On a laptop I had selected to use the Plasma Laptop workspace type. Rebooting I had a blank screen. I wanted to re-instate the Plasma Desktop workspace.
Its an old laptop and curious to see the progress with the KDE Plasma laptop workspace I selected to change the desktop style. (Systems Settings/Workspace Behaviour/Workspace/workspace Type)
When I next logged into the laptop the KDE desktop was simply the background screen. No icons or menu bar were visible.
Right clicking on the desktop had no effect. I tried this because it was how I shut the laptop down after making the change.
I Also hitting the edge of the screen with the mouse, corners and edges but to no effect..
The last time I tried this out, at least a year ago, I took the easy approach and deleted the .kde directory. However, this time I wanted to take a different approach, editing configuration file(s).
I was able to logout of the non-working workspace using <CTRL><ALT><DELETE> and selecting logout.
From here I was able to login using Gnome. This allowed me to investigate configuration files.
In the hidden directory .config/autostart observe the contents of the file
plasma-netbook.desktop [Desktop Entry]
Comment=workplace shell for netbook devices
Exec=plasma-netbook --desktop
Hidden=true
Name=Plasma Netbook
OnlyShowIn=KDE;
Type=Service
X-DBUS-StartupType=wait
X-KDE-StartupNotigy=false
X-KDE-autostart-phase=BaseDesktop
I copied the file to my directory, down a couple of levels
cp plasma-desktop.desktop ../..
I then renamed the file to plasma-desktop.desktop and changed the references from laptop to desktop giving:
[Desktop Entry]
Comment=workplace shell for desktop devices
Exec=plasma-desktop --desktop
Hidden=true
Name=Plasma Desktop
OnlyShowIn=KDE;
Type=Service
X-DBUS-StartupType=wait
X-KDE-StartupNotigy=false
X-KDE-autostart-phase=BaseDesktop
Logging out of Gnome I logged back in using KDE. The result was the laptop style with the icons across the centre. I clicked on System Settings at the top of the screen.
Within the section Workspace Appearance and Behaviour select Workspace Behaviour and then the last item in the left column Workspace. From here select Desktop from the drop down list for Workspace Type. Applying this changed the plasma presentation back to a working desktop style.
The next time I logged into the computer I found that I was again back to the plain screen. Looking in the .config/autostart file it was showing desktop entries as edited above. This time I deleted the file , from within Gnome and logged back into the plasma shell.
The desktop was again presented correctly. With the correct desktop workspace view and navigation launchers. I then shut the computer down and restarted. All worked correctly. KDE desktop workspace was shown correctly.
