[kde-linux] Re: symantiks in Gnome MINT

[John Layt]

On Sunday 21 November 2010 11:08:20 Doug wrote:
> I recently installed the latest version of Linux MINT on my laptop.  It
> uses a Gnome GUI, but has access to some KDE software.  For example, KPat,
> the KDE solitaire game installed from the synaptic package manager and
> runs fine.
> 
> Symantiks, the program that turns off the scratchpad--oops, touchpad--
> when an external mouse is plugged in, was also downloaded from the same
> repo. (I assume so: the same download process was used.)
> 
> At any rate, the synaptic package manager says it's installed, but there's
> no evidence of it in any menu I can find.  I have posted to the MINT forum
> and after several go-rounds with someone who thought I meant synaptic,
> rather than synaptiks, he said it was KDE and therefor would have to have
> a whole batch of KDE programs downloaded and installed in order to run it.

I'm assuming you need to configure synaptiks to work the way you want, that 
you are running Gnome, and that synaptiks will work OK on a Gnome desktop once 
it is configured.

In which What you need to run is either systemsettings or kcmshell, and you 
probably won't have to install too much more as installing Syaptiks and KPat 
would have pulled all the required libraries in to work in the first place.

Running systemsettings (aka System Settings or KDE System Settings in the 
menu) is the easiest and gives you the full KDE settings program and the 
ability to configure all of KDE, but it does have more dependencies than 
kcmshell, you will need a package usually named something like kdebase-apps.

Running kcmshell from the command line (or kcmshell4 as it may be named like 
on openSuse where kcmshell is the KDE3 version) runs just the configuration 
module you request, so "kcmshell4 --list" gives me a list of all the installed 
control modules, and "kcmshell4 synaptiks" gives me the synaptiks control 
module.  You don't need to install anything more for this option, as you 
should have everything already needed installed.

Cheers!

John.