[SOLVED]Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

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[SOLVED]Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 14th, '19, 18:03

I am running an up-to-date Mageia 7 beta 1 to test it out. Occasionally, a widget will show up on my desktop spontaneously. It is usually a Notes widget with text in it from a recent keyboard input, for example some commands typed into a bash script as shown below. In a recent case the widget appears to be a link to a recent file I had open. See image below:

StrangeWidgetsOnDesktop.png
The widgets are circled in red
StrangeWidgetsOnDesktop.png (1.29 MiB) Viewed 1509 times


Here is a closer view

StrangeWidgetsOnDesktopZoom.png
Closeup of the widgets
StrangeWidgetsOnDesktopZoom.png (361.05 KiB) Viewed 1509 times


I am not creating these widgets. They just appear after I log in. Is this perhaps a Plasma bug?

inxi info

Code: Select all
System:    Host: localhost Kernel: 4.20.2-desktop-1.mga7 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.14.4 Distro: Mageia 7 mga7
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P5G41T-M LX PLUS v: Rev X.0x serial: <root required> BIOS: American Megatrends
           v: 0502 date: 10/21/2011
CPU:       Dual Core: Intel Core2 Duo E7300 type: MCP speed: 2412 MHz
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] driver: nvidia v: 340.107
           Display: x11 server: Mageia X.org 1.20.3 driver: nvidia,v4l resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce 9600 GT/PCIe/SSE2 v: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.107


Thanks
Banjo
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Last edited by banjo on Jan 15th, '19, 20:25, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 15th, '19, 05:11

OK. This is weird.

The particular mouse that I have is awakened by rolling the scrolling wheel. Moving the mouse won't wake it up. I have to turn the scroll wheel.

When I roll the wheel, sometimes I inadvertenly click the button. Clicking the middle button anywhere on the Plasma desktop creates a Notes widget in that spot. It has nothing to do with rolling the wheel other than the button is rather sensitive, so I click it often.

So, the creation of these spontaneous widgets is really being done inadvertently by me.

Is this a Plasma feature that I am not aware of? Is it something new in Plasma? This does not happen on my Mint system Plasma. The Mint version of Plasma is 5.8.9.

Mint Inxi data
Code: Select all
System:    Host: LinuxMain Kernel: 4.4.0-141-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.9
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena


This "bug" could be just a dumb user error. How do I turn this feature off?

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Re: Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby jkerr82508 » Jan 15th, '19, 08:51

Right-click on Desktop - Configure Desktop - Mouse actions

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Re: Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 15th, '19, 15:54

I brought up the Configure Desktop dialog with a right click. The middle mouse button was set to "Paste", which is described as "Creates a widget from the contents of the clipboard". OK so far.

I set the middle mouse button to something else, I think it was "Application Launcher" or "Standard Menu", and clicked "Apply". I don't remember exactly what it said.

Now, the middle mouse button still creates a Notes widget on the desktop, and the right mouse button displays the application menu from the launcher. I can no longer get to the desktop context menu using the right mouse button, so I cannot display the Configure Desktop dialog to set the mouse buttons back to the way they were.

Where are the desktop settings stored? I don't see it in ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals, which is the only file in that directory. I have not found the information at kde.org. Is there a document online that describes how Plasma really works? The internals? Anybody know how I can manually reset my desktop settings?

This is still looking like a Plasma bug since the code seems to be confusing the different mouse buttons.

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Re: Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 15th, '19, 16:53

I found it. The menu settings are in ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

Here is what the settings were after I attempted to change the middle mouse button.

Code: Select all
[ActionPlugins][0]
MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.applauncher
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop


I edited the file and changed it to:

Code: Select all
[ActionPlugins][0]
MidButton;NoModifier=org.kde.paste
RightButton;NoModifier=org.kde.contextmenu
wheel:Vertical;NoModifier=org.kde.switchdesktop


I could not refresh the desktop settings because the "Refresh Desktop" function is in the context menu that I could not display. So I chose to log out and log back in.

Then, I found that there was no way for me to log out to get the new settings to take effect. Since I could not get to the Desktop context menu, there was no "Leave" option. I could not find a "logout" function in the context menu.

I brought up a terminal, Ctl-Alt-F5, and shut down the system as root. After rebooting, the desktop is back to a usable state (middle button for paste and right button for context menu).

I think that it is a bad usability bug that Plasma will allow me to set the Desktop settings such that I am locked out completely from basic functions. It is nice to be able to configure things the way you want them, but it allowed my attempt to try something different to break my system in a devastating way. The Desktop Context menu should always be available regardless of what settings the user has requested. Think of it as a safety interlock.

Now that I have my system back, I will run the experiment again to see if Plasma really did mislabel my mouse buttons, or if I just ham-fisted it again.

But even if it was my own fault, I should not be allowed to lock myself out of the system like that.

One idea would be to put a "Logout" function in the launcher.... unless there already is one. I could not find any.

Perhaps we could add a System tool that will post the Configure Desktop dialog box. None of the Desktop configuration tools that I found in the launcher would configure the mouse buttons for the desktop.

A well-known keystroke accelerator to post the Desktop Context menu could work.

The best option is to disallow the removal of the desktop context menu since it has such critical actions in it.

Banjo
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Re: Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 15th, '19, 20:24

I displayed the "Desktop Folder Settings" dialog and set it up to use the settings:

    Middle-Button - Application Launcher
    Vertical-Scroll - Switch Desktop
    Right-Button - Standard Menu


I clicked on Apply, and it all worked as expected. The application launcher shows up when I inadvertently click the wheel button. I don't have to delete those desktop notes with random text in them.

So I must have clicked on the wrong setting on the wrong button last time. User error.

Even so, I still say that a simple user error like that should not lock me out of my desktop menu.

Banjo
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Re: [SOLVED]Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby jkerr82508 » Jan 15th, '19, 22:14

The Main Menu includes "Power/Session" which expands to show several options including logout, shutdown and reboot.

A default installation also includes the Lock/Logout widget on the panel.

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Re: [SOLVED]Spontaneous widgets appear on my Desktop

Postby banjo » Jan 16th, '19, 02:26

Yep. There it is. Don't know how I missed that since I was looking for it. I don't use the launcher much. I drop shortcuts on the desktop or use the CLI.

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