KDE4.0 Tip

KDE4 has been released for a while (currently 4.0.2). As you can see, although many things in KDE4 look cool, it still needs a really, really hard effort to polish things up to be used in the real world. I have struggled in using KDE4 as my main desktop environment. One trouble arises from my own hardware, an aged laptop using the old Intel graphic which has not adequate power to handle composting correctly. The other is its own interface. Plasma panel, widgets and many desktop effects are cool but some functionalities are reduced so that it can't get the job done. For example, you can't move widgets in the panel, just add or remove. Furthermore, you can mess up the desktop easily either by the way you config it or their own bugs.

Alright, if you just mess your desktop up, I have a tip for you to reset it to the beginning state.

Firstly, fire up the terminal (Konsole or Yakuake, or your favourite terminal) and type down these commands:

kquitapp plasma
rm ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc
plasma

The 'kquitapp plasma' will terminate the plasma session and your desktop will become dark screen. Make sure that terminal window is still opened.

The 'rm ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc' will remove desktop setting file.

The 'plasma' will restart your plasma session and a new setting file will be created. Then your desktop will return to beginning state.

See you next time...