Hey everyone, nice to be here. I’m new to the forum. Very new to Linux in general as well. Have been messing around with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mint Cinnamon for about 2 weeks now. Trying to get my DE to look and feel how I want, and doing Ok. I settled on a dual boot setup with Min Cinnamon on one side and Kubuntu on the other. Both the newest versions. But a few things on Plasma are just not working out or being extremely complex and difficult to figure out and need some help.
So I’ve got my “theme” all set for the most part. It’s mostly looking like a Dark MacOS theme with some of my own touches. I have transparent windows, blur, MacOS dark sur window decorations, with application set to Kvantum with the MacOS dark sur theme applied, Plasma Style is Dark Sur, colors are Dark Sur and Mkos dark icons. I’m running the newest version of Kubuntu 24.04 LTS. And it all looks just about dead on how I want it to look, but having a few problems and need some help.
The first and most frustrating one is the Latte Dock. No matter how I go about installing it and trying to edit it, I can’t get the dock to look how I want. I take one step forward and two steps back anytime I try to edit it! It’ll delete something, or screw something else up ALL the time when I edit it. So I’m installing the mcOS BS Layout for Latte Dock from the KDE store on Pling from fkorpsvart. But to be honest, it doesn’t matter which one I use, there’s always problems and it’s SOO complicated trying to edit anything without messing up something else no matter how simple.
The one thing I cant’ figure out for the life of me is how to get rid of this Latte Tasks empty icon on the dock?! It’s a plain white rectangle icon with a ? mark on it. And when I edit the dock and delete it, the ENTIRE DOCK disappears! So I undo that real quick. But I can’t figure out what it is or how to get rid of it. I know how to add or subtract new apps, but can’t figure this one out. It looks like this:
I have many more questions, but lets just focus on one at a time and solve them as I go. So just looking for some info and help on how to delete the ? Icon out of the dock, but without making the dock disappear.
Yes, I realize Latte Dock is no longer updated. But it still works and most people seem to have little to no problems with it running still. There are loads of videos showing customization using it with no problems. Plus other people on here even saying that Latte Dock will still work with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for about the next 3 or more years.
What I’m trying to figure out, is why is this black, white, ? mark icon showing up as Latte Tasks? And how do I get rid of it without deleting the Dock?
Well, so far, if I just install Latte dock from Github, not one of the Theme’d versions, only that 1 icon, that says it’s Latte Tasks shows up.
If I download Latte dock from Pling KDE store, and chose one of the MacOS theme’d versions of Latte dock, then it’s like 2-4 different icons are like this. Which I haven’t even checked yet what apps they are. But it makes no sense that they would be like that.
What I think it “could” be is that it’s an app that does not have an icon from the Icon pack I have installed. Which is Mkos Dark. But it doesn’t matter what Icon pack I select. There’s always at least 1 if not more apps missing an icon in the dock. Even though they do have an icon in the pack. That’s another super weird glitchy problem I’m having I’ll get to later on. Almost any icon pack I download and install, seems to be glitchy. Not just in Latte dock, but in general. I’ll download Vinceliuice’s great WhiteSur icon pack. I install it, chose it, and then about 1/4 ish of all the icons on my computer disappear!
But the problem with this white blank ? icon is that if I delete it when editing the dock, it deletes the entire dock!? And I obviously can’t have that. I can’t figure out why or how I’m the only one that has this problem. I see people installing latte dock on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or other Plasma 5.27 DE distros and they do not get this icon popping up when installing from scratch and editing or even when using the “themes” for Latte.
So, so far, I’m not actually downloading the icons from Github or Pling. Because Plasma has that Appearance menu and in it, I can just search and download anything I want.
But for example, when I was using and customizing Ubuntu or Linux Mint Cinnamon, I had to download the icons, themes, etc from Github or Pling and put them into the correct folder (.themes .icons, etc). But not with Plasma. So could that be the problem I’m having? Where not all the apps have an icon showing?
Like I said, I’m messing around on some different distros with different DE’s to see which one I like the best before staying with one. See which one feels/looks the best, etc. And now that I’m on Plasma again, I REALLY like it.
Nope. If you do it the first way, the icons will go to ~/.local/share/icons instead of ~/.icons. Dunno. Doesn’t kubuntu have latte dock in the repos?
“Even” Debian has a 0.10.9-1version.
But what’s more weird is that an icon pack doesn’t show a 1/4 systemwide.
I tried some of those icon sets you mentioned, no prob. Couldn’t find any that looks off ( except for the custom ones of course).
WhiteSurDark for example:
I’m not sure what you’re saying Nope to? Are you saying I need to download the icons the old fashioned way? And put them in a .icons folder in my Home folder? Instead of just downloading them from Plasma Appearances?
And again, I’m not computer literate or Linux literate enough to know what “doesn’t kubuntu have lotte dock in the repos” means. You’ll have to explain in more detail like I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Because I don’t.
And I should clarify about at least 1/4 of the icons missing. It’s probably not that many. I should have said exactly what I meant and that is: that the Latte dock themes that I download from Pling or Github don’t show around a 1/4 of the icons in the dock. So for example, if I download a MacOS Big Sur dock from Pling or Github and I install, it already is setup a certain way, looks a certain way and already has apps in the dock. Maybe like 5-8. And of those, around 1/4 of the icons for those apps that are in the dock are the same as the one I’m showing you from the first post. It’s a blank, white icon with a ? mark.
If you install manually, you put the icons in ~/.local/share/icons. NOT in ~/.icons. Also, keep in mind that if you install an icon theme like, for example, that whitesur one, you install the core folder as well. In this case whitesur. Cause in some cases the dark and light variant will “take parts” of the core folder. In this screenshot for example, I use a custom breeze rounded icon set. It takes certain icons from the core icon set, which in this case is Breeze.
And with repos, I mean repository. In gui form it comes as synaptic ( most likely in ubuntu). If you want to install some application, you should check if it is available in the repositories first. Either with a gui manager like synaptic or with the diskover tool. I’ll add a screenshot.
This isn’t true at all. In Manjaro forums we have had quite a few threads over the years - and most people agree that with Plasma 6 you’re just better off using Plasma, because the panels can do a lot more than they did when Latte was popular.
He’s on kubuntu. But yeah, lots of probs been reported. Personally, I don’t see a use case for latte ( other than the latte spacer for plasma panel ). For some bling, might as well do Plank imho.
Yeah, I don’t really want to get into a discussion about whether or not there are a lot of problems with Latte. I’ve read tons of posts here and all over the internet from people saying it still works just fine for them, no problems. You’ve seen posts saying otherwise. That’s not what I"m here for.
I’m here to see if anyone knows why I have this blank white ? icon in my Latte dock? No matter how I install it, from where, or what I do, it won’t go away without deleting the dock. That is the only thing I’m interested in right now. Fixing that. And I know it’s possible. The only question is, can anyone here help?
And like Dzon said, I’m not on Plasma 6, I’m on Plasma 5.27 from Kubuntu. And I’ve read many threads on different forums stating that Latte dock will continue to work on that version for something like 3 years or more. And by then, hopefully Plasma 6 will have it’s own Dock solution or built in dock.
EXACTLY this. I stayed with Latte as long as I possible could and finally had to throw in the towel because it had too many issue with newer versions of Plasma. I know more than half issues when they try to use Latte.
So are you saying you know the answer, but wont’ help? Or don’t know and don’t care?
Either way, why are you wasting your time responding to my thread asking for help with unhelpful rude messages? I’m being polite and asking for help, and instead, I get people telling me they don’t care and that Latte Dock has “all sorts” of problems. When I’ve read lots of posts all over saying quite the opposite. And again, that’s not the question or the issue. The question is can you help fix this issue? If you can’t, then no need to respond. Or just politely say: sorry, I don’t know.
So you are making up things as you go to try to discount other peoples opinion. My last reply was to indicate that you refuse to admit Latte does have issue, and most likely ones that weren’t addressed before they started only doing security updates for it. That is by now they are even still doing the security updates for Latte.
If it’s the language which is bugging you, then I’d like to alleviate your concerns.
The word ‘Dock’ tends to be more of a legacy OSX concept. ‘Panels’ was probably mostly associated with Windows.
The main visual differences are generally that ‘panel’ is more likely to define something which takes up desktop space across the full width of the screen, whereas ‘dock’ will be drawn for a narrower width, usually fitting the number of icons in existence.
Plasma does have a dock which is part of the KDE desktop. A dock is a program which runs continuously displaying icons, shortcuts, widgets and launchers for the user to interact with.
You can argue as much as you like, but it was a number of years ago that KDE explained that the maintenance would be far too much - that it might get limited maintenance for a short time and no more development.
The argument is superfluous - it is not part of the KDE project, and if there are features missing from the Plasma panel you should discuss that in the KDE forum…
). For some bling, might as well do Plank imho.