Activities are just workspaces. They might offer a little more customization than a workspace-- but that's all they are.

I used XFCE for many years on this same machine-- without compliant. What I liked about KDE is that it ran as well as XFCE and came with everything I needed for Qt development. Also I don't need to double-load application frameworks. Iv'e been able to use KDE or pure Qt apps for everything I need.

As for drop-shadows, bouncy cursors and business-- that's both accepted and came be done tastefully. (**Cough** Unity **Cough) Like any environment, customization is both available and desirable. IMHO it was easier for me to get KDE where I wanted then Unity or XFCE

This is a big win for the Qt ecosystem. Between KDE libraries reworked into portable Qt modules and official iOS and Android support even with support from Digia-- Qt is gaining momentum. They even managed to survive being gobbled by Nokia, then being sold to Digia-- it has been a bumpy ride.

I recently tried out the latest Kubuntu and have been loving it installed on an old Dell D410 (12inch, 1.8Ghz SC Pentium, 1.5G RAM) laptop and it runs well and does everything I need (which in this case is Qt related application development :-)

> As I'm getting back into C++ after almost 20 years and trying to start with Qt, I'd love to see some practical examples.

Sure. new signal slot syntax covers how to create anonymous lambda handlers for signals. No longer is it required to create methods on our public interface for a slot. This is pretty much The Big News (tm) when it comes to closures in Qt. But in general, I have late taking towards creating methods and interfaces which expect and rely heavily on callbacks-- and the new C++11 lambda expressions are now a very terse way to accomplish callback mechanisms in C++. Conceptually, it has always been possible, and the C++ 11 lambda extensions are effectively code inliners to accomplish the same task as creating a class to wrap state with a callback method-- which needed to be done by hand previously or attached to an existing class (further muddling its interface).

There are many things Qt does very well, some not so well and some pieces completely missing. Opening up KDE as plug-in frameworks will fill in the holes in Qt for bringing very strong applications to a whole new generation of embedded and X-platform tools. Also, C11 C++ extensions and more specifically closures have really helped me fall back in love with C++ primarily through Qt.

After our family got together and played Myst over winter holidays, there was much discussion that we could do better. My dad, uncle, aunt, cousin and others worked for 4 years to make Morpheus which was released in 1998 by Piranha interactive. Piranha very shortly went broke and paid little of what we owed. We all went back to our lives, but there are still background attempts at rebooting the game.

What would you recommend to organizations to curtail the sort of social engineering break-ins for gaining unauthorized entry?