Why won't the launchers stay put in the task bar?

[Silent Observer]

I finally got 16.04 (upgraded from 14.04.4) working today; found I had to install xfce and boot into that once to get KDE to let me see anything -- and then had to downgrade from nvidia-361 to nvidia-340 after finding the "recommended" version doesn't seem to get along with KDE.

All that done, I've gotten my desktop almost back to normal (barring several of my habitual widgets not being available, along with most of the desktop animations I've gotten used to). One thing, however, is going to drive me nuts if I can't find a fix or work around:

The launchers in the task bar won't stay where I put them and I can't reorder them by any of the methods that used to work. That means, instead of knowing where the mouse needs to go to launch a particular frequently used program, I have to look for the launcher, every single time. Open a program and the launcher vanishes; close it and the launcher reappears, but not where it was before. Nor do they go to the top or bottom of my left-side panel -- they seem to wind up either above the icon that was above them, or below the one that was below.

I doubt this will be fixed before upstream KDE team decides it's a problem and figures out where they aren't counting right, but if I could manually reorder my icons I could pretty much live with it.a Unfortunately, I haven't seen any indication on how to move the launchers in KDE5 -- the method that worked in KD4 (open panel settings and then drag the icons) doesn't work, I can seemingly only drag the entire Task Manager within the panel.

There has to be a simple way to do this -- what is it?

[claydoh]

How are you creating the launcher icons on the panel? I can't reproduce this on my end. Mine all drag-to-move the same as in KDE 4.

[Silent Observer]

I created the launchers by dragging icons from the Application Menu (alternative to the default Application Launcher) to the task manager -- except for one that I created by opening the app, then right-clicking on its task manager icon and selecting "Show a launcher when not running". When I try to drag the launchers, I get a "fist" cursor and a draggable icon, but when I release, the icon I've been dragging fades and the original hasn't moved. However, when I open an app with a launcher the launcher vanishers, then when i close the app the launcher doesn't reappear where it was -- and I don't think it's as well-defined even as I posted previously.

[Rod J]

I'm not sure but are you using the Icon-only Task Manager (IOTM)? IOTM has long been my favourite task manager in KDE.

I am unhappy with IOTM in K15.10 and is one of the reasons I dislike Plasma5 (so far). I haven't yet been inclined to try K16.04 as it seems like IOTM hasn't been fixed yet. Compared to IOTM in K14.04 the K15.10 version is only a pale shadow of itself. I couldn't get the icons to resize sufficiently and the icons are not consistent. Most of the options just aren't there at all. Maybe it will improve in time but it seems like it is still too buggy.

[Silent Observer]

No, I'm using the standard Task Manager.

Say, I wonder if there's a practical way to "downgrade" to Plasma 4?

[Guest]

The launchers in the task bar won't stay where I put them and I can't reorder them by any of the methods that used to work. That means, instead of knowing where the mouse needs to go to launch a particular frequently used program, I have to look for the launcher, every single time. Open a program and the launcher vanishes; close it and the launcher reappears, but not where it was before. Nor do they go to the top or bottom of my left-side panel -- they seem to wind up either above the icon that was above them, or below the one that was below.

I doubt this will be fixed before upstream KDE team decides it's a problem and figures out where they aren't counting right, but if I could manually reorder my icons I could pretty much live with it.a Unfortunately, I haven't seen any indication on how to move the launchers in KDE5 -- the method that worked in KD4 (open panel settings and then drag the icons) doesn't work, I can seemingly only drag the entire Task Manager within the panel.

There has to be a simple way to do this -- what is it?

Hi,

I ran into this same problem yesterday. I accidentally found a way to solve it.
When you have the launchers in the panel task manager, grab one of them and move it to the left of the task manager.
This creates a stable launcher which doesn't move or disappear when launched.

--
Aki

[Silent Observer]

Oh, that's so completely intuitive (not!).

I know I can keep using 14.04 for another (about) three years, but I wonder if KDE will ever solve the problem of making hundreds of changes that don't improve the interface, or if I should just bite the bullet and get used to one of the other, also ever-changing UIs available for Ubuntu? I like KDE4 because it has almost everything I ever liked about the Windows 95/98/XP/7/Vista interface. I don't like the current Mac setup, and several of the other interfaces seem to want to mimic that to varying extents...