Playing around with Kubuntu 12.04 beta

[Duncan]

Hans Muecke posted on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 03:12:58 -0500 as excerpted:

>> Hans Muecke posted on Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:27:33 -0500 as excerpted:
>> > Installed Kubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta on one of my machines (Asus EeePC)
>> > to get some ideas about the look and feel.
>> > Instzalled everything ... configured the desktop like I want it to
>> > have it. System said it needed to reboot. Did that and after the next
>> > login I ended up with this:
>> > 
>> > http://goo.gl/qBLSG (sorry for the tilted pic)
>> > 
>> > Whatever I knew about changing the desktop looks I tried ... to no
>> > avail. I don't get the classic desktop back. Any hints are much
>> > appreciated, since to me personally it is not usable.
>> > 
>> > Thanks in advance.
>> 
>> Ahhh, OK.  I'd guess the install detected your screen size/resolution
>> and decided you were on a netbook, so it gave you the plasma-netbook
>> shell (a different executable) instead of the plasma-desktop shell.
>> 
>> The fix is easy enough.  KDE settings (whatever they're called in
>> kubuntu, systemsettings is what they're called as kde ships, despite
>> the fact that most of the settings are kde- and user-specific and thus
>> have little or nothing to do with SYSTEM settings, but I guess some
>> distros do actually add /system/ settings modules to it as well),
>> workspace appearance and behavior, workspace behavior, workspace.  Then
>> switch the workspace type to desktop (it probably says netbook ATM) and
>> apply.
> 
> Thanks for the response! Checked with the settings and I could choose
> between "Air", "Air for netbooks" and Qxygen". Tried both "Air" and
> "Oxygen" but didn't get the classic desktop. It now looks like this:
> 
> http://goo.gl/13JKy
> 
> Still not what I want and might never like it although it is more usable
> to me (am old fashioned ... I like my icons on the desktop).

The Air, Air for netbooks, etc, is under workspace appearance and 
behavior, workspace appearance, desktop theme.  All that changes is the 
colors, transparency, etc.  Nice, but not what you're after.

Instead of workspace appearance, desktop theme, go to workspace behavior, 
workspace.  As I said, that should be workspace type, desktop, instead of 
(I'd guess what you have now) workspace type, netbook.



Once you have it set to desktop there, then click on the "cashew" aka 
"toolbox" for the desktop, and select desktop settings.  Or, you can 
probably get the same dialog by right-clicking on the desktop and 
choosing it from the popup menu, but that's not guaranteed as the right-
click action can be switched to something else.

The desktop settings dialog should have two icons on the left, view, and 
mouse actions.  Under view, click the unlock widgets button if you need 
to, and then you should be able to select the layout dropdown, and change 
it to desktop or folderview, as desired.

The search and launch and newspaper layouts that your screenshots show 
are the defaults for plasma-netbook (there's a switcher that switches 
between them), while the desktop layout is the default for plasma-
desktop, altho you can choose the search and launch or newspaper layouts 
in desktop mode too, if you'd like.


Repeating for emphasis...

Note that there's two different settings involved here.  The first is 
whether you're running plasma-desktop or plasma-netbook.  That's the one 
in kde settings.  Then once you have it set to desktop there, two of the 
desktop settings layouts are the same ones that plasma-notebook normally 
has, but there's the normal desktop, and the old-style folderview, there.


Meanwhile, plasma also can be configured with multiple activities, EACH 
ACTIVITY of which can be set to a different layout, so you can have a 
search and launch activity, a desktop activity (with all the plasmoid 
widgets on the desktop), a folderview activity (with all the file icons 
on the desktop), another desktop activity with different plasmoid 
widgets, etc.  Then you can switch between activities more or less like 
people have for years used virtual desktops.  In fact, if you want you 
can link virtual desktops and activites they're a 1:1 match, but it's 
more flexible to have your normal number of desktops available with EACH 
activity.  There's more that activities can do, but I won't go into all 
that right now, as it'd just be confusing.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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