On the bottom of the screen you find the desktop panel, simply referred to as panel in the future. Among other purposes the panel is the first choice if you want to launch an application. Have a look on the button on the left which shows the two gears. This button is called the "Go!" button. It has a small arrow on the top to indicate that it will pop up a menu if you click on it. Just do it! The popup is called the "Go!" menu and offers you easy-click-access to all applications which are installed on your computer system. With Mod1-F1 (Mod1 is probably mapped to the Alt-key on a standard PC keyboard setting) you also have fast keyboard access to this "Go!" menu.
If you use one application or tool very often, then you may want to have even faster access to it, of course. In this case, you can add a single application or an entire sub-menu of the "start"-menu as a special quick-launch button onto the panel. If you want to reach the "Find Utility" directly via a launch button , simply choose Go!->Panel->Add Application->Find Utility (By this syntax we mean that you should first pop up the Go! menu by clicking on the Go! button, then select "Panel" where the small arrow to the right indicates that another menu will pop up. In this menu, choose "Add application" and in the next sub-menu "Find Utility".). Note that you can move all items of the panel around with the "move" command of the context menu. Just click with the third mouse button (the third mouse button is normally the right button, but if you have configured your mouse for left-handers e.g., it might also be the left one). A menu will pop up where you can choose "Move". Now move the mouse and see how the icon follows while still staying on the panel. When you are done, simply hit the first mouse button (by default the left one). As you have may have noticed, there is also a menu entry "Remove" in case you are tired of a certain launch button on your desktop.
This leads us to another interesting topic: KDE usually offers a context menu on the right mouse button where-ever this is useful. It is therefore always a good idea to try out the third mouse button on something, if you do not know what to do with it. Even the background of the desktops has such a menu!
There are other interesting things possible with this panel. One may be important if you have a low-resolution on your monitor, it is the "hide-and-show"-function: Try to click onto the small button with the "K"-Label! (By the way, if you are not sure what a certain button does in KDE, just move the mouse pointer over it and wait for a short while: KDE has a built-in mini context help, so-called "tooltips", which explain the functionality of such controls in a few words.
But let us put all these details on hold for a moment and start an application instead (for example the already mentioned "Find Utility") and have a look how to manipulate windows in KDE.
Well, usually people work inside windows, but sometimes you may want to manipulate windows, for example
Moving and resizing is easy: Just take the window with the mouse at the titlebar to move it around or drag the window border to resize. As special gimmick you can also move a window around when you keep the Mod1-Key down and start the drag with the left mouse button *anywhwere* in the entire window. The same applies for resizing a window if you use the right mouse button.
More exiting are the various extra buttons at the top of a window: KDE windows have some pretty standard buttons on their title-bar which give you fast access to some common operations. The default button layout looks like this:
On the left side:
On the right side:
Now that we know how to deal with windows we encourage you to open some windows with the panel since we will now reveal the secret how to switch between different windows.
There are several ways to do this. The most simple way is to click into the new window (Depending on your desktop settings you might have to click on the title bar or the border to make this work, but you can also hold Mod1 while clicking into the window; this will activate the window no matter how your desktop is configured.) An advanced way is to use the keyboard for that (try Mod1-Tab or Control-Escape for this purpose). An advanced way for mouse users is to use the task-bar. In the default KDE setup the task-bar is located in the top left corner, but it can also be located at the top or the bottom of the screen.
The task-bar is very powerful: A simple click with the left mouse button on the appropriate task-button will bring you to your application immediately. The middle mouse button also allows you to iconify/deiconify a window, And, last but not least, the right mouse button will pop up a context menu, as usual. This menu is quite similar to the window operations menu of the window itself and allows you to do various operations with the window.
If you are coming from a UNIX/X11 background you may perhaps also enjoy a window-list on kpanel (Go!->Panel->Add Window-list) or on the background (which is also called the "root window" in the X Window System) if you click on it with the middle mouse button.
It may happen that you have more windows open than space on your desktops. In this case you have three possibilities:
Item 3 is the way to go! KDE can handle several different desktops. You can switch between the virtual desktops very easily with a click on one of the (default: 4) desktop buttons of kpanel. Also Control-F1...F8 will send you to the desktop immediately. (There is also a way similar to the switching of windows, here with Control-Tab).
Virtual desktops are very nice. But sometimes you want a window to be present on *every* desktop. This could be for example a small chat window or a alarm clock or whatever. In this case you can use the above mentioned "sticky"-button which will pin the window on the background so that it will occur on every virtual desktop.
This can also be used to move a window from one virtual desktop to another one. But it is easier if you use the context popup menu of the current window (menu item "Onto current desktop") or the "Send to" sub-menu of the window operations popup of a certain window.
Just calm down, there is nothing fear. KDE does not want to take your beloved (and sometimes very effective) command line away from you. You can move your files with the desktop, but you can also use the Unix commands you are accustomed to. KDE provides a very sophisticated command line window called kvt (more on kvt see elsewhere in this documentation).
Sometimes, you only want to enter one command on the command line. In these cases, you do not need a full-blown terminal. Just hit Mod1-F2 and you get a small command line where you can enter one command. The command line window will disappear afterwards, but it remembers your command. When you pop up this window (which we call "minicli" by the way) and hit the "Up" button, you can browse through all the commands you have entered here before. This feature is known from normal terminal emulations and shells, too, and is called "command history".