I installed KDE-desktop on a brand new Chromebook (using Crouton) . I first tried just plane KDE but was terribly disappointed with the results. Nothing was working correctly, I couldn't move any of the windows, the menu was missing, etc.

The desktop version seems to be what I want. The Chromebook is the 32 Gb version. The install went well and I didn't notice any errors. This is a fresh install, nothing special.

There are two three very frustrating things that I have run into:

First, and most important, I cannot make the Synaptic Program Manager start from the GUI. It pops an icon onto the panel, the startup indicator spins for about ten seconds, then the panel icon disappears and nothing. I've tried giving the app full permissions (777) and it just refuses to start from the GUI. The start command shows: synaptic-pkexec. If I start it from a terminal (sudo synaptic), it starts up correctly and seems to work fine. I shows I am the user, and the same for the group.

What can I post that might help determine what is wrong? I'm new to KDE and can't even seem to find the log files that might tell me something.

Two: There is a screen timeout that only seems to run for about 15 minutes or so and then I have to log into the system again. Is there some way to just get rid of it? I couldn't even find a place to at least set it to a longer time in the System Settings, such as the Desktop or Display and Monitor. The computer is sitting in my ham radio station, and I don't do anything important on it, it is just going to be used for hobby applications, nothing important.

Three: There were two items when I started typing this, but I've discovered another that may be related to the Synaptics issue. When I try to run Update Manager, it starts up, but when I click, "Install Updates," a message window pops up: "This operation cannot continue since proper authorization was not provided." Once again, I think there must be something in the permissions that are not working correctly. Where to look?
Thanks for any help.

K1YPP

As for the first problem, where Synaptic Program Manager would start in a terminal, but not a GUI, I think I have found a solution. If one right-clicks on the Synaptic menu item and then selects "edit Application," and then left-click on the "Application" tab, you'll see the "Command" menu. By default, at least in my install, the command is "synaptic-pkexec" which needs to be changed to "gksu synaptic".

For whatever reason, the default install command is bogus and does not work. Now I start the GUI link and it asks for the password and the App is running.

Problem #1 solved, now, if I could only figure out how to kill the automatic logout timer!

K1YPP

Second problem solved, the lock screen. The default app for the screen lock, locks the screen after five minutes of inactivity. I could find nothing in the system settings. My son did some searching around and found that the package: kde-config-screenlocker, is missing from the install. Go figure.

Anyway, do an install of kde-config-screenlocker and then there will be a control in the Desktop Behavior section.

Two down.

K1YPP

dennisblanchard wrote:Anyway, do an install of kde-config-screenlocker and then there will be a control in the Desktop Behavior section.

Greetings,

Maybe a bug of the Neon build / iso that you installed?
I never had to manually install this package.

TKL-Ansi wrote:

dennisblanchard wrote:Anyway, do an install of kde-config-screenlocker and then there will be a control in the Desktop Behavior section.

Greetings,

Maybe a bug of the Neon build / iso that you installed?
I never had to manually install this package.

Not applicable here, as the OP is not using an OS installed via an iso image, but is running Plasma using Crouton on his Chromebook, which has its own unique oddities compared to running a normal install. It is more or less using an Ubuntu 16.04 base running on top of the Chromebook's kernel , drivers etc.

Aight! My focus lies on Desktop PCs.

For the synaptic and update manager apps not running/working by default, I would guess those are set up to rely on PolicyKit to grant/deny/require password for access to those things, and the default policy is to disallow users from running things (again, blame Crouton).
Two solutions for that: Use the workaround mentioned to use a su/sudo-based command to launch the app, or configure PolicyKit to grant your user permission to do things (with your password).