In the KDE 3.5 control panel, there was a "desktop behavior" editor, different from the desktop "Look and Feel" editor in the new "System Settings" tool.

Therein, one could specify "Mouse Button Actions,", i.e., what mouse clicks in the background do.

The facility to control "Mouse Button Actions" seems to be absent from the gnome-like "System Settings" tool.

Is it gone, or is it hiding somewhere?

Right click on the desktop and select "Default Desktop Settings" (or whatever workspace layout you are using, like Folder View, Grid, etc.) and see the Mouse Actions page.

The only thing that right-clicking in the background, followed by "desktop settings," allows to change is the desktop activity, desktop theme, and wallpaper. Not the "Button Actions" that Desktop->Behavior allowed to change in the KDE 3.5 control panel. The "Keyboard & Mouse" editor in the "System Settings" tool also does not allow to configure what mouse clicks in the background do. The Desktop->Behavior panel of the KDE 3.5 control panel included separate settings for the three mouse buttons, with selections for each from "No action", "Window list menu", "Desktop menu", "Application menu", "Bookmarks menu", "Custom menu 1", and "Custom menu 2".

What KDE software version are you using? I'm currently using 4.10.1 but the functionality has been there in 4.9 as well. Not so sure about 4.8 and older. Here's a screenshot of what I mean:

http://wstaw.org/m/2013/04/04/plasma-desktopBc9002.png

I'm using KDE 4.3.4, which I assume is standard with Scientific Linux 6.4. There is no "mouse actions" option on the "Desktop settings" pick from the right-click desktop menu. The "Mouse" option under "Keyboard & Mouse" in "System settings" also does not offer what your screenshot shows. Are the choice your control offers a superset of what I listed in my previous message?

The settings I had under Desktop->Behavior in the KDE 3.5 control center were "Application Menu" for the left mouse button, "Window List Menu" for the center mouse button, and "Desktop Menu" for the right mouse button. Only the "Desktop Menu" for the right mouse button survives in KDE 4.3.4. The others have apparently been changed to "No Action," which was one of the choices in KDE 3.5.

If RedHat and Scientific Linux ever get around to offering a newer (or older) KDE, maybe I'll get the functionality back. It's curious that it got deleted when the Control Center was replaced by System Settings.

Hm ... That is indeed pretty old now. The options weren't lost because of a move from KControl to System Settings. It was "lost" because KDE 4 replaced kdesktop and kicker (the panel) with a new framework that was started from scratch, Plasma. I think around 4.3 (just a year or so after KDE 4 was first released) it wasn't reimplemented yet. It took some time for Plasma to become really stable and mature, but I'm not sure which release started having the mouse actions back.

Maybe you could check if Scientific Linux has more up-to-date KDE packages. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

I'm using Scientific Linux 6.4 (Carbon). The desktop mouse action controls aren't there.

Yes, these features were added between 4.4 and 4.5.

Please note that we don't know which versions of KDE are shipped with each distribution, so please mention the version of KDE you are using.

Thanks for the advice that this facility is restored in KDE 4.4 or 4.5. The version of KDE I use is 4.3.4. I hope that RedHat/CentOS/Scientific Linux eventually include a newer KDE in their distributions. When (if?) I get a newer KDE (my SA is prohibited from installing anything they don't support, and I don't have the root password for my computer), and if I can then configure mouse actions in the desktop, I'll close this thread.

I installed Fedora 18, which includes KDE 4.10.2. The desktop mouse actions configurator does not appear in the System Settings application. Is there a separate program that sets the desktop mouse actions? I want to set the left mouse button to bring up the application launch menu, and the right mouse button to bring up the standard menu.

Mouse Actions are configured through the "Desktop Settings" which can be accessed through the Cashew, or by right clicking on the Desktop itself.

Right-clicking in the desktop didn't do anything. Maybe that's a cool new feature that Fedora 18 decided to add to their distribution of KDE 4.10.2.

Does including the mouse actions configurator within the "Desktop" button in the system settings app cause a problem? That seems to be a logical place to look for it, since that's where it was for many years, especially when KDE called the "Control Panel."

Many versions ago, the default out-of-the box KDE left-click in the desktop action was to expose the application menu. Now the default seems to be to do nothing. Is there a problem caused by putting the default left-click in the background back to the application menu?

Right-clicking in the desktop didn't do anything. Maybe that's a cool new feature that Fedora 18 decided to add to their distribution of KDE 4.10.2.

That is highly unusual - can you try accessing the Desktop settings through the Cashew (quarter circle in the top right corner of the screen) instead?

Does including the mouse actions configurator within the "Desktop" button in the system settings app cause a problem? That seems to be a logical place to look for it, since that's where it was for many years, especially when KDE called the "Control Panel."

To my knowledge, it is located in the settings of Plasma Desktop itself purely for policy reasons.

Many versions ago, the default out-of-the box KDE left-click in the desktop action was to expose the application menu. Now the default seems to be to do nothing. Is there a problem caused by putting the default left-click in the background back to the application menu?

There is no problem caused by this - it is simply not the default any more, as different people have different expectations.