Adding additional kicker applets with KubuntuAdding additional kicker applets with Kubuntu

Posted November 29th, 2007 in Linux/Unix/BSD

The default install of Kubuntu doesn't include useful kicker applets such as the system monitor, media player controller and so on. Fortunately it's very easy to add these with apt-get or using adept or a similar package management tool. Kicker is the taskbar that appears at the bottom (by default) of the screen on KDE, and contains things like the currently running applications, desktop switcher, K menu, system tray and clock.

Using Adept

Open Adept by clicking on the KDE menu icon, then "System", then "Adept Manager". Enter "kicker" into the search box and press the enter key. You'll see "kicker-applets"; click on that and then click the "Request Install" button. Then click the "Apply Changes" button at the top of the Adept window. This will then install the additional kicker applets, and you'll have access to:

  • system monitor
  • colour picker
  • media player controller
  • mathematical evaluator
  • binary clock

You'll notice when you do the search for packages with "kicker" on the title that there are others too. I'll leave those for you to play around with...

Using apt-get

Open up a command line and issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install kicker-applets

And you'll get output from the command along the lines of this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  xmms-kde kdeaddons-doc-html
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  kicker-applets
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/229kB of archives.
After unpacking 909kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package kicker-applets.
(Reading database ... 86696 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking kicker-applets (from .../kicker-applets_4%3a3.5.8-0ubuntu2_i386.deb) ...
Setting up kicker-applets (4:3.5.8-0ubuntu2) ...

You'll see it's suggested a couple of other packages to install as well. Again, I'll leave this up to you as to whether you want to do this or not.

Below is a screenshot of part of my taskbar with the additional applets running. The new applets I added after doing the above were the media control, colour picker and system monitor.

taskbar applets