Completely reset KDE Plasma to factory setting?

[linuxnoob]

I did a fresh installation of Manjaro today, and the first thing I did was created two backups via Timeshift. The first backup is of a complete backup (system + home folder). The second backup is of the system only. I stored all this on the same HDD that Manjaro is running on.

I messed up my panel a bit and didn’t know how to put it back, so I decided to restore the complete backup via Timeshift. But the panel remains the same which makes me believe that KDE’s config somehow didn’t get restored to system default. So how do I do it manually?

[XRaTiX]

KDE config are stored in your home folder because are per user config,if you restored your second backup it will not reset the KDE config,you probably need to use the first backup because it contains the home folder.

In case you want to do it manually still,you can delete all related plasma config in your ~./config/ and ~/.local/share/ then reboot the computer.

But i don’t recommend use Timeshift to backup home data,it will restore everything to that point,let say you have a very important document today and you want to restore a backup from yesterday,since the document wasn’t yesterday backup it will be deleted and you lost your important document.

[linux-aarhus]

Make a copy of your home ~/.config

cp -R  /.config ~/.config.bak

Copy the content files/folders from /etc/skel into your home.

cp -i -R /etc/skel/.* ~

[openminded]

@XRaTiX

delete all related plasma config in your ~./config/ and ~/.local/share/ then

A logical and obvious next step is to restore only those folders from your Timeshift backup. Quick and dirty. However, I don’t know if Timeshift allows browsing its backups and handpicking separate files and folders (I use Back In Time), but I believe it should, otherwise, it cannot be called a backup application imho.

[linuxnoob]

@XRaTiX

KDE config are stored in your home folder because are per user config,if you restored your second backup it will not reset the KDE config,you probably need to use the first backup because it contains the home folder.

I always double check, so it was strange that it didn’t restore the KDE, so I tried again and it actually restored this time. Maybe it was just a glitch in the matrix.

Thanks for the DIR everyone.

[Ben]

First question - if you’re not using BTRFS why didn’t you set your Timeshift to an external drive? If you do a fresh install/wipe the disk, you can restore a timeshift backup.

Now there are a couple of ways to manage this without fresh installing.

For a quick method, start using PlasmaConfigSaver.

If you create a TEST user, it uses the template from /etc/skel. You can use that…

Create a folder in your /home directory called DOTCONFIG, then MOVE all of your hidden files into that folder, log out and in and you should get a pretty clean (like TEST user) desktop. You can include as much as you like - but mostly .local and .config are important (see linux-aarhus post).

After this, you copy important stuff from your DOTCONFIG/.config and .local folder taking care not to copy the problem files back.

I like PlasmaConfigSaver, but it has issues - for example I set up a nice NORD theme, with kvantum, matching default Konsole and Yakuake etc. I also set up EventCalendar with my Gmail and a nice blue-grey font for the time and dark grey for the day/date - I set these up with a custom Latte setup.

I saved 'Nord-2021-03-18 using a date to define the exact save, and if I edit this Nord theme, I can save it with a new date/time.

Later I set up a new theme and setup, and realised that restoring Nord overwrites ALL of the settings (including the EventCalendar/email/colors etc) and is a slight problem…

Basically it saves all the autostart, color-schemes, icons, kvantum, latte, plasma, wallpapers, and rc files (dolphinrc, kcminputrc etc) and it isn’t conservative (I mean if you set Nord, it won’t just save NORD - it copies the entire folder recursively).

The same can happen using Timeshift - you will overwrite everything, including documents, so make sure stuff is backed up first.

I do include my entire /home directory in the timeshift snapshots - that simply means I must take extra care before restoring, I might need to take a new snapshot or backup if I was working since the last snapshot. The other way of dealing with this is to keep your work somewhere else and regard your boot drive as a mostly system drive and less of a /home.

I’ve seen FerenOS has enhanced the KDE settings to include a ‘layout’ switcher, which you can do with PlasmaConfigSaver. Save one DEfault, then work on your desktop and save a new version for easy switching. You can easily delete them later.

I’m curious, with PlasmaConfigSaver - is it easy to load up a ‘foreign’ config? You could try if you like: Dropbox - Plasma-config-Nordic.tar.gz - Simplify your life