I’m running TW with Plasma KDE and using Latte Dock. In the dock, I have the audio (volume control) widget. I looked to see if there was a newer/better one and added the existing widget to the desktop before I realized it was the one that was already on the dock.
But, there appeared to be no way to remove the extra widget from the desktop. I right-clicked the desktop and clicked on add widgets to get to the configure app dialog. All that did was add another instance of the widget to the desktop. Any clicking of the widget adds another instance. At first, I could close any of the extra instances. But I discovered that if I left-click on the widget and hold for 2-3 seconds, a bar appears that includes a trash can. Clicking on that removes the instance.
However, when I reboot, I now get 9 instances of the widget on the desktop plus the proper instance in the dock. It ends up taking nearly a minute of clicking to get these widgets off the desktop. I tried getting rid the proper instance in the latte dock to see if that would to the trick. But, on every reboot, I have all 10 instances back! I can’t attack the problem the normal way since that adds more instances.
I don’t know where to look to try to correct this problem. I have used Stacer to clear out caches, but none seem to relate directly to the widgets. I am up to 22 instances of the stupid volume control widget. My current solution was to create a new desktop via Activities that has no volume control. I can use Pulse Audio Volume control but it is inconvenient compared to a widget. I’ve tried different desktops but like Plasma best. Maybe deleting plasma will cure this issue?
I haven’t used snapper. Now I wish I did. I gave up and created a new desktop but can’t delete the old one. I did this via Activities. This solved the problem but its like putting duct tape on a leaky pipe. It works, but its inelegant.
Snapper does nothing for config files in home. If you run TW you really should use snapper even if it does nothing for /home changes. Less need of snapper for Leap unless maybe you are doing system development or just messing with system.
System Settings -> Startup and Shutdown -> Desktop Session -> On Login
and select “Start with an empty session” apply and exit system settings, logout and re-login.
If you still have multiple instances of the widget, then leaving the above setting as “Start with an empty session” try the following:
logout from the desktop, switch to a VT (ctrl-alt-F2), login as your normal user and temporarily disable the config file “plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc”.
That will result in a new default desktop layout the next time you login. (Switch back to the graphical terminal using ctrl-alt-F7).
If neither of those help, then you can revert “Start with an empty session” to it’s original setting and restore the original “plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc”
I poked around kde.org and while I didn’t find my problem solved, I did find out enough to fix the problem… at least temporarily. I went to /.config/plasma.org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and found the 20+ instances of audio volume. I deleted all but one and that shows up on the default desktop which I abandoned in favor of an activity I created to have a clean desktop.
In general it’s not a good idea to manually edit plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc, very easy to mess up completely…
Personally, if it was my machine, I’d save the existing plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and then start afresh with a new defaultplasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc adding back what I needed to the desktop/panels, rather than carry on with a possibly, still corrupted, plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc that may cause future problems… but, it’s your machine, your call …
There is a copy of that file ending in .old and it is short compared to the one I edited. Are you suggesting I delete that appletsrc (not the .old) and let opensuse recreate a clean file?
As I wrote, if it was my machine then yes, that’s what I’d do, to ensure I knew I wasn’t continuing with a file that’s potentially still corrupt in some way.
But… if you’re happy with the way your desktop/widgets are now behaving then you’ll have to make the call as to start with a new default file or carry on as is.
“plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc” is quite a “dynamic” config file, also with time it can progressively increase in size as the desktop layout is changed, widgets are added/removed/repositioned etc. To compound the issue further it often doesn’t get “cleaned up” as widgets are removed, leaving a lot of redundant entries, this is one of the reasons it’s difficult to manually edit that file, one needs to first establish which entries are in use and which are not…
There’s a bug report / enhancement request over at KDE https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=404641 regarding the clean-up, (or lack of), but I doubt there will be any action taken as it’s probably regarded as very low priority.
…