Ctrl-Alt-Esc gone?

English Applications
1

I’ve not been able to activate a kill - ctrl+alt+esc - which brings up a skull-and-crossbones mouse cursor, then kills what you click on in either 15.1 or 15.2 - but online it’s listed as still a feature of KDE. I do have ctrl-printscr-R-E-I-S-U-B, so I know those special strings are active… Does anyone know?

Thanks!

http://www.allhotkeys.com/kde_hotkeys.html

2

Still working for me (openSUSE Leap 15.2 and KDE Plasma 5.18.5)

3

Hey, thanks, deano. Weird - it doesn’t work on any of my machines (laptops and workstations) in vanilla 15.1 and 15.2.

4

I note that I have to use left hand CTRL and ALT keys (but that when using my VM guest openSUSE so might be particular to that environment).

Perhaps check KDE System Settings -> Shortcuts -> Global Shortcuts -> KWin, scroll down action list until Kill Window, and check that Ctrl+Alt+Esc is defined there.

5

Oops - my bad, on a fresh-install 15.2 machine it works. It’s only the machines which have been updated again and again that it fails. Maybe the answer is to do fresh installs on those machines.

6

Thanks - I didn’t know about that location. Yes, it’s defined there. But my /home directory has been around since opensuse 42.1. So who knows what has changed in the real world without the config files stored in there ever being updated? (I don’t think installs/updates touch the /home directories.) In general, I’m not sure how to “clean up” a home directory (mostly the configuration files in there). I guess the best way is to reformat and reinstall as if from bare metal, then copy over what I might need from a backup drive.

7

Or create a new user and copy what you need to that user account.

FWIW, a KDE thread detailing the config files for keyboard shortcuts.
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=151477

You can also set the shortcuts to default via system settings if desired.

8

1: logout.
2: login at a terminal or maybe login to Icewm and open an xterm.
3:

mkdir OLD

4:

mv .config .local .cache OLD/.

5: maybe move a few more files and directories to OLD.
6: logout, and then login again to KDE
7: configure your desktop as you wish
8: rescue any lost files from OLD (could be lost email, for example)
9:

 rm -rf OLD

That’s it. I do that from time to time. I delay that file step (step 9) for a few weeks.

9

I am totally going to have to cogitate on this one for a while. But it sounds like a pretty good idea. I have WAAAYYY too much old stuff in my home dir, anyway! One thing - I have some symlinks (as directories) to other drives… I guess I can just recreate those manually afterward.

BTW: When KDE hangs, is there consensus of the best way to recover?
Lately I’ve been using Alt-sysreq-R-E-I-S-U-B - but am not sure rebooting is the best recovery. (I know that’s off-topic - sorry)

10

Thanks nric - I guess this forces KDE to reconfigure to a “stock”-ish desktop? (since .config, .local, and .cache are missing after logging back to KDE) I know there are also .kde and .kde4 directories in my “~” directory which appear to hold configurations. That just resets KDE, correct? I have to delete all the unwanted-apps’ “.config” directories manually, I guess.

11

Hi Deano - this seems like the best way to do it - I think… the cleanest break with my old ~ directory.
(The shortcut for Ctrl-Alt-Esc seems to be there, it just isn’t working.)

I should probably keep (or transfer) my user number since I believe some things in linux still reference that. So, create new user, change names around, change numbers around, grant permissions to the new user over the old user’s directories, transfer what’s needed and change ownership to the transferred stuff. I think I should best login as root for creating a new user?

But first… check if the new user can use Ctrl-Alt-Esc! lol!