Mint 17.1 KDE questions on help, taskbar, and window styles

[pe1800]

After a year or more with M16 KDE, I have installed M17 KDE. Have done the usual stuff, install antivirus, Chrome, organizing and tweaking, set up virtual desktops etc., mostly successfully. But some questions remain:

1) Documentation. When I click on that Help buoy all I get is a nice introduction and some pep talk. Before, with M16, it had all the KDE details and also a list of Unix commands. What happened to that useful detail?

2) Taskbar. Have adjusted the size, added icons for the most often used applications. But I cannot find anywhere how to make the taskbar show which apps are executing? This is important because it avoids confusion when working with virtual desktops.

3)[/b]Windows Where can I find a greater choice of window colors and styles, such as bringing the close button back to the far right where it always was?

I am sure M17 and I are going to be happy. Like M16 before, it is a marvelous OS. After clearing up these initial minor issues, it will serve me well. Your advice will be much appreciated. You all keep well,
pe1800

[xenopeek]

1) Type "help" in your menu; you find two entries. The one with subtitle "Launch help browser" gets you the Linux Mint 17.1 User Guide. The one without a subtitle gets you the KDE Helpcenter (you can also type "helpcenter" to open that one directly).

2) You must have removed the default widget for this. Add the widget "Taskmanager" to your panel; that shows the list of running programs.

3) Probably on http://kde-look.org/; I'm not much of customizer

[pe1800]

Thank you. Yes, you pointed me in the right direction and I got things to work.

[DeMus]

3)[/b]Windows Where can I find a greater choice of window colors and styles, such as bringing the close button back to the far right where it always was?

• On an empty part of your desktop right-click and select to unlock the widgets. If you see a text saying lock widgets then they are unlocked already.
• Right-click again and select add widgets.
• At the bottom of your screen a horizontal list of widgets appear. Underneath there is a scroll bar. Grab on to it with your left mouse button and drag it to around the middle of your screen. Keep looking for the red shut-down button. It is called Lock/Logout and since the list is alphabetically organized it should be easy to find.
• Grab on to the icon and drag it to your panel. When you keep your mouse still for a moment you will see an empty grey rectangular spot where you can release the mouse-button. Do that and the icon is placed on the panel. Now it will change into two buttons, one for lock and one for logout.
• Right-click the icon and select Lock/Logout settings. Now you can select which functions you want to have for this icon.
• When you are all done, right-click the desktop again and lock your widgets.

• For styles you open System settings which can be found in the Kick-off menu under Settings in tab Applications.
• A window with your system settings will open. Click on Workspace Appearance.
• In the left column you find 4 items:
  • Window decorations,
  • Cursor Theme,
  • Desktop theme, and
  • Splash theme.
• Open one by one, see which choices are there already and if you still can't find what you are looking for click on the button: Get more decorations.
• This will bring you onto the net where you can find and install more choices.
• After installing those new choices, close the window and you are back in the settings menu where you can try the different choices by chosing one and clicking Apply.
• Once satisfied with the result you can close the System settings menu and enjoy the new look.

Hope this helped you a little.

[pe1800]

Thank you, that is very helpful!