The Usual KDE Beginners Desktop

21 May 2012 on Kde, Opensuse

Every now and then I’m visting my best friend’s mom (generation > 50a) to update her old Pentium 4 system with the last opensuse software. Each time, I have to restore her Desktop to provide the basic features like managing opened windows, add the clock again, etc. Each time, I pay carefully attention to lock the screen afterwards. Sometimes I get doubts, that they are just fooling me, but my friend declined this, of course.

This time they disarranged the screen in a very extreme way¹. Take it for amusement or for considering a clearer warning of unlocking the screen. I vote for:

You might end with a coruppted system!
Please copy this into the form field below:
I asked my son’s friend and got his permission.

Did you recognize these empty plasma panels on each edge of the screen which prevents all application to get maximized properly? ↩︎

Comments

labatts wrote on May 22, 2012

I have an autistic 3 year old daughter. Every now and then, I'll catch her messing with my computer. It is amazing how quickly she can change things (this was the same when I was in the dark ages of Vista, though).

Orion wrote on May 22, 2012

Yes, I do recognise.. from my son's computer. I have no idea how they manage sometimes, I even had to do total reinstall at one stage as I could not get it back to some sort of normality.

True that "unlock widgets" need some sort of "do you really intend to unlock widgets" - or perhaps just desktop widgets should be lockable separate from panel etc. widgets.

Annma wrote on May 22, 2012

There is the Kiosk Frameworks which allows you to lock things and prevents users from changing the settings. This is widely used in schools and internet cafes. No need to enforce any dialog, everything already exists within KDE. Have a look at techbase.kde.org and administration system please.

sverro2 wrote on May 22, 2012

haha, yes my dad does exactly the same :). Sometimes he even accidentally deletes files, which is rather unfortunate. My mum has the habit of removing the task-manager from the bottom panel. (and she doesn't know how to get it back, of course). When I was new to KDE I accidentally removed the 'trashbin' in dolphin.

The most common mistake however is removing a "folder view" containment.
"OMG where are all my icons :'("

BajK wrote on May 22, 2012

Is Kiosk Support in KDE 4 still as bad? Does Plasma at least honor when you manually add [$i] to the plasma-desktop-appletrc? So you could at least lock the panels and widgets in place. :)

Pascal wrote on May 22, 2012

This is what any person that does not care about how things work end up with plasma-desktop.
Ít should be considerably harder to unlock the desktop than right-clicking anywhere and select Unlock with a colorfull icon.

Cédric Bellegarde wrote on May 22, 2012

Yes, it works, you can lock plasma placing [$i] at plasma-desktop-appletrc top

Heller wrote on May 22, 2012

Actually, I hate to have to unlock the desktop just to put a Note plasmoid or a timer for my tea... :/

Mirek Długosz wrote on May 22, 2012

I understand your post is somehow humorous solve of actually properly diagnosed problem.

I don't think we need any popups windows, which will only annoy many users (like it or not, Linux is still mostly used by enthusiasts who just like playing around). Instead, we need:
a) proper kiosk mode, as some users already pointed out in comments
b) a GUI way to simply restore plasma settings to it's defaults.
As for b), we could also have some way to save settings as defaults. This should stay in system settings, so we ensure that no one will overwrite defaults by accidental blind-clicking.
And I would like to emphasize GUI component - I know that we already has simple way to restore plasma to defaults, i.e. remove few files from ~/.kde/share/config/ and relogin. But for people who has problems with configuring desktop, removing config files is unacceptable.

Mirek Długosz wrote on May 22, 2012

I believe that's what Activities were invented for - you just create "tea" activity with timer and use it once in a while.
;)

labatts wrote on May 22, 2012

Yes, a good way to restore the "desktop" would be ideal. I would really not have it even harder to "unlock" the widgets as others have suggested.

Dotan Cohen wrote on May 22, 2012

https://bugs.kde.org/show_b...
https://bugs.kde.org/show_b...

Robert Riemann wrote on May 22, 2012

These reports are filed at 2004 and 2009 respectively. Are these reports back from kde3 times then?

Pascal wrote on May 22, 2012

Why do you want want easy unlock instead of just having it unlocked all the time?
Mine is unlocked at all times and its no problems because I know how to use it. Can lock be used for anything else than people who don't care about how to use plasma?
Pardon my elitist opinion but I don't see the "Hard unlock" as a problem.

CTown wrote on May 22, 2012

Delete the currnet Plasma Panel, righ click the desktop, click on Panel Options -> Add Panel -> Default Panel. You might need to move it to the correct position on the screen (click on the cashew and click on screen edge and drag toward the bottom of the screen).

You can also lock the widgets by right clicking on the desktop and hitting Lock Desktop.

Strassh wrote on May 22, 2012

I think that there is something "broken by design" here. If someone can mess up things like that without knowing, and won't be able to restore it afterwards without help, this is a design problem. Adding something should be easier than destroying it. And useless panels such as the one on the top should disappear by themselves.
Customisation is good, but it should not get in the way of ease of use. Even advanced users tend to mess things up with the current design of Plasma desktop.

Is there any research on usability regarding this particular issue?

Dsaf wrote on May 23, 2012

+1, my mom's desktop often looks very similar

Orion wrote on May 23, 2012

I do agree actually, even I mess up by mistake now and then. Not to mention what can happen if you connect a project with less resolution than your normal screen, whoah!

I also do not like "nag" pop-ups but in this case I think that is one way to go, another to make at least a tad more difficult to "unlock widgets".

and a "make this default" would be great so one could have "appy default settings"

Baum Ranger wrote on May 27, 2012

Even though I think that kde is a great Desktop, seeing a screenshot like this just shows that it is too power full for a user who just doesn't know it's way around.
I don't want to troll around! Don't get me wrong! As I said, kde is a great desktop. But it's advantage of being highly customizable (which is great for power users like us) is also it's disadvantage (as you see in the screenshot). I know that it's often hard not to recommend kde but considering what people can handle without "breaking" everything within 5 minutes I usually get some other solution which fit's their needs.
(Even though I probably get beaten for this post I just wanted to share with you my experience)

The Usual KDE Beginners Desktop

~rriemann

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