Creating Full Monty like workspace in other KDE distros

[linuxpcplus]

For those few of you who actually gave serious advice, I thank you. As for the rest of you, get off your high horses! These attitudes  are the very reason Linux was unprepared for the new UEFI hardware & the very reason Linux hasfailed to get a real foothold in the desktop/laptop consumer markets. These holier than thou attitudes are the reason Linux businesses like mine struggle.
As I said in my original post, I use full monty EXCLUSIEVELY! I LOVE FULL MONTY! But you cant expect me to tell my clients that they shouldnt use Ubuntu or any other distro they feel comfortable with. Plus, many of my clients are brand new to Linux & as awesome as PCLOS is, it is not the best distro there is for former Windows/Mac users who have never touched Linux. I would be out of business in no time if I reccomended an OS my client could not figure out.
Linux will never surpass Windows or Mac in numbers of users unless the developers, users, & linux-based businesses and projects learn to work together & help one another.
Pinoc, I understand your sentiment and as the developer of the FM desktop, you have every right to choose how you wish to share it (or not).
My business is successful because just as kjpetrie  stated, "The customer is always right", and I live that philosophy in EVERY aspect of my business.
In closing, I have to say, as a PCLOS user, I am shocked and saddened by the negative attitudes in thse replies!

[DeBaas]

@linuxpcplus
Sorry if we made some fun at your behalf.
In my opinion it was a mild harrasment on an obvius understandable reason.
Sorry, hold my type fingers next time.

Ed

[linuxpcplus]

DeBass, first thank you for the apology. Second, I have no problem with "a little fun". I will engage in such banter whole heartedly. That being said, anyone who chooses to be honest must admit I am not totally wrong on my points about why Linux struggles so to get a foothold in the OS market. We as a community and as developers are to divided from one distro to the next. There is a tendency to support the distro(s) one loves above all others, even to the point of (un)intentionally degrading others. There are so many ditros to choose from & so many different types of users, that one must be a blind fool to believe there is a "one size fits all" distro. There is no such thing, nor can there ever be.
That being said, as a man who has used many different distros over the years, even for me there is no single distro that "has it all" for me. There are features I like about Ubuntu for example, that I would LOVE to see in PCLOS. That is where my client is at. He LOVES Kubuntu, he has chosen it as his distro, and as a noob it is a great fit for him.But when he saw PCLOS-FM on my machine, he loved the task-oriented desktops.
I will get off my rant for now & close by saying simply that I believe the Linux community will have much to gain and Little to lose by working together. "United we stand, divided we fall"!

[bicol_willem]

@linuxpcplus:  My 2 worthless cents on this. I think the jokes started by realizing the magnitude of your question. As a help forum no mountain seems to high at times for some trying to help but a task like FM ..... Even with the help of pinoc himself that would soon proof a HUGE task. Maybe you underestimated that at the time of asking?
I honestly guess so.
But alas, next to that you did came up with some interesting points like "beeing devided" in the Linux world. I would call that "choices available". True or not, it is clear, I think, that the goal of this forum is to help PCLinuxOS users and promote PCLinuxOS only.
Did you try to ask on the xxbuntu forum the same question?  That would make sense. The answers could be "funny" as well.
You´re customer is living proof. He prefers kubuntu for unknown reasons (its a newbe) and doesn´t want to have anything to do with PCLinuxOS FM (which he likes)...... because, it is not (K)xbuntu.  (A leftover of Windows usage, it´s no Windows so...  ). Better convince him to use PCLOS FM and everybody here will be ready to help you and him where they can. 

[Waldo22]

I work with the public also.  But there are times when clients requests are unreasonable, and, depending on your point of view, this may be one of them.  The request probably can be accomplished, but at what cost to your customer and you?  Your time has value, and unless you are willing to devote and enormous amount of time to this project, you will lose money fulfilling the request.  That being said, I wish you luck in your endeavor.  If you are successful, I commend you. 

[Neal ManBear]

linuxpcplus,     
Sorry you were offended. I do not think I should back away from what I said previously. Nok asked:     

My friend drives a Datsun. I showed him where to get a free Ferrari, but now my friend wants to know how to make his Datsun look and go like a Ferrari.
 Any ideas?

     
so I responded:     

Yea. Got an idea. Put all the careful planning, hard work at creating, time at testing and debugging and all other effort that pinoc put into creating full monty into your friend's system. When you've done all of that, you will have a close (perhaps) approximation of full monty.     
Easier to install the real thing and say "thank you" to pinoc.     

     
I must stand by what I said. I know the amount of work pinoc put into creating FM. I had the great privilege of being a tester for him and of having been privy to the planning stages of the project.     

You should be aware of some things:     
We do not discuss other distros here - neither pro nor con. There is a rule, yes.     
This is not the place to get support for kubuttu. They have their own support, or there are "generic" forums available.     
pinoc is in charge of FM and decides what he will/won't do with it and the months of very hard work he put into developing it.     

Don't misunderstand me. I understand that you are frustrated, but even so, there are rules/conventions to follow. Just as you have the right to ask that you be given all of pinoc's work, he has the right to say no. A rant about divisiveness and being united is not a good argument in favor of stripping him of his rights. Any road, you or anyone else is free to do the research and the work, just as he did.     
In the open source world we have gotten used to receiving other people's labor for free. It has come, perhaps, to the point where we believe it is our right to have anything another has developed "on demand." (I'm talking about all of the research, development and debugging work here.) If someone says that he will not "give" his development process along with the product, he has that right.     

[linuxpcplus]

Neal, I agree. In fact I specifically acknowledged Pinoc's right not to share his work. I was not complaining about his unwillingness to share this. I am not a Richard Stallman extremist. I truly believe the folks who spend their valuable tie developing great Open Source software should be compensated & I do not see a problem at all with these developers charging either for the software they create, support for that software, or both. I dont think in the "Free software as in free beer" philosophy. If a developer chooses to share his/her work freely, that is awesome. But I do not"expect" anything to be free of cost! I own multiple opensource programs that I paid for. I currently donate to over 25 different projects EVERY MONTH (including pclos). So I feel that you have perhaps misunderstood some of my comments, possibly my own fault.
As for why I asked this question here rather than an ubuntu forum, it was simple logic: who but PCLOS-FM users would know how to do this if anybody did? And perhaps bicol_willem  was correct, I underestimated the magnitude of this task. I have informed my client of the magnitude of the task & that he would need to find a capable developer if he truly wanted to spare the significant expense. He has wisely chosen to stick with Kubuntu as is.
Finally, the "jokes" and sarcasm: perhaps I was a bit over-sensitive in my reaction. I can admit this now as I review this full thread. Thank you all for the dose of "reality" I was given!

[Neal ManBear]

..... perhaps bicol_willem  was correct, I underestimated the magnitude of this task.

     
I can tell you that the task is not one I'd care to tackle on my own. Whew! Months of research, scripting, testing, debugging and then followed by more of the same. I know some of what was done to accomplish FM. For me it is enough to know that pinoc has the skill for such a monumental task. I admire him for that.     

[linuxpcplus]

As it turns out, it really is not hard to do what my client wants. I found this article which helped me figure it out: http://www.datamation.com/open-source/nine-ways-to-make-kde-activities-more-useful-1.html
This one was helpful too: http://www.datamation.com/open-source/kde-4.9-more-change-than-youd-expect-1.html
So anyway, after reading these articles & doing some further research & found several great articles & youtube videos on the topic. After a bit of playing around, I was able to give my client exactly what he wanted! A prime example of why a good business person thoroughly researches before giving up on an idea. BTW, if anyone is curious, it was so easy to do that I only charged my client $50 for the work!
To be honest, I am wandering if some folks here misinterpreted what my client was asking for, perhaps due to my own lack of clarity. He did not want a total FM clone. All he wanted was task oriented workspaces similar to (but not identical to) those in FM. But as someone with limited KDE experience, I did not realize it was a simple matter of configuring virtual desktops, each with their own "activities". After watching a these youtube vids on this topic & reading a few articles, BAM! Easy peasy baby!

[kjpetrie]

Glad you got it worked out.