I recently upgraded my aptosid ( Debian SID) system and naturally received the latest KDE4 ( 4.4.6.3-?),
I say -? because different parts of KDE have different -? numbers, all seemed to go well until I restarted the system. My KDE4 desktop was a mess !

Please forgive me if I get my Plasma terms mixed up with Desktop terms -- I still have not really figured out where one starts and the other ends !

a) all my desktop icons were huge, about twice my normal set size, and arranged in a grid, not as I had
arranged prior to the upgrade. I naturally rearranged them.

b) many deleted icons returned. Some from over 6 months removed !)

c) the task bar ( "Panel" ? ) was quite corrupt:
1) two digital clocks appeared. i actually only need one thank you !

2) 4 mini-icons appeared behind the 'K' ( application launcher ) & Dolphin File Manager Icons, on the left of the task bar, just showing enough of them selves to allow deletion !

3) The various tooltip & pop up menus were so dark as to be unusable, the calendar was just a black box, quite unreadable.

4) when I 'opened' the cashews pop-up edit tools ( the black bar the appears above the task bar ) all my Icons were re-arranged !! Because the black bar 'touched' one of my icons ??

d) on the desktop, in the top left & right corners were two "cashews", they caused my application windows to fit in a 'frame' 10mm shorter all the way round than the actual screen size, nor could I place any desktop icons in the 10mm edge. I deleted those cashews with some trepidation as the delete option is 'delete this panel' and I was not sure "what panel do you mean?" -- I'm looking at a single cashew icon aren't I ?. Deleting them recovered my full screen area.

e) the task bar was set 'transparent' and this seemed to cause many problems when trying to edit the task bar itself, the 'four way cursor' did not work at moving many icons -- yes they were unlocked !)

f) the 'add spacer' tool is a real mess, it drops what ever size bar 'it' likes without much regard to what
spacer size I would like.

g) I 'solved' many problems when another forum writer mentioned that re-setting the theme from the default one to another -- I chose 'Oxygen' , which is darker and not transparent. The tooltips are now readable ( still annoying !), the taskbar is editable. Transparent might seem interesting but it would ppear to have some problems.

h) I have managed to remove the displaying of current applications from the taskbar, but surely that's a
setting somewhere in the bowels of KDE options

I feel that KDE developers have really lost the plot as what end-users really need, someone need to take a 'clue stick' to the developers and make them sit back and really review what's needed in KDE, and how & what end-user expect to do with their desktops. And believe me it's not rocket science, most people have quite simple needs. It should be easy to to place/remove icons on their screen, create icon links to their own programs, etc. It's NOT more flaky features, its just better and better refinement of the features already existing. Not to mention the task of improving the actual KDE code.

I appreciate that KDE 3x had well past it's use by date and can only imagine how hard it was to support, BUT it is not YOUR right to experiment with MY desktop. If you can't ensure total transferring of my desktop's "look & feel" that I have spent my time in arranging , then don't stuff around with unwanted features !

I've spent a day sorting out the mess YOU left me with.

KDE 4.4 is very old if I am reading that right. Otherwise it is KDE 4.6.3, which is fairly new. In any case, it sounds like your Plasma configuration has been severely broken.

Removing plasma* from ~/.kde4/share/config should fix that, as long as Plasma isn't running at the time.

In regards to the colour scheme, I've never seen that one before. Try changing the colour scheme in System Settings to another one, then back to your usual one.

Thanks for your reply:

the version is actually 4:4.6.3-? ( note the ":") as displayed by optosid's debian package search tool.
So I think that its pretty much up to date.

I'll try your suggestion about the plasma files.


As for the theme, Oxygen is the scheme I was using before the upgrade, so that's ok now, it was the theme the upgrade decided to use that caused the display problem initially.

I found the plasma* files under /root/.kde/share/config ( not .kde4 , a aptosid implementation change ?? )
and deleted them while running in a root konsole.

When I restarted, the desktop was OK, and as I'd left it, however the panel was again transparent !
Checked my theme and it was still Oxygen, tried the other themes but the panel remained transparent.

Turned OFF desktop effects , the panel now opaque as I prefer it.

However I still don't have my applications appear in the panel when I run them, nor when I reduce their Window via 'v' click, if I reduce them they just stop running, which is not satisfactory.

do you have the task manager widget installed on your panel? needed for apps to show on panel, if it is and not working correctly try either fancy tasks or smooth tasks.

are you sure the minimized apps stopped working or just not showing on the panel? check the system monitor (ksysguard) to see if they are actually running or not

Also, which window manager do you use? KWin?

google01103 wrote:do you have the task manager widget installed on your panel? needed for apps to show on panel, if it is and not working correctly try either fancy tasks or smooth tasks.

I had reinstalled the task manager before you suggestion, and of course I see now those tasks again in the panel. Not sure why the task manager disappeared.

google01103 wrote:are you sure the minimized apps stopped working or just not showing on the panel? check the system monitor (ksysguard) to see if they are actually running or not

Not sure, problem fixed, but thanks for your suggestion.

bcooksley wrote:Also, which window manager do you use? KWin?

I don't actually know, I just use what ever KDE version comes with aptosid, I have used KDE on all my Linux distro's and have never thought much about what windows manager I'm using -- as long as it works I leave it alone.

Ok, it seems things are working now in any case. Any other issues with the upgrade?

bcooksley wrote:Ok, it seems things are working now in any case. Any other issues with the upgrade?

No, seems to have settled down, I did a small upgrade last night, just the latest optosid changes, but the exact same upgrade process and my KDE desktop 'survived' the ordeal ! Rebooted exactly as expected.

Thanks for your interest.