# The &kcontrolcenter;

Michael McBride

    mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

&FDLNotice;
2002-02-02
3.00.00

This documentation describes &kde;'s control centre.

KDE kcontrol configuration settings module

## The &kcontrolcenter;

The &kcontrolcenter; (from now on referred to simply as the control centre) provides you with a centralised and convenient way to configure all of your &kde; settings.

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

Each control centre module can be executed individually

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

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

## Using The &kcontrolcenter;

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

### Starting the &kcontrol;

The &kcontrolcenter; can be started 3 ways:

1. By selecting K Button Control Centre from the &kde; Panel.

2. By pressing &Alt;F2.

   This will bring up a dialogue 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 &kcontrolcenter; Screen

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

Screenshot
Screenshot

The &kde; Control Centre Screen

Across the top is a menubar. The menubar will provide you with quick access to most of &kcontrolcenter;'s features. The menus are detailed in The &kde; Control Centre 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 main panel shows you some system information.

In this example, we are running &kde; 2.99, we started &kcontrolcenter; as user adridg, the computer is named aramis, it is a FreeBSD system, Version 4.4-RELEASE, on a Pentium.

### The &kcontrol; 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 centre.

#### View Menu

These options determine how the module selection looks and behaves.

View Mode

  Determines whether to use Tree view, or Icon view for your modules.

  With Tree view, each submenu appears as an indented list.

  With Icon view, when you click on a category, the categories disappear and are replaced with the module list. You then use the up button to return to the 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. If you choose Tree View, the Small icon size will be used, no matter what size was previously selected in Icon View.

#### Modules Menu

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

#### Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

### Exiting The &kde; Control Centre

You can exit the control centre 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 centre.

### 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 &kcontrol; Modules

In order to make it as easy as possible, the &kcontrol; has organised 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:

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.

Use Defaults

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

Apply

  Clicking this button will save all changes to &kde;. If you have changed anything, clicking Apply will cause the changes to take effect.

Reset

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

You must save the options of one module using Apply 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 have installed additional software.

## 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 will allow any user of your system to put it into suspend or standby 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 are any security concerns before giving any program root permissions.

## Credits and Licence

&kcontrol;

Program copyright 1997-2001 The &kcontrolcenter; 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 deller@kde.org

- Mark Donohoe

- Pat Dowler

- Duncan Haldane duncan@kde.org

- Steffen Hansen stefh@mip.ou.dk.

- Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel hoelzer@kde.org

- Martin Jones mjones@kde.org

- Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de

- Jonathan Singer jsinger@leeta.net

- Thomas Tanghus tanghus@earthling.net

- Krishna Tateneni tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>

- Ellis Whitehead ewhitehe@uni-freiburg.de

Conversion to British English: Malcolm Hunter malcolm.hunter@gmx.co.uk

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