[SOLVED] Showing removable media on the desktop

[tarazed]

Moving a little further up the KDE4 learning curve. I logged in to KDE on a different machine and was presented with a blank screen to which I had to add a panel manually (classic) and then populate with various icons. So far so good but how do you get removable media to show up automatically on the desktop? Googling and trying various system menus and configuration dialogues drew a blank. Currently a DVD and a USB drive are mounted. I can access the USB drive via konsole; it is mounted at the usual /run/media/lcl/whatever. In GNOME an icon appears on the desktop whenever a removable drive is attached and that has a right-click menu containing a umount command, which is the most convenient way to unmount. This precise subject does not appear to have affected anyone else in the forums. I did do a couple of searches and look at the FAQ.

[jiml8]

You need to add a device notifier. Right-click anyplace on the desktop and select "add widgets". If widgets are locked, select "unlock widgets" first.

One of your choices will be a device notifier. Click and drag this where you want it on your desktop, or onto your toolbar.

I believe a device notifier is provided by default in the system tray, so if you have a system tray defined you should already have one. If not, that is how you get it.

[tarazed]

Thanks for that information. There was a device notifier on the panel already, which I had looked at, but that is not what I was looking for. In GNOME each removable medium is represented by an icon on the desktop which provides a right-click menu including unmount or eject. This appears as soon as the device is attached or plugged in and disappears when the device is removed. I note that there is a configuration menu for actions with device notifier but there seems to be no way to add unmount or eject.

[OT by way of background] I am a long time user of GMOME (Classic) and have been exploring the possibility of running KDE in a way familiar and comfortable to me. After a week of experimenting my conclusion is that KDE is much less user-friendly than GNOME nor as intuitive. On the other hand it does some things well, like the rendering of fonts, and Phonon delivers good sound.

[doktor5000]

Why would you want icons on the desktop, which is normally covered by windows, if you can have one icon in the systray?
I fail to see how the gnome way is more intuitive. You plug a pen-drive in, and device notifier pops up - which you can easily configure to automount.

[tarazed]

Automount works fine without my doing anything. I am used to the floating icons for each medium but as you say the device notifier does the job better. I did not realize that the upward arrow provides the safe dismount. So, I stand corrected.

I withdraw my general off-topic comment about user-friendliness but there are things which I find over-complicated, like adding my own applications to the panel. I still have difficulty remembering how to do it after a gap of a few days; have to review forum messages and such. And I still have to get a handle on how to resize windows at will.

[jiml8]

In KDE you can configure EVERYTHING...to an absurd extent. This can make it seem user-unfriendly, but you can usually just accept the defaults and be fine.

Curiously, I have never liked gnome because I found it limited, clunky, and (lol) user-unfriendly.

Different strokes for different folks.

[tarazed]

Quite so. And Linux caters for all of them.

Time to close this thread then. My thanks to everybody.

[doktor5000]

And I still have to get a handle on how to resize windows at will.

Try dragging window title bar to screen edges and corners.
Upper edge = fullscreen
left & right edge = half screen
left & right upper corner = quarter screen
You'll also see a window frame during dragging so you'll see what happens before you let go off the mouse.

Apart from that, normal window buttons also work, you can resize as usually, and overall kwin is probably
one of the most configurable window mangers.

[tarazed]

Dragging konsole by the title bar does not seem to work the way described. The whole window moves as a unit until it almost disappears off-screen, just as in GNOME, but sometimes changes size at the top corners, maybe once in ten tries. The ghost frame does appear on those occasions before button release as you said. Not all that useful for me anyway. The usual corner dragging behaviour works fine as I am sure it does for other native applications. My assessment of terminal is that as it is not native to KDE kwin overrides the default size (80x24) and although it seems to know what that is, reduces the window to some minimum size on initial placement and provides the grab handles for resizing. Using the panel icon to configure terminal by editing the Application tab results in the same behaviour. i.e. edit the command line to fix the size, for instance

Code: Select all

gnome-terminal --geometry 84x48

The same command in a konsole gives the same result; the specified initial size is overridden.

Of course, as konsole is available, why use terminal? If I did commit to KDE, konsole would definitely be preferable. It has the tab function for a start.

Disclaimer:
All this is a long way from the original subject and really deserves its own thread. Also, I hope that airing the difficulties I have been experiencing will help anybody else making the transition from GNOME Classic to KDE.