KDE-Forum.org

I'm running KDE (3.3.2) on a debian system and went through the trouble of editing the start menus to what I liked. I felt that they were too cluttered.

Anyway, I'd like to transfer those menu setting to other users. I tried copying my homedir/.local directory (recursively) to another user, but that didn't work.

What is the best way to customize the menus on a system for all users?

Thanks,
Steve

Quoted

Originally posted by anda_skoa
The K menu is built according to the freedesktop.org menu specification.

This means there is are global file and your local changes are merged in at runtime, but you could add those changes to the global files as well.

Cheers,
_

Thanks. I have not had time to understand how the freedesktop menus work. A nice feature would be to have an import menus on kmenuedit. So that another user could just import my custom menus.

Is there a way to copy some files from my home dir to another user's home dir and have the same effect as importing my menus? I thought it was in the .local/share dir, but copying that over did not seem to do what I wanted.

Quoted

Originally posted by anda_skoa
As far as I know the application is more or less constructed according a XML file and each entry has its own .desktop file.

I guess manually merging local changes to the global files should work as well.

I think (haven't edited my menu yet) the local file is called something like kmenuedit.menu and could be under .config if it isn't under .local

I guess you have more to do than just removing applications from the menu?

Cheers,
_

That's it! Thanks.

homedir/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu seems to be the one I was looking for. I haven't tried copying it over, but I'm pretty sure it will work.

Yeah, I have moved many of the items into "More Applications" sub folders and created some other sub folders. This is for my home system. I have not been able to get my wife and kids away from the other OS (if you can call it an OS), and I'm tired of fixing it all of the time. So, I have them setup to use KDE, but when they go through the menu there is this huge array of choices, some of which are not organized well. At least IMHO. Not that the menu on windows is any better. They get confused and go back to what they are used to.

I have menus now that for example under Internet just has:
firefox which they are used to using on windows
thunderbird
gaim
konqueror
skype

Then I move other items into some sub folders I created:
Messaging
Web Browsers
Mail
More Applications

So, 99% of the time they will just use the first few choices. I believe kubuntu and some other distros are doing similar things with the menus. I'm running Debian.

I appreciate the help,
Steve

Quoted

Originally posted by anda_skoa
If you find time read up on the freedesktop.org directory scheme.

It lets you create directory listing which are searched, not just one global and one user-local one.

This can be used to have changes to the global distributor files while still having them apply to all users.

See also kde-config --types, especially the last three ones.

Cheers,
_

Yes, that's a better way to do it. I will read up on that. For now I will do the quick and dirty.

I have to upgrade the PC from really crappy ME to just crappy XP soon. I'm just so tired of dealing with ME. I'm sure that's going to eat up some of my time.

Steve