The KDE desktop is one of the first things you'll see when you boot openSUSE for the first time. The desktop environment consists of the desktop itself, menus, panels, file management, window management and various other applications.

The desktop is not very different from other desktop environments you may be familiar with - you have a panel on the bottom, a launch menu which is opened in the lower left corner.

However two things differ significantly from most other desktop environments:

• KDE uses single click to open and launch things by default
• The content of the ~/Desktop/ folder is not scattered all over the desktop itself, but is instead organized inside a widget called Folder View

Kickoff is opened by clicking the chameleon icon in the lower left corner of the screen. It has five self explanatory tabs and on the top there's a search bar. You can add/remove applications to/from the Favorites tab by right clicking them.

Kickoff can be completely controlled with the keyboard using Alt+F1 to open it, and arrow keys, Enter and Esc to navigate.


You can edit menu entries or add new ones like this:
To add a shortcut for an application on the desktop or in the panel you can do this (requires widgets to be unlocked):
The desktop in KDE 4 is centered around widgets and containments. The desktop and the panel are containments in which widgets can be placed. The menu, the system tray, the folderview on the desktop are simply widgets. Lots and lots of other widgets are available.

To manipulate widgets the widgets need to be unlocked.
To add widgets:

To add widgets to the panel, drag them from widget browser to the panel.

When your widgets are covered by windows you can view them using the Widget Dashboard - either by clicking on the dashboard icon in the panel or by pressing Ctrl+F12.

To avoid your desktop getting cluttered with windows you can use virtual desktops to become more productive. In the panel you'll find a small grid, this is the desktop pager, use it to switch between your virtual desktops.


On the desktop there's an icon for My Computer - from here you can access the central places on the system and get information about the state of your system.


The default file manager is Dolphin, open it by clicking the little file cabinet icon in the panel. It should be very intuitive. USB sticks and other removable media will automatically appear in the left pane of Dolphin.


The global KDE settings are gathered conveniently in one place - Personal Settings / Configure Desktop in the menu. Here you can configure almost anything including mouse behaviour, default applications, file associations etc.



The KDE 4 window manager has built-in support for 3D desktop effects. A basic, unobtrusive selection of effects will be enabled out of the box if you have the proper hardware and driver support in place. Try pressing Ctrl+F8 or Ctrl+F9 for example.

To disable effects or to enable other/more effects:

KDE provides a special netbook shell which is optimized for low resolution monitors and the netbook usecase.

To switch between Desktop and Netbook mode use.

The netbook shell behaves quite differently from the conventional desktop. Here are some examples:

• The Search and Launch area is used for launching apps. Add apps to the favourite section by clicking on the asterisk that appears when you hover over icons
• The Page section is where you have your widgets
• When windows are maximized the titlebar will be hidden to save space
• The top panel will autohide when a window is open, push the mouse cursor against the top of the screen to make the panel reappear
• Switch between open windows by using the rightmost part of the top panel or use the Alt+Tab shortcut
• To log out/restart/shutdown right click on the desktop background => Leave or press Ctrl+Alt+Del