called dolphin takes over for file browsing. This is a terrible mistake, I believe, going backward from the great insight of a universal browser.

Below I list some terrible problems and, whenever possible, a fix for them.

Problems and, may be, some solutions

If you have a better solution, please, contact me.

Hotkeys

There was a comfortable, powerful manager of hotkeys in previous versions of kde. Now it's rubbish. For most things, you have to edit the following file by hand:

.kde/share/config/kglobalshortcutsrc

An important thing that I refuse to negotiate about is circulating through virtual desktops with the keyboard. This is achieved with the following lines:

Switch One Desktop Down=Ctrl+Down,Ctrl+Down,Switch One Desktop Down
Switch One Desktop Up=Ctrl+Up,none,Switch One Desktop Up
Switch One Desktop to the Left=Ctrl+Left,Ctrl+Left,Switch One Desktop to the Left
Switch One Desktop to the Right=Ctrl+Right,Ctrl+Right,Switch One Desktop to the Right

The same but grabbing a window as you go along:

Window One Desktop Down=Ctrl+Shift+Down,Ctrl+Shift+Down,Window One Desktop Down
Window One Desktop Up=Ctrl+Shift+Up,Ctrl+Shift+Up,Window One Desktop Up
Window One Desktop to the Left=Ctrl+Shift+Left,Ctrl+Shift+Left,Window One Desktop to the Left
Window One Desktop to the Right=Ctrl+Shift+Right,Ctrl+Shift+Right,Window One Desktop to the Right

Problems and, may be, some solutions

Hotkeys

See also