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**oshunluvr** · Mar 13, 2014, 01:04 PM

You have your taskbar on your desktop?

Thunderbird isn't a KDE or QT application. It could be causing some problems, but if you've taken your widgets off the panel on put them on the desktop I can't imagine what that would look like.

A screenshot of the problem would help...

**oshunluvr** · Mar 13, 2014, 01:10 PM

Re-reading your post makes me think maybe there's a "terminology" gap.

On the default Kubuntu desktop, there's a panel on the bottom. In this panel are widgets. The default widgets include Kmenu, Task Manager, Clock, System Tray and a few others. The panel is really just a container widget that holds the other widgets.

So is your panel moving about or are your widgets moving about or some combination of both? I seem to recall in my experience with 12.04 the panel was too easily messed up and required constant re-alignment for unknown reasons. You need to right-click on your desktop and "Unlock Widgets" then you can grab and move the panel widget and the others within the panel.

You might consider adding the backports PPA to your install and upgrading to the newest version of KDE. I think for 12.04 it's 4.11.

I am also curious as to how (and why) you got a four year old version of grub installed instead of the one that comes on the default Kubuntu 12.04 install.

**Charlie** · Mar 13, 2014, 06:19 PM

oshunluvr,
There is definately a terminology Gap. I was indeed speaking of the panel at the bottom of my desktop. At least I got the correct termonolgy for Task Bar. I under stand that Thunderbird is not a KDE application but I have been using it for at least 4 years on my old windows machine which no longer exists. Like I said I installed Kbuntu last week and that's the sum total of my experience with any Linux system. Because I am very new to this and the termonolgy I am going very slow. But you gave me the answer I was looking for concerning the widgets on the panel "right click on desktop and unlock widgets then you can grab and move the panel widget and the others within the panel."

I need to read up on backports PPA to find out just what it is and what it does. As for the four old version of grub I too have no idea. I followed the instructions for including information for software and hardware but it is possible that I made an error. I will look into this, redo the commands to retrieve this information - it will be a good exercise for me anyway. I will also check into the KDE upgrade that you sugggested.

I thank you kindly for your comments - now I have some learning to do.
Charlie

**oshunluvr** · Mar 14, 2014, 02:35 AM

Originally posted by Charlie View Post

now I have some learning to do.
Charlie

as we all did (and still do), trust me. Welcome to Linux.

Backports is basically versions of newer software made to work on older versions of the OS.

So backports for 12.04 will allow some newer KDE, kernel, and other programs to be installed on 12.04. The backports become available as a newer release is created. I'm using 13.10 so there's no backports yet. Next month soon after 14.04 comes out there will be.

Unless you already had grub on your drive or installed an old version first, you should have grub 1.99 or higher. If you open Muon, I suspect you'll see "grub (Legacy version)" installed instead of grub-common. The newer version is real stable and easier to use.

**Charlie** · Mar 14, 2014, 07:52 PM

Oshunluvr,

Well I wanted to thank you for your input. This has been a busy two days as I had to stop everything and fix a water leak yesterday, life is exciting. To update what I have found/done I said earlier that when I reinstalled Thunder bird & rebooted the widgets in panel realigned properly. I and after reading your advice about clicking on the desk top and selecting “Unlock Widgets” I did that and discovered that they were already unlocked. I suspect that may have been the source of my delima over the moved widgets. I now have them locked.

I began reading about the other things that you mentioned, Backports, the older versions of Grub and KDE but in truth I have spent all day off and on reading and too often getting sidetracked to another subject. I chose Kbuntu 12.04 LTS i386 because I wanted to be sure I had a LTS package and I was unsure that my 2 GiB of Ram would run the AMD 64 bit version. (Although I have 2 GiB of Ram as we all know not all of that is really available)

So in reality I think my original question is answered and wishing not to abuse your kindness I am going to slowly think about the other things you mentioned along with other issues that I have discovered today. After all I started in this game back when we had keypunch machines and card readers but now I'm aging rapidly and need to go carefully. I will repost under another heading when my next question arises.

Thanks again.

Charlie

**oshunluvr** · Mar 14, 2014, 09:55 PM

Originally posted by Charlie View Post

...After all I started in this game back when we had keypunch machines and card readers but now I'm aging rapidly and need to go carefully. I will repost under another heading when my next question arises.

I too started in 1976 punching cards programming in Fortran4 with WATFIV. Ah, the memories! "Abuse" isn't in the picture - I don't have almost 6000 posts for nothing...

...Always good forum etiquette to start new threads for new topics. Welcome to Kubuntu, KFN and Linux in general.

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