I have been using Linux off and on for about a year now and I've been
incredibly impressed with it's stability. I decided some time ago to switch
over to it as my primary OS, but I just didn't have enough time to invest in
it. I just installed Linux Mandrake and I LOVE it. I was already familiar with
Red Hat 5.2, but with the KDE and the other included applications and
updates it's so much more useful for me (for example, my videocard isn't
supported under Red Hat 5.2 so I had to install the newest XFree86 components
every time I reinstalled it).
Anyway, I still have a few questions I need answered before I can truly switch
over to Linux Mandrake from the ridiculously unstable OS I currently primarily
use (take a guess what it is).
First: How do I get KDE to use a Dvorak keyboard layout? It works fine at the
command prompt before I start X, but not in anything in KDE, including kvt
windows. I use the Dvorak keyboard almost exclusively and I really can't switch
to Linux unless I can get it to work all the time. This is one place where Red
Hat 5.2 is better than Mandrake 5.3--it works in X as well as the command
prompt.
Second: How can I get the kfm to work more like the Win9x Explorer? I know that
may be heresy, but I'm used to some luxuries like being able to hit Win-E to
open an Explorer window at the root dir (and I'm sure I'm not the only one). I
would love to be able to do the same sort of thing in KDE. Failing a keyboard
shortcut, I would like to be able to put it on the toolbar so one click will
open a window of the root dir. The other part is that I would like to have the
tree and long views open by default. I went into the configuration and didn't
see an obvious way to set that up.
Third: How do I copy/cut and paste between apps? I have been mostly using KDE
apps for everything because open windows are saved between sessions, even after
a rare crash (I LOVE that!!!) but sometimes I want to use Netscape and I want to
copy a URL from the KDE browser to Netscape. I copy it, and it shows up on the
clipboard list but it won't paste into Netscape (and possibly any non-KDE app,
I'm not sure). Is there a common clipboard like there is in Windows? If not, I
can work around it but it would really be unfortunate...! Linux, X, and KDE are
better in so many ways I'd hate to see them beat in something like clipboard
functionality.
All in all, I think Linux Mandrake is incredible...the stability
and versatility are awesome. KDE takes the concept behind Win98 and takes it
to a higher level. Thank you to everyone involved, and thank you in advance to
anybody that can answer my questions or at least tell me where to look!
--walker.
