not committed yet

   since my post four days ago i've managed to get mandriva 2010 w/ kde4 installed in virtualbox as a guest on a mandriva w/ gnome host. it seems to work well however i'm having second thoughts about committing myself to using it exclusively. actually i'm quite frustrated with it.
   it's really just a petty annoyance but it irritates me so much because there seems to be absolutely nothing i can do about it. i'm talking about pop-up tool tips or pop-up descriptions that POPUP when the cursor hovers over something. i hate these. i hate these with a passion. i find them totally useless, redundant, and very distracting. for example; moving the cursor to the X on a window title bar a yellow tool tip pops up and states "close window". no shit, sherlock. thanks for telling me what the X does. i seem to keep forgetting what it does and without the tool tip i wouldn't know how to close a window, duh!!!
   although the tool tips are everywhere an icon is they're just a minor irritation. it's the pop-up descriptions that really get my goat. all distros use tool tips and descriptions but kde4 seems to have taken them to a new level. an example of these is icons on the panel. hovering over the firefox icon causes a description to come up stating "firefox web browser web browser". uh duh, are you sure that's what the firefox icon does? and thanks for telling me that firefox web browser is indeed a web browser. the adding insult to irritation part is the way the pop-ups go away and pop up again as you move the cursor. it's like a pesky bug that keeps buzzing in your ears. i move the cursor to make it go away and forget what i was trying to do in the first place. to be even more irritating they often overlap adjacent information. i use the cursor to help focus my eye on reading something and a description overlaps the next line.
   i could just keep going on about how lame these are such as they often disappear when you do try read them because the timing isn't right. it's laughable to some extent how irritated i get but when it affects the overall experience then maybe something should be done to reduce the problem. i wish i knew what.
   here's an example of a pop-up description overlapping adjacent info. it merely repeats the text and covers up the next two lines. brilliant huh?


   i've got to get past this. i've wasted enough time fussing around with this stupid issue. if i were to commit myself at this point (to using the distro, not to an asylum, lol.) the next few things that would need to be done are; setting up the repos and installing some packages and setting up firefox.
   i've already tweaked a lot of desktop settings trying to turn off tool tips but i'm still not ready to commit at this time. when i get some of my favorite firefox addons installed then i'll be committed. the web is where i spend most of my time.
   so i'm still psyching myself up. my stated goal is to pretend this is all i have available. hopefully it gets better from here on in.

my kde4 adventure

   ok, let's get this show on the road. first i want to psych myself up. i'll do this by explaining what i know about and how i feel about kde4 up to this point. throughout this adventure i want to be able to express my thoughts and feelings and results without any derogatory insinuations or insults. i hope i can do this. in fact i'd like to say a thank you to all the GNU/Linux developers that work hard to provide us all with a great operating system. Thank You. if i do say something offensive then please try to grin and bear it and imagine that i'm just an old-skool hippie trying hard to adjust to new ways.
   as we all know kde took a left turn somewhere into some cosmic, intergalactic, subspace, timewarp, plasmoid, wormhole and caused a lot of folks to get lost and confused. many even got angry, very angry. i'm one of those that got mad also but i mostly bit my tongue and honestly tried to explore and use kde4. i started with one of the first nightly releases that came out with the opensuse distro. it wasn't very usable but it provided a nice introduction to where kde4 was going. each time a new release came out i tried it but usually got frustrated in a short period of time (about an hour). when the major distros started implementing it as the default desktop i knew i was going to have problems adjusting. that's when i got mad. so i stayed with mandriva 2008.1 kde 3.5.10.
   i just recently upgraded to mandriva 2010 with the gnome desktop but i'm not happy with it. i know there are other desktops i could try such as xfce or lxde but right now i'm just going to jump into the kde4 wormhole. that's how i got started with linux in the first place. i had linux installed but i kept booting into windows simply because it was familiar. finally i committed myself to stay in linux and learn how to do things or not do them till i learned how. it wasn't so hard and i've never looked back.
   so that's what i'm going to do with kde4. i'm going to create a virtual machine and stay committed to it. i know, a virtual machine doesn't sound like total commitment as the host will still be readily available but i don't feel like creating a dual boot scenario. i'll just have to discipline myself.
   one thing i want to do is document every little, teeny, tiny detail or issue i have with kde4. maybe i'll learn something along the way. one thing i don't want to do is sound like i'm an authority on using kde but rather how i try to deal with things. ok, let's go team, sisboomba. are we psyched yet?
   here's a shot of virtualbox that i'll be using for this. right off the bat i run into one of those little issues. i had to figure out how to close the about window, there's no buttons on the title bar. clicking anywhere inside the window will close it. seems kind of inconsistent to me.

over a year already?

   wow, where the heck have i been? i've been on twitter. has it really been over a year since i blogged something? yes time flies. so what brings me back? well i'm kind of tired of twitter and i feel the need to blog. well then, dear sir, blog something. ok, ok.
   now that i'm back i'm not sure what to start with. one thing that's on my mind is i'm thinking of creating a virtual machine for mandriva kde4 and locking myself into using it and only it. that's how i finally committed to linux and i've never looked back. this would be different though because i'd be going forth with a negative attitude.
   what can i say? i've explored it briefly and didn't like it. i've recently switched to gnome but i'm not really liking it either. so i'm stuck i guess. switch paradigms and use kde4 or throw my computer in the trash. see what i mean by negative attitude?
   when i first started using linux i was excited, amazed, and full of adventure. now after 5 years i've grown bitter at the direction it's going. so i shall calm down, swallow my pride, keep an open mind and lock myself into kde4. who knows maybe i'll like it, i hope.