Disabling KDE 3.4.x sound notifications
Ok, one of the first things that I got annoyed with in the new Mandriva 2006 install on the laptop was the event triggered sounds. Popup notification window one sound, error message – glass breaking, etc. etc…. So, I started trying to remember where to cut all that stuff off. It took a bit of digging to find it, because it’s not in the KDE control panel under “sound” where it might be found in a Windows setup…
Go to the kmenu, system, configuration, configure your desktop… under Mandriva this launches the KDE control center. (Other distros may have other ways of getting there.) Now, you’re going to see a column of items on the left, selecting one will put some properties to change in the right hand frame. Click the plus sign next to “look and feel”, then select notifications. (Or “system notifications” depending on the version of KDE.) In the right hand side of the window you get quite a few things you can configure. I went to the lower half of the box checked the (apply to all applications), then saw sounds was selected and clicked “click to turn off all” next to sounds…
No more noisy system notifications. Which is nice, sometimes I boot up the laptop in public and don’t want it grooving/shimmying/beeping/or making any other sounds.
Of course, you can see that’s also the place you could configure your own sound scheme.
The Knotify (or notify) framework is pretty interesting in it’s capabilities. Popup notification on event, sound notification, passive popup (don’t take away mouse/keyboard focus)/etc. You can get pretty fancy with how or when you want to be notified about specific events. It’s a VERY useful feature of KDE.