openSUSE-Dokumentation
Chapter 3. Customizing Your Settings / 3.2. Configuring Desktop Objects
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Configuring Desktop Objects

Your KDE desktop comes with a predefined set of desktop icons. By adding various objects such as folders, files, or links, you can create additional icons on your desktop and arrange them as you like.

Procedure 3.1. Creating and Arranging Desktop Icons

  1. To add a new desktop object, for example, from the main menu or the Konqueror file manager, select an entry and drag it onto the desktop. A context menu appears from which to choose whether to copy, move, or create a link to the object.

  2. To add a new desktop object, you can also right-click an empty space on the desktop and select Create New. From the submenu, choose the type of object to create on the desktop: a folder, one of several types of files, or a link to an application, a file, a Web site, or a device like your CD-ROM drive.

  3. To arrange the icons on your desktop, right-click an empty space on the desktop and select one of the options under Icons.

You can change the background colors of your desktop or select a picture to use as the background. Because KDE offers virtual desktops, you can apply these changes to one or all of your virtual desktops.

Procedure 3.2. Changing the Desktop Background

  1. Right-click an empty patch of the desktop and select Configure Desktop. A configuration dialog appears.

  2. In Settings for Desktop select the virtual desktops to which the changes should apply.

  3. To change the picture on the background, click Picture and select one of the pictures in the list. To use a custom picture, click the folder button beneath the list and select an image file from the file system.

  4. Click Slide Show to have multiple images appear in a slide show mode.

  5. If you do not want a picture on the background, click No picture.

  6. From the Options group, click the left button below Colors to select the color for your background. For a multicolor background, set Colors to an option other than Single Color and click the right button below to select a second color.

  7. Click Apply then OK to close the configuration dialog.

openSUSE® comes with predefined screen saver settings that you can adjust.

Procedure 3.3. Configuring the Screen Saver

  1. Right-click an empty space on the desktop and select Configure Desktop.

  2. In the dialog that opens, click Screen Saver.

  3. In the list of screen savers, click a screen saver to see a preview in the right side of the dialog.

  4. Click Setup to adjust options like speed or shapes.

  5. You can also choose to view a blank screen instead or to let KDE start a random screen saver. Find these options at the end of the screen saver list.

  6. Under Settings, determine after how long a time of inactivity the screen saver should start and whether a password is required to unlock the screen after the screen saver has started.

  7. Click OK to apply the changes and close the configuration dialog.

Some users might need more desktops than provided by default.

Procedure 3.4. Adding Additional Virtual Desktops

  1. Right-click the desktop previewer in the panel and select Configure Desktops. A configuration dialog appears where you can increase or reduce the number of virtual desktops. You can also change the default names of the desktop.

  2. Click OK to apply the changes and close the configuration dialog.

  3. For the names of the desktops to appear in the desktop previewer rather than the number, right-click the desktop previewer and select Pager Options+Desktop Name.

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