After starting the KDE Control Center, see the main window. It has its menus at the top and a sidebar on the left. The configuration is displayed on the right.

You can change the appearance of the sidebar with the ‘View’ menu. Switch from the tree view to icon view or vice versa. To configure some shortcuts, go to ‘Settings’+‘Configure Shortcuts’.

The sidebar contains three tabs. The first, ‘Index’, displays all the modules according to the settings of the ‘View’ menu. The second, ‘Search’, enables you to search for some keywords. With the last tab, ‘Help’, read small help texts about the current module.

This item features all fine tuning options for the appearance of your desktop. ‘Background’ lets you choose a color, picture, or slideshow for your background desktop.

If you do not like the actual color scheme, modify it in ‘Colors’. You can change the color of the window background, your menu, links, and others.

Fonts are also an essential part of your desktop. Set your default fonts with ‘Fonts’. This module displays a preview of the currently selected font in a text field. With ‘Choose’, select the font, style, and size.

‘Icons’ controls the icon style for the whole desktop. You can select the KDE Classic style, the Crystal SVG style, or others. With ‘Advanced’, fine-tune the icons' appearance.

‘Launch Feedback’ runs a visual feedback for your mouse cursor. If an application is started, KDE shows, for example, a busy cursor. Choose the style, like blinking or bouncing. You can also try a passive cursor or disable this effect entirely.

If you do not use your computer for a specific time, a screen saver automatically appears. With the ‘Screen Savers’ module, configure all the necessary settings. Select from a lot of types, like banners, fractals, and illusions. To tweak the settings for a specific screen saver, click ‘Setup’. More options can be found in ‘Advanced Options’.

When KDE starts, it shows a small image. This image can be defined with ‘Splash Screen’. Click ‘Test’ to display the splash screen.

With ‘Style’, modify the visual appearance of user interface elements (GUI). Choose a style to preview it in the example below. ‘Effects’ and ‘Miscellanous’ can enable some GUI effects and transparency.

Some users created configuration sets and uploaded them to a Web page. ‘Theme Manager’ let you choose and install different themes for your KDE desktop.

‘Window Decorations’ are another style setting. If you change the setting, the example below changes.

‘Behavior’ allows you to change some general issues about your desktop. You can activate previews for some specific files or enable device icons.

The central place for user-defined resources is ‘KDE Resources’. Choose a resource, like Calendar, Contacts, or Notes. Then click ‘Add’. Depending on your selection, it displays a window in which to select the type of the new resource. The next step opens a new window with specific settings for this type. If you confirm with ‘Ok’, the resource can be used in other KDE applications, for example, KOrganizer.

‘Multiple Desktops’ let you choose up to 20 virtual desktops with individual names. Move the slider to change the value. Use the text fields to give your desktops names.

With the ‘Panels’ module, set the position of the panel. You can put any panel on the left, right, top, or bottom of the screen. The other tabs contain settings to hide the panel or add special menus. It is also possible to modify the background or enable transparency.

The ‘Taskbar’ modules configure the taskbar, which provides the window list in the panel. How the taskbar groups windows is determined in ‘Group similar tasks’. You can define some actions to perform if the left, middle, or right mouse button is pressed.

With ‘Window Behavior’, customize the default KDE window manager (KWin). This controls what happens windows are moved, clicked, or resized.

‘Windows-Specific Settings’ let you customize settings that only apply for some windows. It only takes effect if you use KWin as your window manager.

The modules ‘Paried Bluetooth Devices’ and ‘Bluetooth Services’ deal with how you manage your Bluetooth devices and services. KDE lets you change the time-out values for different connections in ‘Connection Preferences’.

‘Desktop Sharing’ is useful if you want to invite other people to your desktops. Only let trustworthy users take part in your session.

‘File Sharing’ can only be changed if you are an administrator. If you are root, you can add, change, or remove folders intended to be shared with others.

Use ‘Local Network Browsing’ if you want to browse a local network. It is like “Network Neighborhood.” Take into account that you need some additional software, especially the LISa daemon (see package kdenetwork3-lisa).

In ‘Proxy’, customize proxy and SOCKS servers. Normally, if your administrator does not tell you to use this, it is probably not useful for you.

The ‘Samba’ submodule should only be customized with the YaST configuration center.

For Konqueror, try the submodule ‘Web Browser’. You can customize fonts, inspect cookies, and determine Web behavior.

The ‘Component Chooser’ module handles basic tasks. At the moment, you can change the e-mail client, text editor, messenger, terminal, and Web browser. Whenever a KDE application needs to start an application of these types, it always calls the same component.

KDE uses ‘File Associations’ to identify a file type and start appropriate applications. With this module, customize the icon, filename patterns, description, and order of applications.

Konqueror can also behave like a file manager. The ‘File Manager’ module configures which fonts and font sizes are used, what home URL is used, if previews are allowed, and if quick copy and move actions are allowed.

An overview of all plug-ins of the KDE daemon is shown in ‘Service Manager’. This module shows two different types: services invoked on start-up and services called on demand. Normally do not change the settings of this module, because it is vital for KDE.

With ‘Spell Checker’, KDE provides support for two common spell checking utilities, ASpell and ISpell. This module sets a default configuration that can be shared with other applications.

This setting opens the configuration dialogs for the mouse, keyboard, and printer administration.

This is only useful for laptops. ‘Laptop Battery’ monitors your batteries. Power management software must be installed.

‘Accessibility’ configures functions that can help individuals with difficulties in motor function or vision.

In ‘Country/Region & Language’, set your locale settings. You can add more than one language. Numbers, money, time, and dates can be customized in the respective tabs.

‘Keyboard layout’ allows use of multiple layouts for different languages. For example, you can activate a French and a German layout and switch between them. Enable this with ‘Enable keyboard layouts’, select the one or more layouts from the list, and press ‘Add’. Fine-tune them in the ‘Xkb Options’ tab.

‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ deals with key bindings. A key binding is an association between an action (for example, delete) and one or more keys.

To make KDE more secure, ‘Crypto’ allows you to configure SSL (secure socket layer). This is used in most KDE applications as well as others. There is also a possibility to manage your personal certificates.

The KDE password manager can be customized in the module ‘KDE Wallet’. Apart from some general settings, you can create a new wallet. This enables you to have different wallets, for example, for different actions.

To change your personal settings, go to ‘Password & User Account’. Here, set a new name, organization, e-mail address, SMTP server, or password.

The ‘Privacy’ module manages personal Web browsing data. For example, use it to clear the cache, delete the history of visited Web sites, or remove unwanted cookies.

Here, perform all settings for the playback of audio CDs and for the sound system. Under ‘System Bell’, switch from system notification to a system bell and specify the volume, pitch, and duration of the bell.

By default, system notifications are used. Use this module to determine how the system should inform you in the event of a problem, when a task is performed, or if an event requiring your immediate attention occurs. In the upper part of the dialog, select the application for which to configure the system notifications. As soon as you select a program, all events the application can send to the user are listed in the lower window. Determine the notification type for each notification in the ‘Actions’ dialog.

The default view of the system notification dialog only offers ‘Play a sound’ for audible notification. Click ‘More Options’ to access other action modes. You can log the notification to a file, execute a program, or show the message in a pop-up window. In the lower part of the dialog under ‘Quick Controls’, globally activate or deactivate the actions for all programs.

If you want to install new fonts, the ‘Font Installer’ is the right tool. This module shows a list of your personal fonts. Clicking a font displays a sentence in the respective face. Easily add new fonts with ‘Add Fonts’. To change system fonts, click ‘Administrator Mode’.

The module ‘Linux Kernel’ only takes effect if you have installed the source of your kernel. It is only useful if you are a developer compiling a new kernel and want to customize some options.

With ‘Login Manager’, change the appearance, the fonts used, the background shown, the shutdown behavior, what users are displayed, and some convenience issues for the login screen.

To change the default paths of KDE, go to ‘Paths’. You can customize three different paths: desktop, autostart, and documents.