Problems with Plasma Desktop - im trying it once upon a few years..

Help
1

Hello,
i just started to use Bazzite with default Plasma desktop for more than just quick check. From my user perspective - Im using Dos,Windows for 30+ years and, Linux for 20 and MacOS for 15 years, AmigaOS too, but with Linux always struggle with Desktop gui. Best what i experienced are Linux Mint Cinnamon or Mate, not quick agronomy mostly working for me. MX Linux default gui is also quite pleasant to me, i can Live with xfce on slow machines..

But i allways struggled with KDE, my present problems, maybe something is Bazzite problem, maybe something is KDE problem, normal user not be bothered to care, which developer do what, on windows i dont know if this is done by Joe or John.

Ok my present problems, i hope that have solution, but i would expect such setting by default, or set through some wizard at first login etc.

  1. When i place some Doplhin folder icon to Desktop and whole Doplhin and system behavior is set to Windows like, select on one click, open on double click, these are opening by single click :frowning:

  2. I manually replaced icons through desktop.. but when i set new file location at Desktop, like for Downloads, which i like, to keep things visible.. even new file icon its in the left upper corner, even when some icon is already there, its annoying it should not be hard to place it on the first free space tile.

  3. When i rename icon its moved to left upper corner, who would want that?

  4. There is not classic show this icons on desktop settings - i mean something like Computer icon - with volumes and mounting option, home and Trash, System setting and network.. quick checkboxes, all has to be done manually.

  5. When create some folder icon -widget and i want to simply move it.. i have to start some edit mode..Edit mode for moving icon on desktop, its like start edit mode in card to we able to turn steering wheel to left or right.. Its not something extra its most basic function of whole desktop, move icons. If not enable, because some accidental moves, make optiomal for such people they are minority.

As designer (mainly games logic, but im doing some main gui design too), i can tell you its not ergonomic, user not feel that its intuitive and tiresome.

Some praise so far, i never ended up with random reordering icons after some game changed resolution and crashed.. but when i changed Display scale.. icons reordered and i have to rollback choice, or rearrange them again.

I understand that another scale means different size of icons, but i would expect to place as much icons to original places as you can and these for which re is not room and the first free place from left top corner..

My 2 cents.

2

I can’t replicate #1. It works as expected for me (Plasma 6.5.4/openSUSE Tumbleweed).

#2 and #3 might be solved by changing the “Sort by” option to “Manual”

Right click the desktop > Select “Desktop and Wallpaper” > Select the “Icon” option on the sidebar

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Regarding #4, I believe there is an option to show mounted drives somewhere; I just can’t remember how to do it or if it is a widget.

For the other icons, you can place .desktop files that point to these directories.

For example, you can add the Trash icon by saving the contents below to a file named trash.desktop on your desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Trash
Comment=Contains removed files
Icon=user-trash-full
EmptyIcon=user-trash
Type=Link
URL=trash:/
OnlyShowIn=KDE;

And the Home directory, by saving the contents below to a file named Home.desktop on your Desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Home
GenericName=Personal Files
URL[$e]=$HOME
Icon=user-home
Type=Link

These files should be available when creating new user accounts. Your distro may remove them.

I agree there could be an option to add these (and potentially other common links) to a user directory. You can open a ticket on https://bugs.kde.org/ to request it.

About #5, I don’t use desktop widgets, so I can’t say much about it.

By your description, IMO, if something was placed as a widget, even if it is a widget resembling an icon, requiring entering edit mode to edit its location is fine.

If you add those locations as links (look at the sample .desktop files’ content above), then you would be able to move them as regular icons without entering edit mode, as they aren’t widgets but regular icons.

3

most of this does not sound normal to me on kubuntu LTS, and may be a distro specific issue.

  1. my folders/files open with double click
  2. when i manually place and icon that’s where it lives, new icons are added per the settings for how icons are to be arranged on that monitor.
  3. renaming an icon has no affect on it’s position.
  4. there is no “computer” icon, that’s true… dolphin is your “computer”… you can drag the trash to the desktop and get a trashcan icon, but three is an even better option
  5. here we get to the separate nature of icons and widgets which may be confusing things

icons are controlled by settings for each monitor, i have icons arranged to appear in the upper left and go down on my main monitor and on my side monitor they are set to appear on the upper left and go across… but if i manually place an icon, that that’s where it stays.

widgets are a completely separate layer of desktop items that have zero interaction with icons… they completely ignore one another.

you can place folder widgets onto the desktop and there is even a trash can widget which offers a nice context menu for you, but size and placement are done via the edit mode, you can’t just drag it like an icon.

i’ve not toyed with Bazzite, but it would not be on my short list of recommends for someone who wants a good plasma experience.

4

It sounds like you’ve created widgets for your folders and launchers, instead of shortcuts/links to them. The better and easier way is to just drag the things you want to the desktop, and select “Link Here” from the menu that appears. This encompasses #1 and #5.

Issues with desktop icons moving around are bugs, most of which I believe should be fixed as of Plasma 6.5.4. This is the case for at least #3, possibly #2 as well.

#4 is not a bug, but rather just a difference from how Windows does things.

But overall, desktop icon positioning is a surprisingly challenging thing to get right, and we’re aware that our code for it is rather fragile and buggy. It’s been a source of focus for the Plasma 6.5 release family.