KDE

Loading X resources

At startup, KDE will run whatever programs it finds in $HOME/.kde/Autostart, so put a shell script in that directory that does "xrdb -merge $HOME/Xresources".

KDE window manager - KWin

The default window manager provided by KDE is the K Window Manager (KWin). Good luck finding documentation about it.

KDE menus

Here are some of the problems I have after switching from GNOME to KDE: KDE menus are interesting - there is only one global menu hanging off the "start" button, but you can create copies of submenus on the panel. So to create a panel menu, you first use the menu editor to create a submenu on the main menu, then you create a copy of the submenu on the panel. Once you understand this concept, it makes total sense - the main menu always contains everything. To create a submenu on the panel, right-click the mouse over a blank spot on the panel and go to Add->Application Button. Then find the menu title of the submenu you want, and then click Add This Menu. Cool!

When I upgraded from KDE 3.1.4 (came with Fedora Core 1) to KDE 3.2.2 (came with Fedora Core 2), the menu editor stopped working. It's a known bug to be fixed in KDE 3.4.4. It's caused when you run GNOME on your system and then switch to KDE. The work-around was to delete the ~/.config and ~/.local directories from outside KDE, then start KDE and define new menus with the menu editor. If you switch back to GNOME, it may wipe out your .config and .local directories, so I saved copies in .config.sav and .local.sav.

KDE sessions

KDE stores information about sessions in ~/.kde/share/config/session.
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Last modified: Tue Mar 29 23:27:49 MST 2005