NOTE: The issue I describe below seems like it might be a KDE/dolphin issue rather than one specific to EndeavourOS but because it works after login, I thought I’d try here first – because this is such an awesome and helpful community.
While exploring dolphin, I discovered that drag-n-drop of a document onto the desktop creates a launcher widget that will launch that document when clicked upon (cool). However, it happened only one time. Subsequent attempts with other documents fail – upon the drop, the widget just disappears. Today, I gave it a try and once again this worked – once. Subsequent attempts fail as before. Digging further, I found that this behavior repeats every time I login: It works once the first time but all subsequent attempts fail until I logout and back in again.
This is using dolphin 25.04.1-1 on KDE 6.3.5 running EndeavourOS 2025.03.19.
@Bink I confirm that the folder view works for drag-n-drop but it doesn’t support(?) use of the widget as with desktop view. In folder view, it rather presents a menu for move, copy, or link and, using the link option, it does provide a similar functionality to the widget. So, a workaround but still seems the widget w desktop is broken?
“Desktop” mode is intended to be used differently than what you may have expected coming from windoze or other environments.
That is the desktop is not expected to be used with a wall of icons.
In fact “Desktop” mode is used for more of an icon-less (no icons) desktop.
Some users (like me) use this for a minimal/clean desktop, while others use it as a space to keep a bunch of widgets like conky style outputs, utilities, or even a more compartmentalized ‘folder view’ widget for a window into that previously mentioned workflow.
Or you can just set it to “Folder View” to get back to the classic clutter format.
All this to say - I would think if you want to use icons on your desktop you would set it to Folder View.
But for whatever it is worth I could also not replicate the issue. Every drag of a file or folder to the desktop in Desktop Layout prompted what to do with it - even to create an ‘Icon’ widget (which does somewhat defeat the separation of flow mentioned before, but I suppose options are always good), even multiple times in a row.
Wayland here.
I thought it might have something to do with the prompting .. like maybe that was disabled somewhere and that caused the discrepancy .. but it looks like that isnt even an option right now.
@Bink I’m using Wayland. I haven’t installed any other widgets or other things from the widgets menu. (I’m still learning KDE and don’t want to muck things up yet ) If I right-click the desktop and select “Enter Edit Mode” then “Add or Manage Widgets > User Installed” no widgets are listed.
@cscs Interesting that you can’t duplicate this. But, note that I wasn’t really trying to do anything particular. I actually dropped that first document by accident and, seeing what it did, tried it again – which resulted in the issue I described. But what you shared is helpful because use of the “link” in folder view does more closely model what one would see in most desktops by drag-n-drop of a document.
I am running wayland and the latest kde of course. I cannot replicate this. When i move a text file from documents to the desktop i get a menu that tells me how to handle it.
@UncleSpellbinder , @MichelN Very interesting… When running in “Layout: Desktop” and I drag something from dolphin to the desktop, I never see the menu, it just drops the first item on the desktop and subsequent drag/drop do nothing. As mentioned, if I log out and back in, then it will again just drop the first item but subsequent attempts do nothing.
I believe I’ve not made any significant changes to anything. I have done the following (I tend to log every change I make when building/learning a new system):
Installed Brave and removed Firefox.
Changed desktop wallpaper to “Nuvole”, “System Settings > Login Screen (SDDM)” to “Breeze”, and “System Settings > Screen Locking > Configure Appearance” to “Nuvole”.
Created keyboard shortcuts to several System Settings items.
Updated /etc/environment to show BROWSER=brave and EDITOR=micro
Updated /etc/fstab to mount several of my other drives.
Copied in the contents of .bashrc from my LinuxMint instance to EndeavourOS. This is some alias, environment settings, and prompt adjustments.
Applied the fix listed here to resolve my resume issue.
Installed nfs-utils and configured NFS to mount my server share via the method described here.
Other than that, just installed other apps and regular updates.
This is why I thought it may have been related to some ‘what to do when dragging a file’ setting .. but looking around found that its not even an available option as yet.
I’m beginning to think this may be related to some combination of NVIDIA on Wayland with KDE. I’m observing several other quirks in window appearance, etc. (see my other post).
Others that responded to this thread that you couldn’t replicate the issue, what about your systems?
NOTE: I have switched to using X11 to eliminate Wayland as a variable. I see the same behavior there; i.e., first drag-drop works, subsequent do nothing.
It seems that quirky desktop behavior is not uncommon. I am using EOS/Budgie with x11. When I enable desktop icons I can drag and drop from nemo to desktop, but can not select, or move icons on the desktop let alone drag back to nemo.
[I’m traveling but had a few minutes to look into this further.]
Besides my desktop (where the issue identified in this thread was exhibited), I am running EOS on my laptop (a former Chromebook). I tested this issue there and could not replicate the issue! I tested for sufficient time that I’m certain the issue would have manifested if it was going to occur.
Then, I switched the wallpaper to “Nuvole” as I had on the desktop. Following that change, the laptop was now exhibiting the issue just like the desktop. I switched the wallpaper back from “Nuvole” to the default “EndeavourOS” and tested again. It is still exhibiting the behavior.
So, it appears to be associated with having changed the wallpaper. But changing it back didn’t eliminate the problem.
How can I “reset” this short of reinstalling things?
You can look in ~home/cache and/or ~home/config if something is still left behind concerning the wallpaper in question. Also look in ~/usr/share/wallpapers/. Or probably more likely ~/home/local/share/wallpapers.
Don’t know for sure if this is related but in “This week in KDE”
Plasma 6.4.0
Fixed multiple bugs where dragging-and-dropping widgets onto panels or the desktop would only work once until Plasma was restarted, or could make Plasma crash, or where widgets dropped on a panel could overlap. (Marco Martin, link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
) If I right-click the desktop and select “Enter Edit Mode” then “Add or Manage Widgets > User Installed” no widgets are listed.
