[Other] Right click on Desktop to bring up terminal?

[taylorkh]

I am not REALLY a newbie at this. I have been using Ubuntu since about 7.04 (with Gnome 2 or Mate) and had used KDE on Red Hat 5.x up to Fedora Core 4. I found the early Gnome rather "chunky" sort of like the current version of Gnome. The icons were TOO BIG and I did not have a lot of screen space to spare. That blather out of the way...

I have been reading a lot of good things about the Plasma desktop/environment so I though I would give it a try. I downloaded kubuntu 19.10 and installed it in a VMWare virtual machine with no issues. I have managed to move the main panel to the top where I like it and to create a launcher for Firefox and for lock screen on the panel. I guess I am trying to make it look like Gnome2/Mate

I am especially intrigued about the ability to configure two monitors independently. I used to run separate X sessions on my two monitors in Ubuntu 9.10 but it did not work in 10.04 LTS. In fact I could not even get the two monitors to work at all with Unity. I then switched to CentOS 6 which did support my configuration. CentOS 7 does not so have developed a different scheme using virtual machines. I will probably dig out my old workstation and scrounge up a couple of monitors to test what Plasma can do. But in the mean time...

In just about every GUI Linux configuration I have ever run I can right click on the desktop to bring up a terminal. It does not work in Plasma out of the box. I have searched but have not found the trick to enable this simple feature which is burned into my brain I know someone here knows the simple answer and will be kind enough to share it.

TIA,

Ken

[Don B. Cilly]

I don't think you can.
See, if you right-click on the desktop, you get a "Configure Desktop" option.
In there, under Mouse actions, you have little icons deceptively labelled "Add Action".



Thing is, the Standard Menu one lets you remove actions, but not add them.
Nor do any of the other choices, like Switch Desktop, etc... that I found.

Still, having a Konsole icon in your panel, and left-clicking on it, is just as good, isn't it?

[kubicle]

In just about every GUI Linux configuration I have ever run I can right click on the desktop to bring up a terminal. It does not work in Plasma out of the box. I have searched but have not found the trick to enable this simple feature which is burned into my brain I know someone here knows the simple answer and will be kind enough to share it.

If you aren't too stuck in your ways (using the desktop menu sounds a tad clunky way of running konsole), I'd recommend you try out "yakuake" (installable from the repos)...that you can show hide with a keyboard shortcut (default is F12). It's a highly configurable/themable tabbed dropdown shell (and my personal goto shell application).

Even if you are normally a mouse control guy, since you're opening a shell your hands are probably going to the keyboard anyway, so a keyboard shortcut is probably faster than any mouse way (besides it works even if your desktop is covered with windows). Of course you can also set a global shortcut for konsole (if you prefer it over yakuake), but yakuake's advantage is that you can show/hide with the same shortcut.

[Don B. Cilly]

+1 for yakuake.
I especially like it because... you may be aware that Dolphin and Kate have their own drop-down (well, up) terminal window (F4).
No browser that I use has it. So for copy-pasting things from a web page to a terminal (or the reverse), yakuake is just the thing.

Just configure the window to the size and position you like, and tell it to "keep window open when it loses focus" - so it doesn't go behind the browser (or whatever) one.

[WWDERW]

Another vote for yakuake. Nice thing too, as I run a 3 monitor setup, I have it pop down on whichever monitor I'm actively using. Comes in handy when trying to run scripts for xsetwacom and need to change on the fly.

[jlittle]

Another approach I've tried is to use a mouse with lots of buttons, and map one of them to open a terminal.

IMO, because a hand has 5 digits there should be at least 5 buttons. However, I use a mouse in my left hand ... so, there's several characteristics I want in a mouse:

1. work in a left hand (not necessarily "left-handed")
2. lots of buttons, easy to press each of them
3. physically robust and reliable; I've worn out or broken dozens of mice
4. fit my moderately large and thick hand, with thick fingers
5. wireless
6. reasonably-priced
7. not tied to MS Windows for some functionality

Getting more than a couple of the above is difficult.

[taylorkh]

Thanks folks. Right Click on the Desktop just always seemed to work. I guess I took it for granted. One of the first things I do when I install a new system physical or virtual is to make a panel launcher to the terminal. I go looking for that if the desktop is covered by some maximized application. I guess I need to go the keyboard shortcut route. I used to use a lot of them in Windoze. The 32 bit file manager program (winfile.exe) from Win NT 4.0 was my normal interface. I had file types and programs associated to my liking. I copied winfile to XP machines as it was not included.

Worked great. And I did tricks like copying notepad.exe to n.exe. To open and edit a file from withing file manager I would point to the file and type F10 r n <Enter>. I did that so often I probably typed it in miliseconds

Thanks again,

Ken

[jglen490]

I just leave my konsole, and other apps, on the bottom panel. When I reboot, these apps show up again in the panel. From there, it's one left click away.