I would be grateful if someone could tell me where the config files are for these:
(i) The K menu in Plasma 5
(ii) The default applications for each file type.

Students sometimes mess up the settings for the desktop and I would like to be able to restore them from a backup.
I found the settings for the panel and widgets in plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc .
I've looked in ~/.kde/share/config and in ~/.config but can't find the K menu settings in them.

The default applications I have been setting one by one (open .avi by default in VLC not dragonplayer; open webm by default in VLC; open .mp3 in VLC ... etc ...) every time I set up a new computer with Kubuntu and if I could just replace a config file it would save a lot of clicking. I am guessing it is somewhere in /etc?
Thanks.

The default applications should be in ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list, the K-menu entries are the .desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications/ and submenus are in ~/.local/share/desktop-directories/.
The menu structure is stored in ~/.config/menus/ (applications-kmenuedit.menu is what kmenuedit creates/modifies).

This is not at all specific to Plasma5 btw, but a freedesktop.org standard, so should be respected by other DEs as well.

Thanks Wolfi323. Just what I was after.

Can someone verify whether this is still true for Plasma 5 today?

I have a K menu with favourites that keep emptying themselves apart from 4 entries.

This started when I had to remove my .local because KDE was not starting because I had connected a second monitor and now the configuration was all messed up and refused to give image on any monitor.

So I had replaced (removed, renamed) .local and later set it back when I found out how to fix the issue by hand.

Now only Opera, Dolphin, System Settings and Kate remain after every restart. I try to get e.g. Chromium in there and it doesn't keep.

But I cannot find any mention of opera in my entire home directory. There are barely any symlinks (the relevant ones would be .kde/socket-xenpc, .kde/cache-xenpc, .kde/tmp-xenpc) and there are no files named opera in any directory not by opera. Opera only exists in:

.local/share/recently-used.xbel
.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list
.config/mimeapps.list
.config/kdeglobals

So that didn't work to find the location of the menu.

I am assuming my .local and .config got out of sync but I have no clue on how to fix this. If only I could find the file that contained the current menu as a starters. Ah, mystery solved.

Because opera is my standard browser it is saved as //browser in the plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletrc file.

[Containments][137][Applets][138][Configuration][General]
favorites=preferred://browser,systemsettings.desktop,org.kde.dolphin.desktop,org.kde.kate.desktop,org.kde.konsole.desktop

So why is this getting wiped? Because after restart that kde.konsole.desktop will be gone.

I guess I'll have to see what happens to it when I shutdown KDE.

xen111 wrote:Can someone verify whether this is still true for Plasma 5 today?

Basically yes.

Just that the default applications are stored now in ~/.config/mimeapps.list instead of ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list (the latter will still be read if the former doesn't exist), as per a change in the XDG specs.

I have a K menu with favourites that keep emptying themselves apart from 4 entries.

The Favorites are a specific setting of each application menu applet, and are stored in the Plasma config, ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc.

This started when I had to remove my .local because KDE was not starting because I had connected a second monitor and now the configuration was all messed up and refused to give image on any monitor.

So that didn't work to find the location of the menu.

Menu entries are stored as .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/ (system-wide), and ~/.local/share/applications/ per user.

I am assuming my .local and .config got out of sync but I have no clue on how to fix this. If only I could find the file that contained the current menu as a starters. Ah, mystery solved.

The menu structure is saved in ~/.config/menus/. (kmenuedit saves it in applications-kmenuedit.menu)

So why is this getting wiped? Because after restart that kde.konsole.desktop will be gone.

Maybe there is no kde.konsole.desktop in the above mentioned folders?

wolfi323 wrote:The Favorites are a specific setting of each application menu applet, and are stored in the Plasma config, ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc.

I found that one.

Menu entries are stored as .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/ (system-wide), and ~/.local/share/applications/ per user.

The local store is empty, it's only about the favourites.

The menu structure is saved in ~/.config/menus/. (kmenuedit saves it in applications-kmenuedit.menu)

That's pretty much empty, favourites aren't saved there (I didn't edit the menu).

Maybe there is no kde.konsole.desktop in the above mentioned folders?

There is nothing in any of those but they surely exist in the site-wide /usr/share/...

Apparently the favourites are saved in that line in the applet rc.

xen111 wrote:

Maybe there is no kde.konsole.desktop in the above mentioned folders?

There is nothing in any of those but they surely exist in the site-wide /usr/share/...

There should be an org.kde.konsole.desktop in /usr/share/applications/, if konsole is installed.
But I doubt that there's a kde.konsole.desktop anywhere...

Apparently the favourites are saved in that line in the applet rc.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say.
Try to edit that file manually when Plasma is not running.
Do the favorites stick then?
Maybe plasma isn't saving them properly or something.

What version are you actually using?