The solutions with KDE4

Logging in

After seeing the message “No greeter widget plugin loaded. Check the configuration.” I correctly assumed that this would make a great web search query. Unfortunately searching the web required a browser, and I couldn’t access any of the browsers which required KDE. I could have installed GNOME, but I wouldn’t want to give their developers the satisfaction of knowing that they helped me solve a KDE problem. Braving the harsh, inhospitable world of the console, then, I switched to a virtual terminal, logged in, installed ELinks and eventually managed to browse to a blog post which had exactly the answer I needed, basically running apt-get install kdebase-workspace.

The clock

Tragically the solution to the excessively wide clock problem is to install a different clock. The clock I went for in the end is available upstream at KDE-Look.org, but more conveniently is available in an Ubuntu PPA. Once you have installed it you need to then set the formatting using pseudo-HTML, so I’ll share the markup I used. For the main display:

and for the tool-tip format:

If you want to add to the 108 votes that KDE’s bugzilla has recorded for this feature request, the bug number is 169130. There is also technically a workaround you could use if you really don’t want to install any additional software. The versatility of KDE’s plasma system means you can run two panels independently, and with a bit of coaxing you can even have them both running at the bottom of your screen side by side. If you put all your widgets except the clock in one panel, and the standard KDE clock widget in the other, you can shrink the height of the second panel until the width of the clock text becomes acceptable. This then looks like you have a “step” in your panel, but at least you don’t have any wasted horizontal space.

Task Manager applet

If you find that the task manager is not using the vertical space efficiently enough, rather than messing around with fonts you can select “Task Manager Settings” from the right click menu, then tick the “Force row settings” box. This assumes you have the “Maximum rows” option set to the value you desire.

Lock / logout applet

Ubuntu bug 292766 covers the problem of wrong icons for the lock / logout applet and the K menu. Following the hints there, it turns out that what you need to do is open the “System Settings” utility, look in the “Appearance” panel and select the “Icons” icon, then make sure that “Oxygen” is the selected theme.

Konsole audible and visible bell

The bug for the lack of an audible system bell in Konsole is number 177861 in KDE’s bugzilla, and it currently only has 62 votes. The bug for the lack of the visible bell is number 290189 in Ubuntu, which is (perhaps incorrectly) linked to the upstream KDE bug number 174505. This KDE bug is specifically about events happening in a “non-visible session”, but even if it is the same as the bug reported to Ubuntu, it only has 20 votes and so may not be fixed before the audible bell problem. Anyway, these are serious usability regressions in an application which is already one of the hardest for new users to learn.

The good news

Having waited patiently for over 18 months, I have finally been rewarded by a solution to the Ctrl + Backspace problem which I blogged about. The KDE bug this relied on was number 84457, which was fixed in KDE4 as my earlier blog post mentioned, and it meant that I was able to configure any key combinations I wanted. The old Ubuntu HOWTO was still helpful, but I will include the precise steps below to make things clearer.

In the Settings menu of Konsole, select Edit Current Profile…, go to the Input tab and click the Edit… button with the default key bindings choice selected. Now add or replace the following bindings: Backspace+Ctrl \E[9;3~ Left-Shift+Ansi+AnyModifier \E[1;5D Right-Shift+Ansi+AnyModifier \E[1;5C Del+AnyModifier \E[3;5~

Unfortunately there is one extra step, though, which does require editing a nasty old-fashioned config file, as there needs to be a system-wide way of interpreting the sequences specified above and making them carry out the correct actions. At the bottom of /etc/inputrc then, add these lines: # Backspace-Ctrl “\e[9;3~”: backward-kill-word # Del-Ctrl “\e[3;5~”: kill-word and that should work. If you have problems getting this to work, or if it suddenly stops working (as I think might have happened for me), then it is worth noting that the list of key bindings in Konsole seems to be in precedence order. This means that if you have the key binding for Backspace at the top of the list, then this might interfere with the binding for Backspace+Ctrl, for example.

Blue tint when playing videos

Thinking that the blue tint in my video was a general graphics problem, my web searches were rather unfocused and I ended up finding a page which seemed to blame the Totem player. I did not have Totem installed, but the page said that Totem could fix the problem, so I installed it and followed their instructions, dragging the Hue slider to zero in the preferences. This did indeed fix the problem, but it was only when later using the Dragon Player and having the problem resurface that I was able to see the causal link. Fortunately Dragon Player has its own Hue slider, so I fixed the problem from within the application that caused it, but I think that from now on I’ll be using KMPlayer for my videos.

Missing icons from Konqueror side bar

The workaround for the missing icons in the side bar is to go to your ~/.kde/share/apps directory and mv konqsidebartng/ konqsidebartngOLD or do something similar to rename that directory. I got this idea from the comments on Ubuntu bug 277806.

Disappearing status bar in Konqueror

Bug reports aren’t the only way to find solutions to bugs, and the solution I found for the disappearing status bar problem was in a forum post on the KDE forums. It recommended that you “Load View Profile” from the “Settings” menu and select “Tabbed Browsing”, then keep the home page tab open and close the other tabs, then save this profile. Those are the basic instructions, but hopefully you can fill in any gaps.

Conclusion

I think I’ve written a lot about bugs and their solutions over the course of these two posts, and I’d like to think that splitting the bugs from the solutions has some artistic merit. Perhaps the alternative would have been to split the bugs into two categories, and deal with each category in a separate post. There is one final bug and potential fix that I will include together here though. If you find that you can’t load Synaptic (or any “Run as a different user” application) from your KDE4 menu (after a clean install, but not after an upgrade, as far as I can tell) then you might have to ln -s /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/kdesu /usr/bin/ to put kdesu in your path.

If that doesn’t work? Delete /tmp/ksocket-(username)/kdesud_:0. If that doesn’t work? Use sux?