Does the TDE Classic menu support Favorites like the Kickoff menu?
I'm not comfortable with the Kickoff menu although that menu supports Favorites.
I am aware of the Classic menu search box, but not the same as a Favorites list.
Out of curiosity, where does the Kickoff menu store Favorites?
Thanks.
On 3/13/25 1:24 PM, Dan Youngquist via tde-users wrote:
On 3/13/25 10:48 AM, Darrell Anderson via tde-users wrote:
Does the TDE Classic menu support Favorites like the Kickoff menu?
You mean something different than the Most Used Applications section at the top?
Yes.
The Quick Start options of 'Most recently|frequently used' don't quite fit the bill. I can see how there would be overlap for many users, but I envision not using a Favorite for a day or two and then those menu items would bubble out of either Quick Start list. The TDE Quick Start options are dynamic.
The idea of a Favorites widget is static. The idea is from KDE. I had not realized how much I grew acclimated to this KDE feature.
Looks like the data is stored in kickerrc [menus]. There is a Favorites= key. I presume that key list is for the kickoff menu.
Well, I don't know about TDE menu favorites as you describe, but here are some workaround ideas that may fill a similar need well enough:
1. Use the "Application Finder" fuzzy search program from Xfce as a faster way of accessing the specific programs you want. I personally installed TDE on top of an existing installation of Xfce and haven't seen any compatibility issues so far (though I am new to TDE and haven't used Linux for years until recently, so I may be wrong in some subtle ways potentially).
2. Create a simple folder entitled "Favorites" on your desktop and then place symbolic links and/or hard links and/or application launchers and/or shell scripts running the required commands in there so as to thereby provide yourself with basically the same thing as what you describe, just on the desktop icon grid and file browser instead of in the start menu.
3. Figure out how to edit the menus in TDE. In Xfce there is an XML based syntax you can use to create your own menu systems and it even includes both statically and/or dynamically filled menu items (whichever you prefer for each sub-menu) if you set it up right. Perhaps TDE has something similar. I am new to it though, so I don't know.
Anyway, sorry for not knowing the actual answer that you seek, but I think you will find that one of the three above options provide ~90% to ~95 percent of the kind of easy accesibility that you want.
Hope that helps!
TDE is awesome and I really love the 1990s to 2000s era freedom-respecting (and not overly minimalistic) nature of it! It is the best-feeling overall Linux desktop environment I've encountered.
On 3/13/25 2:59 PM, WraithGlade via tde-users wrote:
Well, I don't know about TDE menu favorites as you describe, but here are some workaround ideas that may fill a similar need well enough:
- Figure out how to edit the menus in TDE. In Xfce there is an XML based syntax you can use to create your own menu systems and it even includes both statically and/or dynamically filled menu items (whichever you prefer for each sub-menu) if you set it up right. Perhaps TDE has something similar. I am new to it though, so I don't know.
I've already implemented option 3. For years I have had a collection of custom menus: 1) Lists, 2) Projects, 3) Virtual Machines, 4) Super User (yes, I launch Konqueror and Konsole as root -- take your meds and leave an old guy alone. :) ). This effort required a custom TDE menu and respective desktop files. Since I prefer to avoid desktop icon clutter this has worked well for me for, oh, I don't know -- close to 20 years?
I hadn't thought about that at all. Probably because I have used my custom menus for so many years I had completely forgotten I did that.
Not as simple as the KDE feature or the Kickoff menu, but doable.
Won't take much to create my own custom Favorites menu. Good suggestion! :)
I probably should submit a feature request to add the Kickoff Favorites feature to the Classic menu.
TDE is awesome and I really love the 1990s to 2000s era freedom-respecting (and not overly minimalistic) nature of it! It is the best-feeling overall Linux desktop environment I've encountered.
Odd you mention that. :) I was part of the original development crew after Timothy forked KDE 3.5. Stuck around for several years. Job requirements (admin) required me to eat some different dog food for some years, primarily MATE. I changed course at home too to be better equipped and more knowledgeable about what coworkers needed.
Then the GTK 3 shift began. I got mad the way the MATE developers did not fight the upstream folks who controlled GTK. So I bought myself a few years more by moving to Xfce, where the developers had not moved to GTK 3. Then GTK 3 got sucked into Xfce too.
I've been a long time Slackware user. When 15.0 was released with Xfce based on GTK3 along with KDE 5, I decided not to play the GTK game any longer. I started pruning GTK out of my life. That left me with KDE 5, which I think is an improvement over the KDE 4 that caused a rift among KDE 3 users.
I spent many weeks tweaking KDE 5 to my liking. Stripped out packages, removed fluff and bloat, and learned to tweak the bejeebers out of the environment. I ended up with a nice no frills KDE desktop. The effort involved was pretty much, "Kids don't do this at home -- you'll break things."
The effort reminded me of my KDE 3 and TDE days.
While I am mostly content with KDE 5, there are a few things that irritate me. One is this activity manager thingie likes to run my laptop fans at high speed every now and then. I never can figure out why. Another example is I need a four-core system to use KDE (KDE is not a memory hog, just needs muscle). I have some dual core computers still running. KDE is painful on those systems. Even with four-core muscle, KDE is nowhere near as snappy as TDE. Launching KDE Dolphin always takes a "long second or so." No preloading. Dolphin is a fine file manager, really, no significant complaints. Just not as fast as TDE Konqueror and not as flexible.
Likewise with launching KDE Kate. I never understood why launching native apps in a desktop environment are not lightning fast. You know, like TDE. With TDE I barely press my keyboard shortcuts and before I can look at the monitor the tool is on screen.
And I don't know what original wizardry was put in Konqueror as a file manager or what the current wave of devs have done, but Konqueror is the only file manager I have seen that can traverse deep directories instantly. Remarkable.
I am exaggerating a bit, but not overly.
About the time I polished KDE to my liking, I found a way to install TDE in Slackware. I had long forgotten much of what I built locally and my retired aging brain needs all of the daily exercising I can muster to not wither away. The oddity is that through those years of being away from TDE I never wiped my $TDEHOME profile. Much reduced time trying to refresh the old noggin.
But I have been slow to move away from KDE to TDE. I'm no different than most folks. When something mostly "just works," I tend to avoid sweat equity to move to something different. Every couple of months or so I would tinker with TDE trying to get everything working the way I like and want. Takes time and my old brain is not as sharp anymore. But after a few sessions I'd be back to KDE. Familiarity breeds contempt?
TDE mostly works the way I want, but like any DE, has its share of paper cuts and nit picks. I have ever so slowly been picking at that list and of late, with more determination. I don't know exactly what triggered my motivation some days ago, but I decided to just hammer down and iron out the wrinkles in TDE that annoy me. At least most of them and find ways to live with the remaining nominal irritations.
For me the main attraction of TDE is speed and overall simplicity. I am awestruck how fast TDE is. No other DE like this. I cut my teeth on computers in the 1980s and I am definitely an old curmudgeon about how I want my desktop to behave. KDE does let me do this but is still designed by folks who think everything should look and behave like a smart phone. TDE hangs back and says, yeah, we still like the 1990s too.
I also refuse to use KDE PIM tools because of that akonadi thingie. That leaves me using TDE PIM tools, which by golly gee willikers Mr. Wilson, still work the same way as 15 years ago. And why not? POP3 hasn't changed.
I fudge a little with cosmetics. I find the Oxygen icons more palatable than the historic crystal svg. I like the KDE mouse pointer collection. For some time I thought I liked KDE Kate better than the TDE Kate, mostly because the KDE version has built-in word counts and sorting tools. The TDE version does not and the sort plugin is broken. OTOH, my professional tech writing days are long behind me. Word counts are not as critical anymore. I can do them with the wc command. Likewise with sorting lists -- just use the command line.
I do have to establish some new habits and exercise some new muscle memory to break away from KDE. But part of my quest is I remember enough of the old days that when I can't do something in the way this old fart likes to use computers, I get frustrated and grab my proverbial hammer.
No software is perfect and my old rule is find the software that bites the least. Find work-arounds and live with remaining irritants. I keep reflecting that TDE might be the least irritating -- best -- DE for a cranky old man like me. When I tell software to get off my lawn I expect to see some feet moving.
Anyway, I hope that explains the flurry of list questions of late. Probably more to come too!
That was an interesting read Darrell. I appreciate you sharing those insights into that time and from someone who was involved!
It's good to hear from someone whose experience goes so far back to the golden days like that.
As for myself, I'm an "older millennial" (i.e. approaching middle-aged), but with every passing year I have less and less of a stomach for the recent waves of destructive and/or stifling changes to user interface "design" that are being increasingly forced upon everyone, such as those embodied by pervasive counterproductive soulless "minimalism" and sterile and unimaginative "flat design" icons and graphics and such.
For the past decade or so I can barely remember any updates or "upgrades" from big tech companies that I actually liked. Too many companies (and even individual developers) have lately been insisting on randomly mixing up interfaces and removing many useful features and reducing even the most basic user freedoms down to now intolerable levels.
It is bizarre seeing many Linux distros and desktop environments imitate this same stifling shift towards less freedom and less user choice and it is important to stand against it by using and supporting better-natured systems like TDE and Xfce and LXQt and such (of which TDE is my favorite). I don't understand how people actually like Gnome 3 or Plasma.
In fact, more broadly speaking, even things like Xfce and LXQt and most modern desktops in general have become almost absurdly computationally wasteful. I still remember using a Windows computer in my childhood with only ~66 MHz (or maybe 166 MHz? not sure) that was more responsive and pleasant to use than almost any typical modern computer setup. I even saw a wonderful statistical study (see https://danluu.com/input-lag/) where someone found that old computers on average respond to key presses much faster than modern ones do!
I've been very unhappy on Windows for the past several years, barely tolerating it, but they've crossed the ethical line far too many times recently and so I've decided to never move to Windows 11 and to instead permanently move to Linux as my primary computer, except for using old Windows devices purely for cross-platform program testing for broader user reach.
I'm tired of having things changed against my will and having useful features removed and workflows changed and "dumbed down" so counterproductively and so pervasively. That's why it was such a joy to find TDE! I intend to also have Xfce around so I can use it when I run into compatibility problems with some programs on TDE, if and when they arise.
A little bit of acceptance of imperfection like that (but not acceptance of having our freedoms taken away!) will go a long way to a reasonable pragmatic computing environment I think. That's why I don't view TDE's potential issues as a game stopper. I can just work around them with Xfce when needed, which is also reasonably customizable and freedom-respecting, although not as much of a joy to use when it works right as TDE. Xfce's use of GTK also seems less likely to conflict with TDE's Qt perhaps, though I haven't used either library in a real project yet so I am just theorizing here.
Anyway though, thanks again for giving such a thoughtful and worthwhile response. Have a great night and best of luck in getting your system set up in a way that pleases you!
Here's to freedom and seeing the value in all things!
"Older" software is often better and shouldn't be overlooked!
-
Dan Youngquist -
Darrell Anderson -
WraithGlade