KDE 4.5 Active screen edges + keyboard shortcuts

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1

Hi all,

Quick question/s: **Is it possible to map the same “Present Windows - All Desktops” action which is invoked by activating the top left corner of active screens via a keyboard shortcut? **I basically want to ape OSX and have an expose-like button, the screen edge works fine for now, but I would love a keyboard shortcut also. Is it possible?

Also, when I set up a custom keyboard shortcut to run yast, I initially tried using the same command from the KDE menu:

/usr/bin/xdg-su -c /sbin/yast2

However, when I use the keyboard shortcut to launch this command, I get problems when trying to use zypper after the initial launch using the keyboard shortcut(from yast GUI or CLI). The error basically states another instance of yast2 already exists. The problem is only with the app/repo management modules though; for instance I can launch yast (using keyboard shortcut or start menu) and access hardware info, sudo users etc, I just can’t access software/repo management stuff. Even when I kill the offending PID from the CLI I still get the error and have to restart the box to rectify it proper.

So I changed the keyboard shortcut command to :

/usr/bin/kdesu /sbin/yast2

and this seems to have resolved the problem. My second question is what is the difference between the two in this particular instance and why does one cause problems (xdg-su) and the other does not (kdesu).

Thanks in advance for any insight or feedback.

2

You can’t have two apps installing things at the same time. When a zypper based app is started it locks certain files so other apps can not use it.

Can’t answer the rest. It may have to do with environment differences in the two command like su and su -

3

My problem though is that I didn’t have two yast/zypper instances open at once. I probably didn’t explain myself well enough.

I tried to make a global keyboard shortcut for Yast2 using the command “xdg-su -c /sbin/yast2”. This worked well enough I was able to install and manage repos etc. However, when I close the yast application I initially opened with the new keyboard shortcut, I was then unable to use any more instances of yast2 to manage apps/repos or to use zypper from the CLI.

And this was after I had already closed/quit the program after I originally ran it, and even killed the PID. “ps -aux | grep yast” does not show any process yet I am still unable to use zypper etc.

I guess it doesn’t matter since kdesu works fine for me in the keyboard shortcut, I just wanted to know why this happened.

Thanks for the help.

Now If anyone could help me with finding out what command is being run when you are activating an active screen edge, so I could then map this to a keyboard shortcut, I would be very grateful. Is this even possible?

4

You can map Present Windows to shortcuts. Even two version, Present Windows from Current Desktop, and Present Windows from all Desktops. You can set it up in the Desktop Effecs section, but before you do you might want to try if Cmd-F9 and Cmd-F10 don’t work already.

5

Thanks so much, that’s exactly what I was looking for.

For further reference it is located under “Personal Settings” –> “Shortcuts and Gestures” –> “Global Keyboard Shortcuts” change the KDE component pulldown option to KWin and the options are all there.

Perfect!

Thanks again.

6

I actually meant in the configuration for the Desktop Effects: Alt+F2 and ‘kcmshell4 kwincompositing’ to go directly there. Or use Personal Settings to find the right module; however there are differences in the organization of Personal settings between KDE 4.4.x and KDE 4.5.x.

But if you can set the shortcuts in Global Shortcuts as well … and did so, I guess that is fine too. :wink: