Minimize all windows?

[LeeM]

Is there a shortcut that will minimize all the windows on the active desktop? More than once, I've had 3-4 windows open, and need to see an icon on the desktop. I have to scurry around minimizing windows until the icon is uncovered. Seems like there should be a simple panic button/shortcut to clear off the desktop, but I haven't found it in Kubuntu or KDE documents.

[claydoh]

Re: Minimize all windows?

You can add a button for this on your taskbar:
right-click somewhere on the taskbar, select 'add applet to panel', and scroll down to 'Show Desktop' and select that.

The keyboard shotcut for this action is ctrl-alt-d

[dibl]

Re: Minimize all windows?

This feels a little like offering a can of worms .... but if your system will support Beryl, I personally find it a very cool solution to the same problem that you have. Instead of minimizing windows, you just flip to the next "viewport" with a little push on the mousewheel. You get 4 viewports (identical desktops, until you start opening windows on them), so when one gets cluttered you just move to the next.

But you might want to review the Beryl questions that people seem to have -- it works great for me, but not for everyone, apparently.

[pulpfile]

Re: Minimize all windows?

You can add a button for this on your taskbar:
right-click somewhere on the taskbar, select 'add applet to panel', and scroll down to 'Show Desktop' and select that.

The keyboard shotcut for this action is ctrl-alt-d

This applet does NOT "minimize all", though. It does exactly what it says: "Show Desktop."
As soon as you open something on the desktop, all those windows are back on the screen again.

Per dibl's suggestion, you can also use ctrl-F2 through F4 to access the 3 other desktops (assuming, of course, that they're empty of windows). (And you don't need to install anything.)

[claydoh]

Re: Minimize all windows?

But it is the "panic button", you quickly minimize all your windows, then they all come back. So I have to disagree: it does minimize all. Then when the boss (mom/girlfriend/etc) have left, you use the same keystroke/button to get back to where you were before. The desktop switching is another option, but if you use multiple desktops for multiple tasks or have different wallpapers, this may not work as intended. But you can configure the taskbar to show only items that are open in that desktop, so switching desktops would give you an empty taskbar. So as you can see there are many different ways to go about this