%ents; ]> The &kicker; Handbook Dirk Doerflinger
ddoerflinger@web.de
2001 Dirk Doerflinger &FDLNotice; 14/01/2001 0.09.00 &kicker; is the &kde; application starter panel and is also capable of some useful applets and extensions. It usually resides on the bottom of the desktop. KDE Kicker kdebase panel application starter
Introduction &kicker; is the application launcher panel of the K Desktop Environment. Besides the K Menu, where you can start applications, &kicker; is also capable of running docked applets like the pager, the taskbar or the clock, and extensions, such as child panels. &kicker; usually resides on the bottom of the desktop, but it can also be moved to any other border. Please report any problems or feature requests to the &kde; mailing lists. Using &kicker; This is what you see on a freshly installed &kde;. If you are using lower resolution, some of the icons may not appear immediately. To cater for those smaller resolutions, the screenshot below is divided in two parts. Here's a screenshot of the left side of &kicker; Screenshot Left Here's a screenshot of the left side of &kicker; And here's the right side Screenshot Right And here's the right side Of course, this is only one way &kicker; might appear on the screen. There are many more configurations available. A quick tour for new &kde; users If you are experienced with this kind of application launcher, you can ignore this chapter and move on to &kicker; basics. Of course, the main use of &kicker; is starting applications. This is done by clicking icons, either from the panel or from the K Menu. &kicker; shows some more things too, so let's see. Having a look at the screenshots above, there are from left to right: The hide button This button - which also appears on the right side - lets you fade out &kicker; for having more space on the screen. When &kicker; is faded out, only the hide button will remain in order to fade in &kicker; again. The K Menu It is used for launching applications and some other useful things. Refer to The K Menu for more information. Application start icons Here are some icons of commonly used application. They can be moved and removed and others can be added. Some of them have a special meaning, which you can read more about in &kicker; basics. Resting the mouse over an icon without clicking shows the name and the description of that application, if you have set that in the Settings Dialog. The Pager applet This displays a small view of the virtual desktops. Clicking one section of it will activate that desktop. Please refer to Applets. The Taskbar All running applications are displayed as buttons in the taskbar. Clicking an application's button will bring this application on top. If it was on top before, it will be iconized. As always, more information in Applets. System Tray The systemtray is able to swallow some kind of applications like - in this case - &klipper;. There are also more useful apps for the systemtay. You can click the applications either with the left or the right mousebutton and see what's happening. It also contains two small buttons. The one with the luggage lock on it locks your screen if you ever leave your &kde; and want nobody else seeing or using it, the other one shuts down &kde; and the X-Server. Clock The Clock applet is - of course - a small, useful clock. It can have various styles, have a look at the applets section for more information. This was only the description of &kicker; on it's initial launch. It can be configured in many ways and styles and more applets can be added. There are even some extensions like the external taskbar you can add. See &kicker; basics, Applets and Extensions for more information. &kicker; basics General usage As mentioned before, there are a lot of things that can be added to &kicker;. This section will tell you everything about application starting, folder browsing and adding some kinds of applets and extensions. Lots of things can be done from the context menu or from Configure Panel in the K Menu. Adding applications There are three different ways to add an application to &kicker;: Drag and Drop Simply drag any file from &konqueror; into &kicker; and it's there. This works also from the K Menu with any entry. You can change the attributes like optional command line parameters or the icon by clicking it with the right mouse button and choosing Preferences from the context menu. Using the context menu to add a &kde; application Click the right mousebutton on any free space in &kicker; and choose Add and then Button . There you can choose an application which will be added in the place you clicked. Using the context menu to add a legacy application Legacy application means non-&kde;-applications ⪚ xosview or xemacs. Click the right mousebutton on any free space in &kicker; and choose Add and then Legacy Application . Choose the application you want to add. In the newly appearing window, you can append an optional command line, have the aplication start from a terminal, and choose the icon which will appear in &kicker; by clicking the gear . If you don't choose an icon, the application will use the gear as a default. Applications can be moved or removed by &RMB; click and choosing Move or Remove. You can also move an icon by clicking &MMB; if you have one. Adding Folders Folders can be added by simply dragging a folder to any free space of &kicker;. Quick Browsers can also be added from the context menu or the K Menu. There are two different ways to have a folder in &kicker;, you can choose between them in the menu appearing after dropping. Omitting this menu, it will be added as a file manager URL. Add as file manager &URL; Choosing this will add a link to the selected folder. Clicking this folder icon will open &konqueror; displaying the contents of this folder. Add as Quick Browser If you add a folder this way, it will be displayed as a submenu of &kicker;. This submenu contains Open in File Manager, which does the same as a file manager &URL;, and Open in Terminal, which opens a terminal with this folder as working path. Also, this submenu contains the contents of that folder. Sub-folders are displayed as new submenus like the Quick Browser itself. The maximum number of displayed elements can be set in the Settings Dialog. Both kinds of folders can be moved or removed by &RMB; click and choosing Move or Remove. You can also move an icon by clicking &MMB; if you have one. File manager &URL;s can also be configured from the context-menu, just like any other folder anywhere in &kde; Special Icons Some icons in &kicker; have a special meaning. They are added by choosing them from the submenu Add of the context-menu. The K Menu Icon The K Menu icon is one of the most necessary icons in &kicker;. As you might guess, it opens the K Menu, which you can learn more about in The K Menu. The Desktop Access Icon The Desktop Access icon lets you have quick access to all the things you have on your desktop by minimizing all currently open applications. Clicking it once will toggle it to show the desktop. The icon will remain pressed until you either click it again, what will restore your minimized apps, or reactivate an application from the taskbar. The Window List Clicking this icon will show the Window List. Its first entry, Unclutter Windows, tries to move the windows on your active desktop in a way to see as many as possible. Cascade Windows puts all windows on the active desktop over each others, the most recently on top and the others sorted by the time they where last used. Below those entries is a list of all currently running applications, grouped by the desktops on which they are running. Clicking on the name of a desktop will switch to that one, clicking an application will also activate it. Adding Applets &kicker; comes with a set of applets like the taskbar or the mini-pager. Those can be added either from the submenu Configure Panel of the K Menu or from the context menu by choosing Add and then Applet. Applets can be moved by dragging them with holding the &LMB; mouse button, or the &MMB; mouse button, or by choosing Move from the context menu. They can be removed by choosing Remove from the context menu. You can learn more about the applets in the section Applets. Adding Extensions There is also the possibility to add external extensions to &kicker;, like the external taskbar, the Dock Application Bar for WindowMaker dock-applications, Kasbar, an iconic kind of taskbar and even child panels which behave like new instances of &kicker;. All extensions can be moved to any border of the screen by dragging them with the &LMB; on the small handles on the left or top side of the extensions. The child panel can also be dragged by clicking with the &LMB; on any empty space on it. You can remove extensions by clicking Remove in their context menu, usually located in the move handles. More about extensions can be read in the extensions section. Configuring Application Buttons Every application starter has some preferences you can set from their context menu. Usually applications and folders have the same preferences as in &konqueror;. Only the applications which are located in the K Menu (for experienced users: those which have a *.desktop in the applnk dir) have a special kind of config dialog. The <guilabel>General</guilabel> Tab Here you can see some stats about the application link. You can also choose an icon by clicking on the icon button and change the filename of the link file. This may be useful if you want the icon on the panel behave different to the analogue one in the K Menu. The <guilabel>Permissions</guilabel> Tab Here you can set the permissions of the link file. Please refer to the manuals or handbooks of your operating system for more about permissions. The <guilabel>Execute</guilabel> Tab You can set the behaviour of the application when it's executed on this page. Command Usually, there is only the name of the binary that has to be started when clicking on the icon. You can search for another application to be started by clicking the Browse button and/or add special command line parameters to the application. Panel Embedding Sorry, this feature is not implemented yet ;-( Run in terminal If this box is checked, the application will be executed in a terminal window. You can also add special Terminal options. Run as different user Checking this option will let the application start with the permission of the user you typed in the field Username. You will be prompted for the user's password on application start. This option may be very useful if you want to start some applications as superuser. The <guilabel>Application</guilabel> Tab If you set a name and a comment, they will be shown as tooltips of the start icons in the style "Name - Comment". In the File Types section you can choose what kinds of filetypes are handled by this application. Please refer to &konqueror; handbook for more about this. Configuring &kicker; This section describes the ways &kicker; can be configured. It's only about the basic &kicker; settings, configuration of the applets are described in their sections You can change the settings by either clicking Settings in the context menu or the submenu Configure Panel of the K Menu or in the &kcontrol; in the module Look & Feel. <guilabel>General</guilabel> In the General tab you can configure some basic functionality of the &kde; panel (&ie; functionality you'd find in other panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting features). In the Panel Location frame you can choose which screen border the panel should be attached to. Please note that usually the available space is used more efficiently if the panel is aligned horizontally, &ie; attached to the top or bottom screen border. If you want to play around with different settings you can change the panel's position even easier by dragging the panel from one border to the other. The panel's size can be tiny, small, medium or large. Depending on which applets you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel sizes. Depending on your screen resolution you may find that the panel takes away too much of your precious screen real estate. To save screen space, the panel offers an auto hide feature. When this feature is enabled, the panel will hide when the mouse cursor has not been moved over it for a configurable amount of time. If you move the mouse to the panel's screen border it will show up again. Check the Enable automatic hide option in the Automatic Hide frame to enable this feature. Using the Delay in seconds slider you can configure the amount of time the panel will wait before it hides. Preferred terminal application is the default terminal program to be used by the QuickBrowser when you select Open in Terminal. It's very likely you don't need to change this option. <guilabel>Look & Feel</guilabel> Using the Look & Feel tab you can configure the panel's overall appearance. When the panel's hide buttons are enabled you'll see buttons on both sides of the panel, with arrows showing to the screen border. If you click on one of these buttons, the panel will slide away in that direction. After that, you'll see a remaining show button in that corner, which will make the panel show again. Check the Enable hide buttons option to enable this feature. Using the slider you can change the width of the buttons. Using the Manual Hide Animation (for the hide buttons) and Auto Hide Animation (for the auto hide functionality) options you can configure whether the panel will softly slide away or just disappear. You can enable or disable both animations using the Enable options and you can change the speed of the animation using the sliders. The Background Image is a picture that will be used to draw the panel's background, just like you can use a picture for the desktop background. Check the Enable background image option to enable this feature. You can specify an image file in the line edit box below or choose one by clicking on the Browse button. You'll see a preview of the selected picture on the right. Menus In the Menus tab you can configure the panel menu's behavior. This affects the K menu you will often use to launch applications, the browser menus you can use to access directories and other menus like the recent documents menu. The K Menu Layout frame offers you some options to configure the K menu's functionality. The Show "Bookmarks" submenu and Show "Recent Documents" submenu options will enable submenus showing your konqueror bookmarks and the last documents you've opened using &kde; applications respectively. The Show "Quick Browser" submenu option will enable a browser menu. Merge different menu locations will show all applications in the same submenus, regardless of where the corresponding configuration files are stored: for example, enabling this option will show system wide applications in your Applications menu as well as you own ones. If you'd disable this option, there would be one applications menu for the whole system and one in a submenu containing only your personal entries. The menu cache is a feature that can make the panel's menus appear faster on screen: instead of reading the menu information from disk every time you access a menu, the panel will remember menu entries after accessing the menus for the first time. However, depending on the amount of memory available to your system, you might want this cache to be cleared after some time. Check the Clear menu cache option if you want the cache to be cleared after some time. You can configure the amount of time after which the cache will be cleared using the slider below. In the Browser Menus frame you can configure whether the panel's browser menus will show hidden files or not (hidden files on unix systems are those whose filenames begin with a dot) as well as how many files at most will be shown in a browser menu. The latter option may be especially useful if you have a rather small screen resolution, as then the browser menus will quickly fill up your screen when you browse directories containing many files. The quick start section in the K menu offers quick access to programs you have used often or recently. In the "Quick Start" section contains frame you can choose whether this section will show the most recently or the most frequently used programs. Using the option Max number of "Quick Start" entries you can configure how many programs the quick start section will remember. Buttons The &kde; panel supports so-called tiled buttons. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To enable button tiling, check the Enable background tiles option in the Buttons tab. Then you can configure tiles for certain kinds of buttons. For every kind of panel button there's a frame offering an Enabled option to enable or disable tiled images. If tiles are enabled for this kind of button, you can choose a tile in the combo box below and the box on the right will show a preview of this tile. The different kinds of buttons are: K Menu Tiles The icon for the K Menu will be displayed as a tile Quickbrowser Tiles The icons for Quickbrowsers will be displayed as tiles Application Launcher Tiles The icons which start applications will be displayed as tiles Legacy Application Tiles The icons for legacy applications will be displayed as tiles Window List Tiles The Window List icon will be displayed as a tile Desktop Access Tiles The Desktop Access icon will be displayed as a tile Applets Applets are small plugins that extend the panel's functionality. &kde; comes with some applets but they may be provided by third parties as well. Panel applets can be started using two different ways: internally or externally. While internal is the preferred way to load applets, this can raise stability or security problems when you are using poorly programmed third-party applets. To address these problems, applets can be marked trusted. You might want to configure the panel to treat trusted applets different from untrusted ones. Your options are: Load only trusted applets internal: All applets but the ones marked trusted will be loaded using an external wrapper application. Load startup config applets internal: The applets shown on &kde; startup will be loaded internally, others will be loaded using an external wrapper application. Load all applets internal: will load all applets internally, regardless of whether they're trusted or not. For stability and security reasons, we recommend using one of the first two options and that you mark only those applets as 'trusted' that come with the &kde; base packages. To mark applets trusted or untrusted you can move them from one of the shown listboxes to the other. Just try selecting an applet in the list of trusted applets and click the >> button. This will move the selected applet to the other list, while clicking the << button will move the selected applet of the list of available applets to the list of trusted ones. The <guimenu>K</guimenu> Menu The K Menu is one of the central elements of &kicker;. There are five main groups in the K Menu which will be described now from bottom to top. The <acronym>KDE</acronym> Group This group is for the common &kde; things in the K Menu. Logout This entry is used to finish the &kde; session. It also shuts down the &X;. Lock Screen With this entry you can lock your screen if you don't want anybody else to see your desktop. If you have set a screensaver, it will appear when locked, otherwise the screen will turn black. If you hit any key, you will be prompted for your user password. This is independent from the screensaver's password settings. Configure Panel In this submenu you can change the settings of &kicker;, described in the Configuring &kicker; section, add things to &kicker; (see in &kicker; Basics for more) and start the Menu Editor. You can also reach the Help Menu, but as you are reading this, you probably found it yourself. Run Command This will bring up a small but powerful application start dialog. In the standard case, you just type in a command and press Enter or click Run. But there is also an Options button which will bring up some starting options to the command window. Run in terminal Checking this box will let the application start in a terminal. Run as a different user If this box is checked, you can specify a user with whose permission the application should run in the Username textfield. If you specify another user, you will have to give a password at the box below. Run with different priority Check this option to run with a different priority. A higher priority will tell the operating system to give more processing time to the applications. You can use the slider to change the priority. If you want to give your app a higher priority than the default one (middle position), you will need to enter the root password below. Scheduler The Scheduler is the part of the operating system which processes will run and which have to wait. Usually, an application will run with normal schedule, which means it can use the processing time it gets from the operating system, but you can also set it to Realtime. This means that the application has all the process time until it gives it away. You will need to enter the root password to use Realtime. This can be dangerous. If the application hangs and can't give up the processor, the complete system might hang. Browsers This group contains some very useful browsers: Quick Browser This submenu contains quick browsers for three very useful directories: home, root, and system configuration. Recent Documents This menu shows the most recently used documents (works only with &kde; applications for the moment). Clicking the element Clear History will remove those entries, what may be useful for privacy reasons. Bookmarks This submenu shows your personal bookmarks just like &konqueror; does. Refer to the &konqueror; Handbook for more help on this. The Application Group The submenus for application starting are located in this group. You can use &kmenuedit; to add, remove or move the entries. The most recently used applications This group holds either the most recently or the most frequently used applications. See the Menus Configuration section for more about that. Applets Applets are small applications running inside of &kicker;. Almost everything besides the application starter buttons are applets. They can be added from the context menu or from the submenu Configure Panel by choosing Add and the Applet. The Taskbar Applet The taskbar applet shows buttons for the running applications. The application, which has the focus, is shown as a pressed button. If an application is minimized, the title displayed in the taskbar will fade to grey. If you click on the button of the active application, it will be minimized. This means also that if you click twice on an inactive application, it will also be minimized. A click with the &RMB; on a button will show the standard application menu. Only the entry To current desktop differs: if you have set the taskbar to show the applications of all desktops, you can move this app to the current desktop. There is also a small icon on the left or top side of the taskbar, which opens a menu. This is called the windows list icon. The menu's first entry, Unclutter Windows, tries to move the windows on your active desktop in a way to see as many as possible. Cascade Windows puts all windows on the active desktop over each others, the most recently on top and the others sorted by the time they where last used. Below those entries is a list of all currently running applications, grouped by the desktops on which they are running. Clicking on the name of a desktop will switch to that one, clicking an application will also activate it. Configuring the Taskbar Applet You can configure the taskbar by clicking the &RMB; on the small move handle. Show all windows If this box is checked, the taskbar will show all running apps of every desktop. Otherwise, only the applications of the current desktop are shown. Show windows list button Checking this box will show the small window list button. The Mini-Pager Applet This little applet shows a preview of the desktops and lets you also choose by a click with the &LMB; which desktop you want to use. There is also a very useful context menu: Preview This option lets the mini pager appear as a tiny preview of the desktops with symbolic rectangles for the running applications. Number If this option is chosen, the pager will show the numbers of the desktops Name This will let the pager show the names of the desktops, which can be set in the preferences or from Control Center. Enable Desktop Preview If this option is checked, a small button will be shown which shows a bigger preview of the running desktops. Preferences Here you can set the number of desktops you want to have and the names of them. The Clock Applet As you might already guess, the clock applet is a small clock which resides in &kicker;. A click with the &LMB; on the clock will show a small calendar. You can use the single arrows to switch the months or the double arrows for switching years. This won't have any effect of your date settings, it's just for your information. There are some things you can do with the clock applet. This can be done from the context menu. <guisubmenu>Type</guisubmenu> There are three ways the clock can appear: Digital This lets the clock appear as a digital clock. Analog If this is set, the clock will be displayed as an old styled analog clock. Note: this may only be useful if you set &kicker; to normal or large size. Fuzzy This is a very unorthodox style of time display. Try it out, it is really funny! <guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem> Here you can set some general preferences of the clock applet. Type Here you can choose between the clock styles like in the context menu. The Digital Clock Tab In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date, the seconds and/or blinking dots shown. In Colors you can choose if you want the common LCD-Look or your own custom colors. The Analog Clock Tab In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date and/or seconds shown. In Colors you can choose if you want the common LCD-Look or your own custom colors. The Fuzzy Clock Tab In the Options section you can check if you want to have the date shown. There is also a slider to set the Fuzziness. This cannot be described in the documents, just do your own experiments. In Colors you can choose the colors and the font of the fuzzy clock. <guimenuitem>Adjust Date and Time</guimenuitem> This option starts the Country & Language configuration module of the &kcontrol;. You will need the super user password for adjusting date and time. <guimenuitem>Date and Time Format</guimenuitem> This will open the Date and Time module of &kcontrol; where you can set your formats. There aren't any special permissions needed for that. <guisubmenu>Copy</guisubmenu> If you need to paste the actual date and/or time in another application (⪚ in a text editor), you can copy it to the clipboard with this function. After selecting one of the available formats, the actual date and/or time is placed on the clipboard using the appropriate format. The Quick Launcher Applet This is a compressed application launcher. It is very useful especially if the panel is set to normal or large size. You can add applications by drag and drop or from the context menu. The context menu is also used to remove an application. The System Tray Applet The System Tray is used to dock some special applications like ⪚ &klipper; or &kteatime;. There are also two common buttons: The luggage lock is used to lock the screen if you ever want to use your &kde; box alone and don't want anybody to see it and the off switch to close your &kde; session. The Application Launcher Applet This applet provides a simple command line embedded in &kicker;. Nothing more, nothing less. The Runaway Process Catcher Applet This applet shows a smiley which will get angry when any process catches up too much system resources. If an application uses too much, a messagebox will appear and ask you how to handle that application. Clicking it with the &LMB; will show a configuration dialog. Here you can set the Update interval, which is set in seconds, and the CPU load threshold. At the moment, there is no real advice for setting this up, you will have to do some experimenting. These settings will probably change in a future release. There is also a section Programs to ignore where you can add applications that use very much resources naturally ⪚ compilers or 3D renderers. Extensions There are also some features that run outside of &kicker;, the extensions. They are added from the submenu Configure Panel of the K Menu or the context menu by choosing Add and then Extensions. You can move them to any screenborder by dragging them at the small handles on their left or top side and remove it by right clicking on that handle and choose Remove. The External Taskbar Extension The external taskbar is just the same as the taskbar applet with the only difference that it provides its own panel. Refer to the taskbar applet section for help about it. The Child Panel Extension This is just a panel like &kicker; itself, where you can add all the stuff &kicker; is also capable. So you can have as many &kicker;s as you want. Just add a child panel and add applications and applets to it. The KasBar Extension The KasBar is an iconic replacement of the taskbar. It always shows the icons of all currently running applications on any desktop, they can be chosen by clicking with the &LMB;. The active window is highlighted, minimized windows will show a little triangle instead of the square in the lower right of the icons. The Dock Application Bar Extension The Dock Application Bar is an external bar which lets WindowMaker applications be docked. Just run your dockable WindowMaker programs, if the Dock Application Bar is running, they will be automatically docked. Finding Files You will find the entry Find Files. This will launch &kfind;, a handy application for finding files or even expressions within files. The Name/Location Tab When starting &kfind;, you will see a quite simple window. Type in the name of the file you are searching in the textbox labeled Named:, choose a directory where you want to search by typing it in the field Look in: or clicking Browse... and hit Enter or click Find. If Include subdirectories is checked, all subdirectories starting from your chosen directory will be searched, too. The results will be displayed in the Box below. You can use the following wildcards: The Asterisk * The asterisk stands for any number of missing characters (even zero), that means ⪚ searching for marc* may find the files marc, marc.png and marc_must_not_read_this.kwd. Otherwise, mar*.kwd may find marketplace.kwd and marc_must_not_read_this.kwd. The Question Mark ? In contrast to the asterisk, the question mark stands for exacly one character, so mar? will find marc, but marc? won't find anything, as our files are called marc and marc.png. You can put as many question marks in the term as you want, it will find exactly that number of characters. Of course you can combine those two wildcard symbols in a search term. The Date Range Tab In this tab you can tell &kfind; the date period when the file(s) to be found have been created or edited last time. Choosing All files will tell &kfind; not to worry about dates. If you check Find all files created or modified:, you can either enter two dates, between which the files were changed or created, or specify a period of previous months or days where the files should lay in. The Advanced Tab Here you can refine your search or only look for files that contain a specific word or phrase. These are the special refinements you can choose: Of Type Here you can specify the type of file you are searching for. Containing Text Type in the word or phrase the files you are searching for must contain. Note: If you do this in a large directory or checked Include Subfolders, this may take a long time. Size is: Here you can specify if the file has to be at least or as most as big as the size (in KB) you entered in the following box. Case Sensitive Usually, &kfind; doesn't matter of cases, so searching for marc.png will find marc.png and Marc.png. If you enable this option, it will only find files with the exact case matching, in our example only marc.png. Command Reference The Panel There is only one standard shortcut available in &kicker;: AltF1 Opens the K Menu Questions and Answers How can I add applications, applets or anything else to the panel? Click the &RMB; on any free space in &kicker; and choose Add. From appearing submenu you can choose, what you want to add. See in Kicker Basics for more about that. Can I have an external Taskbar just like in &kde; 1? Yes, you can just click the &RMB; on any empty space in &kicker; and then choose Add, Extension and the External Taskbar. How can I move &kicker; to another screen border? Simply drag it by holding the &LMB; on any empty space in &kicker; to any screen border. How can I move extensions to another screen border? Just drag it by holding the &LMB; on the small handles on the left or the top of the extension. I want the taskbar to show all applications I'm running, independent on which desktop it is. Is that possible? Yes, click the &RMB; on the small handle of the taskbar, then choose Preferences and check Show all windows in the appearing dialog. How can I access the K Menu without using the mouse? Simply press AltF1 and it will appear. Is there a way to add a menu containing all desktop icons to &kicker;? Just fire up &konqueror;, go to your home directory and drag the KDesktop icon to any free space of &kicker;, then choose Add as Quick Browser from the appearing menu. How can I change the color and style of &kicker;? You can change the colors of the panel with the global color module of the Control Center or you can style the panel itself, see in Configuring Background tiles for more about that. Why is the clock showing the wrong time? On some &RedHat; systems, the clock always shows the time in GMT. This is a bug in the &RedHat; setup. To solve it, just create this symbolic link: ln /usr/share/zoneinfo /usr/lib/zoneinfo. Is it possible to change the K button of the panel to another picture? Look for $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kicker/pics/go.png and $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kicker/pics/mini/go.png and replace them. Do not forget to flatten the replacements to one layer, or else you will not see anything. Create the directories if they do not already exist. Then restart &kicker;. Why is my Settings menu not working? Your menu entries may be mixed up for some reason. Simply run kbuildsycoca on a commandline. &reporting.bugs; Credits and License &kicker; Program copyright 1999-2000 The KDE Team (www.kde.org). Matthias Elterelter@kde.org Matthias Ettrichettrich@kde.org Wilco Grevengreven@kde.org Rik Hemsleyrik@kde.org Daniel M. Duleymosfet@kde.org Preston Brownpbrown@kde.org Documentation copyright 2001 Dirk Doerflinger ddoerflinger@web.de &underFDL; &underBSDLicense; Installation How to obtain &kicker; &kicker; is part of the &kde; project http://www.kde.org. &kicker; can be found in the kdebase package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main &FTP; site of the &kde; project. Requirements In order to successfully use &kicker;, you need &kde; 2.1. Actually, it makes not too much sense running &kicker; without the complete &kde;. Compilation and installation In order to compile and install &kicker; on your system, type the following in the base directory of the kdebase distribution: % ./configure % make % make Since &kicker; uses autoconf and automake you should have no trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the &kde; mailing lists. Configuration Please refer to the INSTALL file in the kdebase directory for more information about configuration. &documentation.index;