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I'm presently trying out the KDE flavour of Mint (17.2 Rafaela) using the 64-bit download. I am testing it in VirtualBox 5.0.2 running on an earlier version of Mint using Cinnamon (I think 17.0, it probably isn't relevant). I plan to continue to use it as a virtualised desktop machine once I have it up and running.
My one remaining issue is that screen corner/edge mouse activation does not seem to work correctly. I have configured the number of virtual desktops (4), the number of screens per row (2) and have attached various operations using the standard Settings panel (e.g. show desktop, show windows, etc).
What actually happens when I activate a corner or an edge is that it highlights in bright blue (using a point or a line respectively) but otherwise does nothing. I had initially wondered if being a guest in a virtual machine was affecting it, but that the triggers are working suggests to me that this cannot be the case.
The virtual desktops will change using keyboard shortcuts too (Ctrl-F1 etc) so there is no problem with switching in itself. I have successfully placed a window on various desktops and found they animate/slide into position very nicely.
I had also pondered whether the graphics settings in the VirtualBox environment would make a change - I've tried increasing the RAM allocation for the video driver, and toggling the 3D Acceleration switch, to no avail. Broadly my VirtualBox installation has been fine with window animations anyway, in both Ubuntu and Mint/Cinnamon, so this was unlikely to bear fruit.
I am thus rather out of ideas, and wonder if someone might advise on what to check next. Mint/KDE seems to have an OS X level of polish otherwise, so it is frustrating it is sticking on something so trivial.
I've reset one of the corner behaviours to "lock screen", and when activated it is clear the trigger has been met, but it does not result in a locked screen. Since the screen can be locked from the task-bar menu, it looks like there is something getting in the way of corner/edge triggers.
I've noticed that Ctrl-F8 does a nice animation to show the desktop spread (I think this is called "Desktop Grid") and it is this that I'd like to connect to a screen corner action.
I don't think the virtual machine settings are particularly unusual. It has 2048M of RAM allocated, 128M of video RAM, and 3D Acceleration is enabled. The Hardware Virtualization settings I think are default: VT-x/AMD-v is enabled, as is Nested Paging. All other settings are standard as far as I know.
halfer
Posted 2015-10-22T18:04:35.903
Reputation: 93
Good question @Brian. I think so, but I'll double-check. I don't think it would make a difference to simple trigger actions, such as lock screen, but you never know. My hope has been that there is a log for this part of KDE, so I can find error messages that can be searched for on the web. – halfer – 2015-10-28T11:59:28.750
@Brian: I've reinstalled Guest Additions just to make sure, and rebooted - no effect, I'm afraid. I've also since discovered that Ctrl-F8 works manually to animated a Desktop Grid into place, but still nothing triggers from the edge/corner detection. I've looked at a couple of system log files, but without knowing where KDE would log this, that's a needle in a haystack. – halfer – 2015-10-29T20:33:19.767
Cool - what box settings did you use before install? And which edition of Mint? can you edit the new details into your question and I will delete the no longer relevant comments on my side (and have a go myself at installing ;-) – brianlmerritt – 2015-10-30T09:09:17.623
Thanks @brian! The Mint edition was in the question (17.2 Rafaela/KDE) and I've added some details about the box. Yesterday I installed a fairly identical box with 17.2 Rafaela/Cinnamon and this was fine, so it does seem to be a KDE issue (or an issue in which KDE interacts with VirtualBox - I'd certainly expect this to work "out of the box" without the virtualisation). – halfer – 2015-10-30T13:26:00.880
I've noticed incidentally that one of the Settings screens in KDE complains that OpenGL is not working (and so some screen effects like desktop cube won't work). I'd be surprised if that was the culprit, since the desktop grid will show manually just fine - but it may be worth flagging it up. – halfer – 2015-10-30T13:27:39.010
Looks like a KDE problem http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2855 and http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2015/06/cinnamon-2-6/ (search for corner) -
– brianlmerritt – 2015-10-30T13:30:47.727@brian, thanks; I've searched for "corner" in those blog posts as you suggest, and can't seem to find anything related to KDE - the topic of each post appears to be Cinnamon. Searching for "KDE" specifically doesn't seem to link to material about hot corners particularly (unless I am missing something!). – halfer – 2015-10-30T18:13:16.093
If indeed this is a known bug, would there be any evidence of the problem in a log file somewhere, do you know? An error message of some kind would give me something to do research on. In the short term I think I will use Cinnamon for my new guest systems - I've been using an older release for my machine host OS, and bar some very minor issues it has been great. – halfer – 2015-10-30T18:15:43.793
I've done a search on the KDE and Mint bug trackers, and have not noticed a report for this. Does anyone have a view as to what project this issue should be filed under? – halfer – 2015-10-31T23:22:03.750