Raring - desktop icons cannot be dragged

[ptoche]

Dear all,

I have just installed Raring on my Lenovo U300S laptop without any major problem. But I have just noticed that I cannot drag the icons/shortcuts on the desktop. When I created them they placed themselves in an approximately ordered sequence, from top-left to bottom but with occasional gaps, so right now the icons are displayed in a haphazard fashion.

I have selected "unlock widgets" and "default desktop layout"

I can add and remove icons but cannot organize them around the desktop. They are on the main desktop, not inside a folder.

I've been a Kubuntu user for many years but I'm mainly an end user so I may be missing something very basic here.

Thanks,

Patrick.

[ptoche]

And now all the icons are arranged in one single pile on the desktop. Entirely useless. This happened after I experimented with "folder view", "newspaper view" and so on. Heeeelp!

[Shabakthanai]

I don't even like icons on my desktop, but your post has confused me a bit. I am currently on a Windows 7 OS, and cannot open Kubuntu, so I can not take a look at what might be happening, nevertheless, "folder view" is a file manager designation, like "Dolphin", and I don't recognize "newspaper view". That is what confused me.

When I have had icons on the desktop, they are all precisely located on my computer. Kubuntu allows you to drag them to a position of your choice properly spaced from other icons you have onscreen. If that is not working for you, it sounds like your Desktop application is corrupted, (KDE). If you rename the existing kde folder, like perhaps "kdeold" and restart your system, a new kde will be installed. If the old kde is corrupted, you probably will have solved your problem. If that is not the case, your kdeold folder still contains all your data. You can restore that folder by simply deleting the new kde and removing the 'old' from the 'kdeold' and your desktop will be returned as it was before renaming it. If that doesn't work, I haven't a clue. It may even require re-installation of the OS.

And now all the icons are arranged in one single pile on the desktop. Entirely useless. This happened after I experimented with "folder view", "newspaper view" and so on. Heeeelp!

[oshunluvr]

AFAIK, If you have "Default Desktop" selected, you can't have icons on your desktop only widgets. To see icons, you have to select "Folder View."

[Shabakthanai]

Thanks for that bit of info, Oshunluvr, I did not realize that. My input was probably not needed. Just trying to help.

[ptoche]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. To see what I mean, you really need to have a clean install of Kubuntu 13.04 from the iso currently available (i.e. on 3 May 2013) and right-click on the desktop on "Default Desktop Settings" to pull up the options and see what they are.

I don't know what "Newspaper Layout" (the exact name on the tab) is supposed to do, but it's there and it looks real strange if used.

The other options are "Default Desktop", "Folder View", "KDE Homerun", "Search and Launch"

At any rate toggling the different options in a full cycle caused the icons to first shrink to a very small size, then to be aligned along a diagonal across the screen, then to be piled on top of each other, and finally to disappear altogether.

I haven't noticed a difference between Default Desktop and Folder View, both display similarly looking and similarly stuck icons.

[ptoche]

Can anyone suggest whether this is a bug that should be reported as such? Thanks.

[oshunluvr]

Here's what I would do: create another user. I would assume Default Desktop is the default setting (why else name it that, right?). Then carefully observe the desktop. I.e. what widgets appear where. Then one at a time cycle through the other choices, taking notes along the way. Point being; if you can re-create the mess you have using a different user, you can post a bug report and have others be able to re-create it and then they'll know what to fix.

Myself and a couple others have noticed what might be a bug when creating a new user: the Default Desktop has no widgets at all except for a panel with the Activities widget. You have to add everything else in manually. You very well may have found another or related bug worth reporting.

To get your desktop cleaned up, you might have to decide which Layout to use and then manually clean it up. Last resort: rename the folder ~/.kde and log out and back in. In theory, this will rebuild a default desktop. However, the above bug might still bite you.

[ptoche]

oshunluvr, thanks.

I've been able to reproduce the problems on different desktops, logged in with the same user. I'll log into the guest account (will that be good enough?) and see what happens there. Thanks.

Note: What I wrote about the icons disappearing wasn't accurate, what happened is they were all on top of each other and somehow hidden, so I failed to see them, but after changing the background picture to the default they reappeared, still piled on top of each other.

Will report back soon.

[ptoche]

So I went into the Guest account, created a bunch of desktop icons by right-clicking and selecting "Add to Desktop". Then I cycled through the various options: folder/newspaper/homerun/search-launch and then back to the default desktop view. The result was that the icons had shrunk by a factor of at least 50 percent and had all bunched into a single pile. In none of the cases was I able to drag the icons around the desktop or whatever you call it (its name varies depending on what option you select). This can be repeated always on other desktops and/or activities (I don't know the difference between a desktop and an activity, it looks the same here).

I'm on a completely clean install of Kubuntu 13.04.

The only workable solution is to forget about desktop icons and basically not use the desktop at all.

In my guest account I noticed that there is an icon "Show Desktop" which I have somehow lost in my named administrator account. How can I get it back? (I googled and followed instructions on how to get it back but it didn't work, so maybe K13.04 is a little different so I'll ask here while I'm at it) Thanks!

Edit 1: I made some screenshots of each of the options and saved them in the "Public" folder in my guest account. Unfortunately I don't know where to find that from my main account, they are not under /home/guest/, that's for sure, and not in /usr/sbin/ nor /usr/share/

[oshunluvr]

I think we must be having some terminology problems here, as I am still not clear on what it is you're doing. It seems we are interchanging Activity with Desktop and Icon with Widget.

Granted, it appears you've discovered a bug and you should report it. But I'm going to take a few minutes to discuss some of what I think is going on.

First of all: In KDE4 the "Desktop" is nothing more than a folder. In the Default Desktop layout, the only Icons that are visible are the ones in the folder displayed by the Folder View Widget. Which folder is displayed in that widget is changeable, but I believe defaults to the users Home. In this layout, no icons are present on the visible workspace I believe you're referring to as the Desktop, only in the Desktop Folder Widget. If you switch to "Folder View" then the Folder View widget goes away and the contents of the Desktop folder are displayed on the screen in the classic way an older Windows or KDE3 would display them.

Secondly: At least on my system, there is no "Add to Desktop" function anywhere that I've seen. There is a "Link to Current Activity" in Dolphin with a Link To option to the "Desktop" activity but linking objects to a certain Activity isn't the same as putting an icon on the desktop. Again, at least here, selecting this does nothing in Default Layout because I don't really use Activities at all, so I have only the Desktop activity. Maybe this dialog differs if you select a different Layout?

The "Show Desktop" widget that your missing is available from the "Add Widgets" dialog. If you want to put it back on your Panel, right click on the desktop, select "Unlock Widgets" (unless they are already unlocked), then right-click on the Panel and select Panel Options > Add Widgets. Type Show Desktop in the search bar and drag it to the panel. Make sure a grey box appears under the widget before you release it, the panel can be quite finicky about widget placement. Just drop it anywhere the panel will take it, then close the Add Widget dialog. Then right-click on the panel again and select Panel Options > Panel Settings. This will allow you to re-arrange the Panel Widgets any way you want.

Worth noting: If you click on the "Cashew" labeled "Desktop" in the corner of your screen, it will open a dialog and minimize all window automatically, just like the Show Desktop widget does.

It's at least partially likely what your seeing is the Folder View widget, calling it the Desktop, seeing it minimized by switching panels around, and then you aren't able to do anything because the widgets are locked. I'm going to test this out in a few minutes.

[oshunluvr]

Ok, switched to a new user and did the following:

Set the Folder View widget to "Home" folder thus showing all the folder icons (Documents, etc.).
Cycled through all the other Desktop layouts.
Returned to "Default Desktop" layout.
Observed Folder Widget was shrunk to a size that only showed a single icon.
Expanded the Folder View widget and placed it back to the left side of the screen where it was before.
Observed all icons view-able as before.

At this point, unless you're experiencing something different than the above, I don't think this qualifies as an actual bug. Rather, it's the odd behavior of the Folder View widget. Likely, if you went into the Folder View settings, you could unlock the icons, un-check to align and sort options, and have total control over the placement of the icons.

[notabug]

I'm a little confused myself. I don't typically use desktop icons with Kubuntu. My desktop is configured to slideshow using my own folder of desktop images. I already have been using the weather widget YAWP. I created four desktop icons for this experiment. They were created at the top left, in a line top to bottom. I found that trying to move any one icon I had to grab the icon by the black configuration bar (I'm sorry, I don't know the official name) that pops out to the side of an icon or widget when moused over, with widgets unlocked. I was then easily able to move each icon at will to any location on my desktop. I hope I haven't muddied the waters further with my description.

(Kubuntu 13.04)

[ptoche]

oshunluvr, thanks for taking the time to discuss all this in detail. Quite frankly I'll need some time to digest all this terminology.

So let me just say it again without using any technical terms that might introduce some confusion. Let's say you have a clean install of Kubuntu 13.04, "right out of the box". First, right-click anywhere (say, in the middle of the screen) and select "unlock widgets". Next, take the cursor above the bottom-left corner blue-colored K-shaped icon, wait till it expands, then move the cursor above one of icons displayed there, let's just say the Dolphin file manager, and right-click. You will get an "Add to Destkop" and "Add to Panel" options. If you don't get these options, we're somehow talking about different things -- not sure if activities, desktops, panels, widgets or whatever, but if you don't see an "Add to Desktop" option then it'll be hard for you to reproduce my issues. Now, a shortcut/widget/icon thing will appear somewhere on the "screen" (again, is it a destkop, an activity or something else, I don't know, it is what is displayed on my screen the very first time I turn on Kubuntu 13.04) and stays there: impossible to drag it. Forget about everything else I may have written and consider this only: the shortcut/widget/icon/whatever cannot be moved by the usual cursor-based clicks and flicks. Now if you can drag and move the "Dolphin" icon/shortcut/widget on your destkop, then you're not having my issues; maybe my issues are related to the particular hardware. Just to be clear, I've had Kubuntu for about a decade and never experienced that problem before. I had 12.10 on the same machine with the same hardware and without the problem.

Anyway I'm getting used to having nothing at all on my screen/desktop/activity/monitor/thing: I probably didn't need that thing whatever it's called.

;-)

[Guest]

I have the EXACT same problem. I just have installed a fresh Kubuntu 13.04 copy on my PC and its seems a really bad thing that you cant do a very BASIC thing like drag an icon and re-arrange it wherever you want, or have an option after right click the desktop to arrange the icons in certain way ( yes like windows). Im a little disappointed.

Also i also have experienced the problem of having all of my icons piled up one over the other after switching desktop modes.....the only solution: erase all and dont use desktop icons for now