Flavor 8

Kicker is the panel that sits at the top (or bottom or side) of your screen in KDE, which includes the taskbar, K menu, and system tray. I have for a long time been using Kicker with auto-hide, so that bumping the top of the screen would drop the panel down, but it would otherwise remain hidden. However, I wanted to experiment with using virtual desktops, and because I’m on a twin monitor setup (i.e. wide) wanted the top and bottom of the screen to be the “active borders” (i.e. to be the edges which switch from one virtual desktop to the next when the mouse hits them.) Kicker really got in the way here, as it would unhide when I tried to switch. I could have set it to be permanently displayed, but I find it obtrusive if it’s always there.

So, I started investigating alternate ways to set up the UI. The first step was to install and set up Kommando, which provides an intuitive popup menu. Installation, of course, is as simple as:

• sudo apt-get install kommando
  

Once installed, a new configuration section is added to kcontrol, which allows you to set up Kommando as you desire. Either enter kcontrol on the command line, or browse K Menu / System Settings / Control Center. The configuration looks like this (click for full size):

• Add menus and buttons to build your on screen menu. Try to keep eight or less items per menu.
• Use the “From KMenu” button to copy over your favorite applications.
• Don’t try and add every program you ever use. Go for the 80/20 rule; add only the applications you use 80% of the time. We’ll keep the KMenu around for the other 20%.
• Under shortcuts, assign a key combination to launch Kommando. I use Ctrl + Menu, which I can hit with my right hand, since I use the trackball with my left hand.
  

Once you invoke it, it pops up over any applications being used, and looks something like this:

I find that it is much more efficient to use than the KMenu. However, since (as mentioned above) KMenu is by design comprehensive, I set it up to popup when I right click on the desktop. Again, go into kcontrol, and modify the “Mouse Button Actions” as follows (except Right and Left should be inverted, if you’re a right handed mouse user):

Now all that remains is to remove the KMenu from kicker. You can always add it back, so this is not irreversible. Right click on the K, and click “Remove” from the context menu that pops up. Done.

Next post I’ll go into details on how the system tray and task bar are configured.