[PLASMA 5] My panel [taskbar] is gone since KDE Neon upgraded fr 5.7 to 5.8.

[finny388]

I did an update that seems to have upgraded it from 5.7 to 5.8 and now when I log in my cairo-dock is there but the rest of the desktop is empty.

I had a panel at the top that is gone.

Does anyone know how to get it back?

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Well, if you have the bottom panel, you do not specify, then one can right click the little "three horizontal bar" thing at the end of the panel (on my system at right) right click and one will see an "add panel" option of two types.

If you have no panels then you can go the the "cashew:"Which is nowadays a grey box for me on the top left do the "add widget" thing. type into search the word "panel" one will get a box that says "input method panel" .

it appears as a simple white box.

Right click on it and several options are presented click "desktop options" one sees several options one of which is add panel.

One can then move the panels to any side of the desktop.

There is also a right click on the desktop, depending on your right click options to do it. and the above can be repeated.

You might also go to settings / desktop behaviour / activities and add a whole new default desktop and the panel might appear, then just delete the other desktops/activities and remake them which should be a relatively trivial effort.

En extremis you go to dolphin / root / search for "plasma desktop" with "hidden files" ticked and you will see twenty odd items, one of them has the script for the desktop and it's panel in it,

Another way around it is:

search for in root: plasma-desktop-appletsrc, do not search for the plasma-desktoprc

The panel is what is known as a "containment" I do not understand containments but my script looks like this when I do not have any activities.


activity=
activityId=
desktop=-1
formfactor=2
geometry=0,-57,1282,51
immutability=1
lastDesktop=-1
lastScreen=0
location=4
plugin=panel
screen=0
zvalue=0

The IMPORTANT THING there is that there should be the word "panel" after plugin, check to whether it is there.

I, personally have never fiddled with this but if the word panel is not there then one can make a copy of the .rc and then rename it and try adding in the word.

HOWEVER, again, this could easily bork the system even more.

I AM SURE that there are people here who will be able to give you a more cogent answer.
woodhopethishelpssmoke

[Xylon]

I have this problem too since last week.

When I right click the desktop and do "Add Panel" > "Default Panel" or "Empty Panel" nothing happens.

It's hard to use KDE with no panel...

[Xylon]

Found something suspicious:

$ cat /usr/share/applications/display-im6.desktop

$

[Xylon]

OK turns out that's an imagemagic file so it's not that.

What about this in .xsession-errors:

kdeinit5: PID 1323 terminated.
kf5.kcoreaddons.kaboutdata: Could not initialize the equivalent properties of Q*Application: no instance (yet) existing.
kdeinit5: Got SETENV 'GTK_RC_FILES=/etc/gtk/gtkrc:/home/joseph/.gtkrc:/home/joseph/.config/gtkrc' from launcher.
kdeinit5: Got SETENV 'GTK2_RC_FILES=/etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:/home/joseph/.gtkrc-2.0:/home/joseph/.config/gtkrc-2.0' from launcher.
kdeinit5: PID 1317 terminated.

[Xylon]

OK I logged out, switched to console and did

rm -r .conf/ .kde/

. I still have no panel and can't add one...

[GreyGeek]

Did you try to change your display manger?

[Xylon]

I just tried lightdm I can't even log in at all. "Failed to start session."

[GreyGeek]

Did you install lightdm? Have you installed GDM? They should have binaries in the /usr/bin directory.

[Xylon]

Did you install lightdm? Have you installed GDM? They should have binaries in the /usr/bin directory.

Yes lightdm starts but when I try to log in it errors.

[GreyGeek]

What do the errors say?

You might be miles ahead at this point to boot into the recovery menu as root. remount "/" as rw and purge the neon-desktop, then do an autoremove. Then reboot into the root recovery menu again, remount "/" as rw again, do another autoremove, and then reinstall the neon-desktop.

It's cases like this that using Btrfs would be a life saver. You could roll back to your last good snapshot in a few minutes. (Just a thought if you are considering a reinstallation)

[axelmasok]

I'm running 5.8.8 here on Kubuntu 16.04 Xenial. Very much same issue and I know how I triggered it. Fresh install on new Dell XPS15 9560, Virtualbox wouldn't work because of vboxdrv kernel module wouldn't load. Also I couldn't get nvidia kernel module to load either. Work around was to turn off secure boot mode (WIn10 now paralysed). Magically nvidia was loading and vboxdrv but strangely no panel/dock/task manager/application manager. No matter what I couldn't get it back. I could add widgets to the desktop, that's about it. Turn secure boot mode back on (BIOS) and back to Intel graphics we go - panels all magically appear... No idea how to resolve this.

[GreyGeek]

The panel is a widget also, but you are saying that even though you can install other widgets to the desktop you can't install the panel widget?

[axelmasok]

Indeed true. I can drop a launcher widget to the desktop and also a generic input panel as per the instructions earlier. Can't add a panel widget, it's crazy stuff. Or rather, it does add but isn't visible. Same with the original default panel, it's probably there but not visible.

[GreyGeek]

If widgets were there but invisible or out of sight, which is more likely, they's still be showing in the widget list by virtue of a number attached to the widget listing showing how many times it has been installed. If the panel doesn't have a number showing then it is not installed.

Have you tried a different theme?