[Solved] How to get /home back

[frisbeelab]

Thanks again blackbird.  I tried locking widgets and that was better. Then I tried the folder view and that is far better. 

Now the questions I have revolve around the panel. 

1. The panel when booting a live cd or if I start as Root, has several icons on the left that start Dolphin, show desktop, etc.  I lost them when I used my old /home partition.

2. When I open an application the icon appeariing on the panel contains the icon and a narrative taking up far too much real estate. 

3. The panel in  general is narrower (top to bottom not laft to right) than the standard panel on root or live cd. 

4. Can you point me to a good site explaining how to set up KDE4?   Then I won't have to keep bugging you.... although hopefully this dialog is helping others as well.  I have googled and gone to some sites but they seemed to be more geared to changing themes, backgrounds. etc.

Thanks Again!

[Bald Brick]

Thanks again blackbird.  I tried locking widgets and that was better. Then I tried the folder view and that is far better.  

Now the questions I have revolve around the panel.  

1. The panel when booting a live cd or if I start as Root, has several icons on the left that start Dolphin, show desktop, etc.  I lost them when I used my old /home partition.

The easiest way of adding a program icon to the panel is by right-clicking the name of the program in the PC-menu (K-menu) and choosing "Add to Panel". The widgets have to be unlocked when you do it.

2. When I open an application the icon appeariing on the panel contains the icon and a narrative taking up far too much real estate.  

This would indicate that your task manager is the widget that's simply called "Task Manager". If you remove it and replace it with "Smooth Tasks" you'll save a lot of real estate. Again, the widgets have to be unlocked when you do it.

To remove "Task Manager": right-click an empty spot within the space reserved for the task manager and click "Remove this Task Manager".

To install "Smooth Tasks": click the tiny symbol to the far right on the panel. (It's called a "Cashew" because it looks like one.) A control panel will appear on top of your normal panel (or below it if you've moved your panel to the top of the screen). Click "Add Widgets". A panel where you can choose the widgets to add will appear. Look for the widget called "Smooth Tasks", double-click it, and close this chooser panel. Then click the Cashew once more and drag "Smooth Tasks" to wherever you want it on the panel.

You can control how the icons in "Smooth Tasks" behave by right-clicking at an empty spot within the space taken up by the widget and choosing "Smooth Task Settings". You may, for instance, want to untick "Expand Tasks" under "Appearance".

3. The panel in  general is narrower (top to bottom not laft to right) than the standard panel on root or live cd.  

To adjust the height of the panel, click the Cashew and drag "Height" up or down.

4. Can you point me to a good site explaining how to set up KDE4?

You could start here: http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials.

I have googled and gone to some sites but they seemed to be more geared to changing themes, backgrounds. etc.

Well, to a large extent that's what setting up KDE4 is all about.

[frisbeelab]

Hi blackbird,

I finally got a chance to try all your directions and every one was "spot on", exactly what I was looking for!  I now have a very usable desktop...... and learned a lot about configuring KDE4.   Thanks so much for your very explicit and knowledgeable help!

This thread has been marked "Solved".

[frisbeelab]

Well I know I have already declared this thread is solved......  but after spending several hours mucking aroound with my recent 2010 install I have come to the conclusion that Texstar does a much better job with the kde setup for new users than my tweaking of the old /home partition I saved.    I now have 2 ids set up, one with my old /home on a seperate partition and the other an id I created to play with where the /home is not in it's own partition.  I MUCH prefer the setup of the new (mostly empty) partition.    Specifically it has things like:

• an icon on the panel that will minimize all windows
• there are two groups of icons on the panel.... to the left are icons for; Dolphin, PC, Synaptic, etc.,   and smaller icons to the right (i think that's the taskbar?) are for sound, network, logout, etc. .... I have only been able to get all icons on the left or right.
• there are desktop icons on the new setup that I would also like on my /home partition setup; Home, Trash, Network Center, etc.

What I am wondering is, is it feasible to copy a kde configuration file from the /home with Texstar's much nicer standard 2010 KDE settings to my old /home partition?   

Thanks!

[menotu]

Hi frisbeelab,

After all that work to get "back home" you ought to play John Denvers song "Back Home Again" 

[Bald Brick]

Well I know I have already declared this thread is solved......  but after spending several hours mucking aroound with my recent 2010 install I have come to the conclusion that Texstar does a much better job with the kde setup for new users than my tweaking of the old /home partition I saved.    I now have 2 ids set up, one with my old /home on a seperate partition and the other an id I created to play with where the /home is not in it's own partition.  I MUCH prefer the setup of the new (mostly empty) partition.    Specifically it has things like:

• an icon on the panel that will minimize all windows
• there are two groups of icons on the panel.... to the left are icons for; Dolphin, PC, Synaptic, etc.,   and smaller icons to the right (i think that's the taskbar?) are for sound, network, logout, etc. .... I have only been able to get all icons on the left or right.
• there are desktop icons on the new setup that I would also like on my /home partition setup; Home, Trash, Network Center, etc.

What I am wondering is, is it feasible to copy a kde configuration file from the /home with Texstar's much nicer standard 2010 KDE settings to my old /home partition?    

The problem is that copying one file won't help. A lot of the panel settings appear to be in the file /home/<user>/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc, but most of the widgets have their own configuration files too. You could try copying all of /home/<user>/.kde4/share/config. (If that isn't enough you should perhaps also copy /home/<user>/.kde4/share/apps.)

Or you could copy the whole ~/.kde4 directory, but there won't be much left of your own settings then. And be aware that if you use Kmail, all your mails will be under ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail.

(You'll also find some settings -- and your main trash folder -- in ~/.local, and more application settings in ~/.cache, and in the hidden folders created by individual programs. "~" stands for /home/<user>.)

Some of the icons in Tex's panel are widgets that you can add to your panel the way I told you about when I recommended Smooth Tasks. The rest of them are application icons that you could add by right-clicking the name or description of the program in the PC-menu and choosing "Add to Panel".

If you have a task manager on the panel (whether Smooth Tasks or plain Task Manager) it will take up all free space, so it acts as a natural separator: the icons and widgets you drag to the left of it will be on the left hand side of the panel; those that you drag to the right will be on the right. (You can also add spacers to the panel to control their placement more precisely.)

The area with the smaller icons is the System Tray (that too just a widget).