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I'm trying to set up a CentOS 6 system with KDE. I have an older system that use gnome that I'm happy with, and I'm trying to make the KDE system behave as much like the gnome one as possible.

The current issue is the pager. On Gnome, I have two pager widgets. one has the full 4x4 view of all of my virtual desktops with just silhouettes of the windows. The other just shows the current desktop, and just shows the name.

If I try this in KDE, all pager widgets appear to have the same settings.

All I really want is a full 4x4 pager widget, and another widget that just has the name of the current desktop. How do I do this?

I'm not sure what version of KDE I have, I tried looking it up, but nothing seemed to say...

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Brian Postow
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2 Answers2

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I went through this last year when I switched to KDE from fvwm2, which has a very full featured highly configurable pager. The default one in KDE, by comparison, sucks.

I made the best I could of it and kept using it for a few months, until I found I was relying on other features, e.g.:

  • CtrlF8 Pretty sure this is the default key-binding, but you may need "Desktop Effects" enabled, a toplevel option of "Workspace Appearance and Behavior". This gives you a bird's eye view of all desktops (much like a fullscreen pager) but with the individual windows abstracted a bit so they do not overlap, etc.; i.e., you see each application on each desktop distinctly (even if they are currently minimized). This is instanteous on a fast box. You can use it for navigation like a pager. The keybinding is set via Common Appearance and Behavior -> Shortcuts and Gestures -> Global Keyboard Shortcuts, then select "Kwin" from the dropdown which initially reads "KDE Activity Manager"; the feature is "Show Desktop Grid".

  • Putting a "Task Manager" widget in a taskbar configured to only show applications on the current desktop. This comes with a weeny, featureless little pager of its own, lol.

  • Under Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Workspace Behavior -> Screen Edges you can pick a corner or edge into which you can shove the mouse cursor to "Present Windows, All Desktops" (actually I now prefer "Current Desktop"; there's a "Current Application", too). This abstracts the windows in a manner similar to the "Show Desktop Grid" feature, but without distributing them across a pager-like representation of the desktops. It is sort of disorienting at first.

So the pager had become useless/unused (in fact, since I had it configured into it's own odd geometry pop-up taskbar, I'd actually forgotten about it).

Keep in mind I was really, really annoyed by that and some other things that I saw as KDE eccentricities at first and almost gave up on it right off the bat (which I've done before, and same w/ GNOME). I also tried to do some searching regarding a pager (I don't even think there are any decent alternatives) and was perplexed how little other people had to say about it. Now it seems to me this is just because of how KDE generally works; using a pager is contra the general design, hence "power users" don't have any use for one, hence what there is is pretty gimpy.

goldilocks
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Glad I stumbled onto this - ctrl-f8 is 'puffect' - but there are some 'errors' here (which, I hasten to add, have absolutely nothing to do with Goldilocks or Brian Postow).

1) "Under Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Workspace Behavior -> Screen Edges" - No! That's not right. Since April 2014 when Goldilocks wrote this, KDE has changed the Systems Settings screen so that there are now two buttons - "Workspace Appearance" & "Workspace Behaviour" (at least we Brits get a correct spelling sometimes - although not, apparently, where Goldilocks come from)

This - the changing of the buttons - may not be an 'app-killer' but it is disorientating. I have absolutely no doubt that when Goldilocks wrote this it was correct; but, 18 months later it is not!

2) "Putting a 'Task Manager' widget in a taskbar (Panel?) configured to only show applications on the current desktop. This comes with a weeny, featureless little pager of its own.." - I use, and have used for years, SuSE. The cluster of blobs for the 'Virtual Desktops' has always been installed by default, has always appeared at the LHF side of the Panel (this section used to be called 'Icons' it may now be called 'quick start' or something.) and, yes, this may have 'been a weeny, featureless little pager' in April 2014, but it's not entirely true now; the 'cluster of blobs' do now show a (sort of) useful snapshot of what each window contains.

3) "Under Workspace Appearance and Behavior -> Workspace Behavior -> Screen Edges you can pick a corner or edge into which you can shove the mouse cursor to "Present Windows, All Desktops" - Um, no, it doesn't. I've fiddled around with this for some time and can't get anything to work.

I don't blame Goldilocks or Brian Postow, so, who do I blame? Well, KDE. I have used SuSE since 6.3 in 1999 (probably before that but 6.3 is my 1st 'boxed set') and I have always used KDE but why do 'they' (KDE) change comparatively simple things so frequently?

People like Goldilocks write good answers to perfectly reasonable questions but, 18 months later, they're out of date. OK. the correct answers may not be difficult to find; but finding them is irritating and for a tyro user (I hate the word 'newbie') it might be a 'deal breaker' (back to Gnome!).

Anyway, for the time being, Ctrl-F8 is good enough for me.

Thanks!

dmk

dmk
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