Forking around with KDE...

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi readers and typers,

As some of you may have gathered I am active in
a Linux Users Group here in San Francisco. One of the things I do
is try out various distributions selected for various reasons.

I got to try out a late version of CentOS, a KDE version of Porteus
4.0. and from the Linux Pro Magazine a late version of KaOS.
yesterday. These all might deserve more time but my time is limited
in that I had other tools to try out. For example I had to install
Deepin to check it out and it does not have a live version.

CentOS led the way by sticking to its choice of older,
proven components with KDE's Plasma 4.14.8 and it was so sweet
to see all the stuff I use in slightly older versions. It has
the time/date copy from the digital clock for example. I used
this at least once a day when it was available and more often
when I had business correspondence at hand. Most of the tools
you want to use will be there.

KaOS uses a version of KDE's Plasma 5 that is coming closer
to the current but it throws you off balance by putting its task bar
on the Right side of the screen. It can of course be moved to other
places on the desktop display by the usual methods. A lot of the tools
I use were in the iso file but some different tools were supplied.

Porteus-KDE-v4.0-x86_64.iso and in an i586 version as well. Either
fits on a CD and both use KDE. Too bad it is 5.12.3 KDE
Plasma. But with Slackware repositories it should not have to stay
there long and most of the tools that are missing from the <400 Megabyte
iso file can be replaced as fast as you can remember what you want
to use. Porteus used to be quite different but this is clearly
as the distributors state, "portable Linux". By the way if you don't
like KDE's Plasmas, the Porteus site has almost every other desktop
environment available, Mate, Cinnamon, Gnome, LXDE etc. ad lib.

bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com