I want to run a custom application on startup instead of the normal panel and desktop. the custom application will be for an unattended POS type of machine, so removing the user's ability to run other applications is extremely critical. I have found the information necessary to launch my own application on startup, but I can't find any explanation of how to disable the panel and the desktop.

Fedora 16 x64
KDE 4.7.3
Qt 4.8.0

did you look at kiosktool?

just a guess - try moving plasma.desktop out of $KDEDIR/share/autostart/ it's what calls plasma-desktop

I am guessing in this case that you do not need Plasma to start? You might also want to disable KRunner as well.

To do this, I would recommend editing $KDEDIR/share/autostart/plasma-desktop.desktop and adding a Hidden=true flag to the bottom of it.

kiosktool is too old to work with KDE 4.7.3, and I don't have the time or ambition to update it myself.

adding the Hidden=true flag works perfectly. it's exactly what I was looking for.

elkvis wrote:kiosktool is too old to work with KDE 4.7.3, and I don't have the time or ambition to update it myself.

there is a version of kiostool for 4.x.x, not sure how it differs from the 3.x version but it exists