Desktop: KDE Related Problems

Stefan Parvu

SuSE 8.2 ships with KDE 3.1.1 Right now there are already the new KDE 3.1.3 packages out. You can find them to this ftp address: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE

There are many ways to update your KDE 3.1.1 to KDE 3.1.3 under SuSE 8.2: yast, manual or using apt-get We will present the Yast version.

Jon Klaussen

For which purpose the nice people at KDE provide us with... the "Autostart Folder"... ;)

Look in .kde2/ in your home directory... and check this out: http://www.kde.org/documentation/userguide/all-about-your-desktop.html#THE-AUTOSTART-FOLDER

To fix it:

Szabó László

This is because of the missing path from qt plugin configuration. If you check the qtconfig Library Paths settings, you will see all previously installed qt plugin paths in the list, but not the current (3.0.5). If you add the correct plugin path (/usr/lib/qt-3.0.5/plugins), you will see jpeg images in file preview or kview etc...once again.

You may have to restart KDE once you make the changes in QTconfig. Just open a shell/console window and type qtconfig and it will open up! Go to the Library Paths tab and add the new path to qt 3.0.5 plugins! That will take care of all your jpeg problems in the main KDE screens, but your login background will still have to be a png for now, as it does not affect that image format.

Go toPreferences+Peripherals->Keyboard and select the Turn on radio button in NumLock on KDE startup under the Advanced tab.

Preferences-> System->Login Manager

If you use kde3 and /opt/kde3/bin/kdm as login-manager, and always get an ugly grey xdm-ish background, make sure you have the following lines in /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup:

kde3root=/opt/kde3/bin					#Somewhere near line 52

for p in ${kde1root}/kdm \				#Starting circa line 62
             ${kde2root}/kdm \
              ${kde3root}/kdm
      do
    

To change the menu for all users, you have to modify the general kde menu that is in /opt/kde3/share/applnk. If you want to add a new icon that is not present there, you have to create a new .desktop file and you may specify the following fields:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8 
Name=                           #name of the application in menu
GenericName[i18n]=              #text within brackets in menu, i18n is the code of the    		          
                                # language you're using, [en] I suppose... :-)
Exec=			        #name of the application o execute, you can specify full path
Icon=				#name of the icon of the applicatio, you can specify full path. !! If
				#you don't put anything here you're entry won't be displayed in the menu
Type=Application
Terminal=0			#whether the application has to be executed in a console. 0 for 	
				#none
      

To add a new menu or submenu, simply create a new folder and assign it an icon you like. For the folder to be displayed you must at least put a .desktop file in it.

The /opt/kde3/share/applnk is merged with the personal user-kde directory to generate the menu for each user. If the ~/.kde/share/applnk doesn't contain any entry, the whole /opt/kde3/share/applnk menu will be displayed. If it contains different entries, those will be displayed next to the ones of the general kde menu. If it contains an entry that is in the same folder or subfolder of the general menu and has the same name, the entry won't be displayed in the menu.

For example, if you have:

	/opt/kde3/share/applnk/Applications/[empy] 
      

and

	~/.kde/share/applnk/Applications/xmms.desktop
      

The xmms entry will be displayed in the folder 'Applications' of the Kmenu, but if you have:

	/opt/kde3/share/applnk/Applications/xmms.desktop
      

and

	~/.kde/share/applnk/Applications/xmms.desktop
      

The xmms entry won't appear in the menu.

In respect to the icons on the desktop, I don't know how to add new ones. There's a script in /opt/kde3/bin/startkde written for SuSE that substitutes the original /opt/kde3/bin/startkde.original that do the job of creating the new desktop icons when a user logs in for the first time. But as I don't know bash script programming very well, I decided to create my own icons manually and I uninstalled the SuSE theme. This way only aTrash icon is created on the desktop. If you know bash programming, I think it wouldn't be difficult to understand the SuSE script and change it to create your own desktop icons.

Anders Johansson

On request, a little mini-howto on how to compile kde from cvs

It's probably a good idea to do all this in one terminal window. If you set an environment variable in one konsole window, that variable will not be set in another window, so stay in one window when you do this.

First of all, make sure you have cvs installed. It is on SuSE's CDs. You also need gcc, gpp, automake, autoconf and yacc. I can't list here everything you need exactly. If you install the "development" setup in yast, you should get most, if not all of it. I never worry too much about that, because the compilation scripts will complain if you lack a certain package you need. Just install it as you go along.

Stefan Parvu

You can easily change the dpi settings for KDE env by editing the Xservers file found under: /etc/opt/kde3/share/config/kdm directory. Edit the file and change the :0 local line like:

:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt7 -dpi 100
      

you just have to add after vt7 the '-dpi 100' or whatever other setting you would like. 'Dpi 75' is another solution.