Drag the Task Manager over one of the empty holes in the panel and drop it in, which should add it to the panel.

Drag the Task Manager over one of the empty holes in the panel and drop it in, which should add it to the panel.

I did that as noted above.

I did that but it didn't accomplish anything. Dragging the Taskmanager from the Widgets menu to the Panel produces one or more spaces that say "Add Widgets" Now what? This is not intuitive and I've tried several approaches without success. When I close the Widgets menu the spaces disappear so I've accomplished nothing. I can't even minimize a window and then reopen it. Minimize (the down arrow in the upper right hand corner) closes the window.

Now that I can get " Add Widgets" spaces (It seems to produce two at a time) on the Panel, I can't get it to do anything useful to me. Now what?

I've been playing with the Panel and I now have it doing about what I'd like it do. It now displays a link to the current open application and will also display a link to any minimized windows. I don't know just how I got this to happen and probably couldn't do it again, but right now it is working.

Thanks for your help and pray for me!

The widget which holds 'link's to the open and minimized windows is the Task manager (which we asked you to add). The task manager will expand to fill what space it can and display all of your running (minimized or not) applications (compacting them as necessary if you have a lot open). Your problem was that you didn't have a task manager in your panel (and it sounds like you tried adding it, but then got confused and removed it, or something).

If you have some time, it might be useful to explore the other plasmoids to find out what each of them does (you can place any of them directly on the desktop). You may find a couple that you'll find useful.

I apparently have the Task Manager installed. There's no icon on the Panel but when I right-click on the Panel there is an option called Task Manager Settings. If I click on it I get a menu of options. I've selected Only Show Tasks that are minimized. Is that what you've been telling me to do?

Ah good, you've managed to add it. Untick all options for "Show only..." in the Task Manager Settings dialog.