Where has desktop icons and panel widgets gone?

[hallergard]

Upgraded from 14.10, was asked to choose default display manager, lightdm and sddm (where has kdm gone?), and guess I chose sddm. After having to log in (had autologin before) the desktop appears, but whithout my previous icons and widgets, and the panel only shows the same as the previous notification area. Could someone inform is this is how it is supposed to be? Or have I done something wrong? To upgrade I used a root terminal and the command "do-release-upgrade"

[Wheel Inventor]

Welcome to use the KF5/Plasma5

You have upgraded from the KDE4 desktop to the KDE Frameworks 5 / Plasma 5 Desktop. Many old applications/widgets etc. have not upgraded to the Qt5/KF5/Plasma5.


Discontinuity

The plasma 5 can't use old KDE4 plasma widgets. Some of the widget have been ported to the new Plasma 5 but not all. The Plasma 5.3 will add some more: https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.2.95.php . It is available for the Vivid: http://www.kubuntu.org/news/plasma-5.3-beta .


KDM is part of the kde-workspace source tree: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/vivid/+.../kde-workspace . It is not available for the Vivid: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/vivid/amd64/kdm .


Configuration files

The KF5/Plasma 5 is using the freedesktop specifications: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/ . The configuration files are under ~/.config. The KDE4 did use the ~/.kde/share/config/. There are still some old KDE4 applications left (Amarok, Dolphin, ...) that are using the old path.

[hallergard]

Thanks for the thorough explanation. Do I need to do a fresh install, or can I add the available widgets etc?

Added widgets and programs to the panel without any problems. But adding to the Desktop (changed layout to Folder) went OK for a while, but then Plasma crashed, and I lost everything I had added. Have redone this three times - three crashes. The panel is intact though.

Any advice?

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

[hallergard]

Managed to avoid crash -- logged out and in - Desktop empty again. How get Plasma to save the session?

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

[OneLine]

Damaged plasma configuration files ?

Managed to avoid crash -- logged out and in - Desktop empty again. How get Plasma to save the session?

It could be that the plasma configuration files are damaged - something to try:

1) Start a file manager - Dolphin
2) Start a terminal - Konsole
3) Shut the plasmashell down - in the konsole:

kquitapp5 plasmashell

4) Remove/move/rename the plasma confg files: ~/.config/plasma*

5) Restart the plasmashell - command:

plasmashell

There should be default plasma desktop - if not then there are more problems.

[hallergard]

running "plasmashell" does restart the plasmashell, but command does not finish but stops in the terminal. Get the impression that the system tray cannot be found. Here is the terminal output towards the end:

file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:128: TypeError: Cannot read property 'icon' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:129: TypeError: Cannot read property 'toolTipMainText' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:131: TypeError: Cannot read property 'location' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/StatusNotifierItem.qml:146:13: QML Image: Failed to get image from provider: image://icon/
<Unknown File>: QML Plasmoid: Cannot anchor to an item that isn't a parent or sibling.
<Unknown File>: QML Plasmoid: Cannot anchor to an item that isn't a parent or sibling.
<Unknown File>: QML Plasmoid: Cannot anchor to an item that isn't a parent or sibling.
<Unknown File>: QML Plasmoid: Cannot anchor to an item that isn't a parent or sibling.
Registering "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-9187-1/StatusNotifierItem"
systemtray: ST new task "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-9187-1/StatusNotifierItem"
Currrent active notifications: QHash()
Guessing partOf as: 0
New Notification: "System Notification Helper" "Software upgrade notifications are available" 10000 & Part of: 0
trying to show an empty dialog
Couldn't find node shadow. Skipping rendering.
systemtray: ST2 status changed 0 2
systemtray: ST2 "KDE Daemon" ( "KDE Daemon" )
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:128: TypeError: Cannot read property 'icon' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:129: TypeError: Cannot read property 'toolTipMainText' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:131: TypeError: Cannot read property 'location' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/StatusNotifierItem.qml:146:13: QML Image: Failed to get image from provider: image://icon/
Registering "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-9187-2/StatusNotifierItem"
systemtray: ST new task "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-9187-2/StatusNotifierItem"
Currrent active notifications: QHash()
Guessing partOf as: 0
New Notification: "System Notification Helper" "Proprietary drivers might be required to enable additional features" 10000 & Part of: 0
systemtray: ST2 status changed 0 2
systemtray: ST2 "KDE Daemon" ( "KDE Daemon" )
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:128: TypeError: Cannot read property 'icon' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:129: TypeError: Cannot read property 'toolTipMainText' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/TaskDelegate.qml:131: TypeError: Cannot read property 'location' of null
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.systemtray/contents/ui/StatusNotifierItem.qml:146:13: QML Image: Failed to get image from provider: image://icon/
trying to show an empty dialog

[OneLine]

I would...

I would:

Make a new user and try to start with it.

If the new user desktop is working then I would:
Clean a bit more: rename/remove the ~/.cache and the ~/.config.

If the new user desktop is not working then I would:
Make a new installation.

[hallergard]

Thanks! New user, but no improvement (except no crashes). Changed layout from Desktop to Folder, but it changes back to Desktop after renewed login, also for the new user. Can of course change back to Folder (for the new session only), but can only change the order or position of the icons for this session, which is rather pointless. Seems the answer is a new, fresh installation.

[peper]

I had similar problems. No icons on desktop shown, custom keyboard shorcuts not working and some D-Bus errors. Creating new user didn't work.
As Master Skribe suggested I did this:
loggin to tty (Ctrl+Alt+F1)
sudo service sddm stop
mv .config .config_old
mv .cache .cache_old
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop --reinstall
sudo reboot