%ents; ]>

# The &kcontrol;

Michael
McBride

    mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

23/11/2000
2.00.00

This documentation describes KDE's control center.

KDE
kcontrol
configuration
settings
module

## The KDE Control Center

The KDE Control Center (from now on referred to simply as "the control center") provides you with a centralized and convenient way to configure all of your KDE settings.

The control center is made up of multiple modules. Each module is a separate application, but the control center organizes all of these programs into a convenient location.

Each control center module can be executed individually.

See section entitled Running individual control center modules for more information.

The KDE Control Center groups the configuration modules into categories, so they are easy to locate. Within each category, the control center shows all the modules in a list, so it is easier to find the right configuration module.

## Using The Control Center

This next section details the use of the control center itself. For information on individual modules, please see Control Center Modules

### Starting the KDE Control Center

The KDE Control Center can be started 3 ways:

1. By selecting K Button Control Center from the KDE Panel.

2. By pressing Alt F2.

   This will bring up a dialog box. Type `kcontrol`, and click Run.

3. You can type `kcontrol &` at any command prompt.

All three of these methods are equivalent, and produce the same result.

### The KDE Control Center Screen

When you start the control center, you are presented with a window, which can be divided into 3 functional parts.

Screenshot
Screenshot

The KDE Control Center Screen

Across the top is a menubar. The menubar will provide you with quick access to most of Kcontrol's features. The menus are detailed in The KDE Control Center Menus.

Along the left hand side, is a column. This is a where you choose which module to configure. You can learn how to navigate through the modules in the section called Navigating Modules.

The grey box on the lower right side (with the wizard), shows you some useful system information.

In this example, we are running KDE 2.0, we started kcontrol as user `mmcbride`, the computer is named `btnrg1`, it is a Linux system, kernel version 2.2.16-storm, on a Pentium II.

### The KDE Control Center Menus

This next section gives you a brief description of what each menu item does.

#### File Menu

The file menu has a single entry.

Ctrl Q File Quit

  Closes the control center.

#### View Menu

These options determine how the module selection looks and acts.

View Mode

  Determines whether to use tree view, or list view for your modules.

  With tree view, each submenu appearing as an indented list.

  With list view, when you click on a category, the categories disappear and are replaced with the module list. You then use an up button to return to your categories.

View Icon Size

  Using this option, you can choose small, medium, or large icons to select your modules.

  This menu item only controls the icon size if you are in "Icon View". Users who use the "Tree View", will not observe any effects with this option.

#### Modules Menu

The modules menu, is a shortcut to take you directly to any module in the control center.

#### Help Menu

F1 Help Contents

  Clicking on this, will take you to the top of this document.

Ctrl F1 Help What's This?

  Selecting this option, changes the cursor to an arrow with a question mark. Now if you click on any component of the control panel pane, you get short context sensitive help about that item.

  This is the fastest way to get helpful advice on what any of the controls will do.

Help Report Bug...

  If you discover a bug, you can select this option to automatically collect bug information and submit it to the KDE developers.

Help About Kcontrol...

  Selecting this option displays a dialog box containing copyright, author and license information.

Help About KDE...

  This will display a dialog box with contact information reguarding the KDE project.

### Exiting The KDE Control Center

You can exit the control center one of three ways:

- Select File Quit from the menu bar.

- Type Ctrl Q on the keyboard.

- Click on the Close button on the frame surrounding the control center.

### Running Individual Modules

You can run individual modules without running kcontrol by selecting K Button Preferences from the KDE panel. You can then select the module you want to run in the submenus.

## The KDE Control Center Modules

In order to make it as easy as possible, the KDE control center has organized similar options into groups. Each group is called a module. When you click on the name of a module in the left window, you will be presented with the options of the module on the right.

Each module will have some or all of the following buttons:

OK

  Clicking this button will save all changes to KDE, and return you to the KDE control center main screen.

Apply

  Clicking this button will save all changes to KDE. You will remain in the same module.

Cancel

  Clicking this button will cancel any changes you have made since your last save, and return you to the KDE control center main screen.

Help

  This button will give you help specific to the current module. The button will show you a short summary help page in the left window. At the bottom of that window, you can click on a link to get more detailed help.

Default

  This button will restore this module to its default values. You must click "OK" to save the options.

Reset

  This button will "Reset" the module. The exact effect will depend on the module.

You must save the options of one module before you can change to a different module.

If you try to change without saving your options, you will be asked if you want to save your changes, or discard them.

### Navigating Modules

This is a list of the standard configuration modules (sorted by category) provided by the KDE base package. Please note that there may be many more modules on your system if you install additional software.

File Browsing

  File Associations, File Manager,

Help

  Help Index,

Information

  DMA Information, Device Information, IO Port Information, Interupt Information, Memory Information, PCI Information, PCMCIA, Partition Information, Processor Information, SCSI Information, Samba Information, Sound Information, X Windows Server Information

Look and Feel

  Actions, Background, Borders, Colors, General, Fonts, Icons, Icon Style, Key Bindings, Mouse Behavior, Panel, Screensaver, System Notifications, Theme Style, Taskbar, Virtual Desktops

Network

  Talk Configuration Windows Shares

Peripherals

  Keyboard, Mouse

Personalization

  Accessibility, Country and Language, E-mail, Crypto, Keyboard Layout, Passwords

Power Control

  Battery Monitor, Energy, Laptop Power Control, Low Battery Critical, Low Battery Warning

Sound

  Mixer, Soundserver, System Bell, Midi

System

  System Date and Time, Login Manager

Web Browsing

  Cookies, Enhanced Browsing, Konqueror Browsing, Proxies, User Agent,

## Laptop Modules Notes

In order to use the laptop modules, you must have the kernel APM package installed in your kernel. Useful information on how to do this can be found at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/apm.html" and in the Battery Powered Linux mini-HOWTO at http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Battery-Powered.html".

If you want the 'suspend' and 'standby' menu commands to work then you should install the Linux apmd package (version 2.4 or later). If you want to use them from non-root accounts you must mark the 'apm' command 'set uid root'.

To do this log on as root and enter:

    %chown root /usr/bin/apm
    %chmod +s /usr/bin/apm

By doing this you allow any user of your system to put it into the suspend states - if you are the only user this should not be a problem.

Also note that any program which has root access, can be a potential security problem. You should carefully determine if there is are any security concerns before giving any program root permissions.

## Modules

&access; &action; &background; &batmon; &borders; &konqbrowse; &colors; &cookie; &locale; &datetime; &devices; &dma; &email; &crypto; &energy; &enhbrowse; &fileassoc; &filemanage; &fonts; &desktop; &helpindex; &icon; &iconstyle; &ioports; &interrupts; &kbd; &kblayout; &keybind; &powerctrl; &loginmanager; &lowbatcrit; &lowbatwarn; &memory; &midi; &mixer; &mouse; &mousebehav;

&panel; &partitions; &password; &pci; &pcmcia; &processor; &proxie; &sambastatus; &screensaver; &scsi; &soundinfo; &sndserver; &style; &bell; &sysnotify; &talk; &taskbar; &useragent; &numbername; &winshares; &xserver;

## Credits and License

Kcontrol

Program copyright 1997 The KDE Control Center Developers

Contributors:

- Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel hoelzer@kde.org

- Matthias Elter elter@kde.org

Documentation copyright 2000 Michael McBride mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

Contributors:

- Paul Campbell paul@taniwha.com

- Helge Deller helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de

- Mark Donohoe

- Pat Dowler

- Duncan Haldane duncan@kde.org

- Steffen Hansen stefh@mip.ou.dk.

- Matthias Hölzer hoelzer@kde.org

- Martin Jones mjones@kde.org

- Jost Schenck uzsnty@uni-bonn.de

- Jonathan Singer jsinger@leeta.net

- Thomas Tanghustanghus@earthling.net

- Krishna Tateneni tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>

- Ellis Whitehead ewhitehe@uni-freiburg.de

&underFDL; &underGPL;