Ok, had been making some changes to my desktop and task bar trying to get to know KDE 4.4.4 better. I thought I saw a spacer on my task bar and removed it but the entire task bar went away (the horizontal bar where all your buttons and icons are located). So not I can't do a single thing, I have a big desktop and there is nothing anywhere. It is pretty useless.

I can only post this message because I happened to have Firefox already opened up when this happened. Otherwise, I can't get to any of my programs anymore either.

Please help this poor soul! (Where KDE is concerned I sorta need to be saved from myself)

...Brad

I guess you mean the panel when you say taskbar. You can create a new panel (in 4.4.x it's only possible to create an empty one, in 4.5.x you can also choose to create a default panel) and add the widgets to it, or you can delete your Plasma configuration and restore all desktop settings to default.

It seems like you like to experiment, so I would recommend the first option. You can use this page as reference: http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/HowTo/4.4
The widgets you probably want to add to the panel are: application launcher, pager, task manager, system tray and clock.

Whew! Thanks, yeah I haven't quite gotten the names right for the KDE environment. I'm on my first week switching from Windows Vista so I'm still figuring all this out.

I was able to rebuild my panel though. Ha, you should have seen my face when I deleted the panel and couldn't bring it back! It's back now, thanks!

I have to wonder if there is a way to back up the desktop settings (including panels, etc) so if you delete stuff you could somehow get it back??

Hans wrote:I guess you mean the panel when you say taskbar. You can create a new panel (in 4.4.x it's only possible to create an empty one, in 4.5.x you can also choose to create a default panel) and add the widgets to it, or you can delete your Plasma configuration and restore all desktop settings to default.

It seems like you like to experiment, so I would recommend the first option. You can use this page as reference: http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/HowTo/4.4
The widgets you probably want to add to the panel are: application launcher, pager, task manager, system tray and clock.

Great to hear that you fixed it. In Linux configuration files are generally stored as text files, so it's easy to backup and restore them. You can find KDE configurations in ~/.kde or ~/.kde4 (depending on your distro; some use other names, such as ~/.kdemod4 for KDEMod, but the first two are the most common ones). The Plasma Workspaces files can be found in ~/.kde4/share/config which includes plasma-desktop-appletsrc, plasma-desktoprc and plasmarc. You can also find some activities settings in ~/.kde4/share/apps/plasma-desktop/activities.

If you want to restore a configuration file you usually need to exit the application first. This can be done with the kquitapp command, e.g. run

Code: Select all

kquitapp plasma-desktop

in a terminal or in KRunner (Alt+F2). When you've restored the file you can start Plasma Desktop again with

Code: Select all

plasma-desktop

Thanks!

Hans wrote:Great to hear that you fixed it. In Linux configuration files are generally stored as text files, so it's easy to backup and restore them. You can find KDE configurations in ~/.kde or ~/.kde4 (depending on your distro; some use other names, such as ~/.kdemod4 for KDEMod, but the first two are the most common ones). The Plasma Workspaces files can be found in ~/.kde4/share/config which includes plasma-desktop-appletsrc, plasma-desktoprc and plasmarc. You can also find some activities settings in ~/.kde4/share/apps/plasma-desktop/activities.

If you want to restore a configuration file you usually need to exit the application first. This can be done with the kquitapp command, e.g. run

Code: Select all

kquitapp plasma-desktop

in a terminal or in KRunner (Alt+F2). When you've restored the file you can start Plasma Desktop again with

Code: Select all

plasma-desktop