On a default arch linux install (konsole 17.04.1), I noticed some really odd behavior around profiles. First, there weren't any populated profiles by default. I had to create one manually; upon making some changes, the list of profiles was still only my newly created default (after closing and re-opening konsole several times). However, after making deeper changes (to fonts, hiding scroll bar), konsole create 4 new profiles, and had changed the default to Profile 4. As a result, most of my settings were made to this profile, even though I had my default profile selected prior to making changes. In summary, something odd is going on; there appears to be no default profile upon first use, and some setting change appears to cause them to get created, and blindly change over to using it. This is re-creatable with a new user.
I also did some debugging just now, because I was migrating my old Linux user account to a new one to clean up years-old cruft. Here are my observations. Initial condition: first Konsole start, there is no ~/.config/konsolerc and no ~/.local/share/konsole/ yet. - there is no profile listed in Settings -> Profiles - the context menu, however, has the item Switch to profile → Default profile I now go to Settings and want to add a new profile, and call it “Default”. Now Konsole complains that a profile of that name already exists, the dialog closes nonetheless and creates a profile with the Name “New Profile” instead. I can repeat that, each time the Profiles list grows by another item called “New Profile”. This in itself is a bug IMHO, as the dialog should not be closed in this situation. Now I rename one of those “New Profile” entries and it is renamed while all the others disappear from the list. In conclusion: - The “Default” profile is not reachable in the configuration GUI, maybe except via “Switch to profile” and then “Edit current profile”. - If a profile name already exists, the name is changed to New Profile. - And if that profile already exists, it is overwritten (or ignored?), because no additional file appears in ~/.local/share/konsole, but an additional item is created in the Profiles list. I am running current Arch packages: Konsole 20.08.2 KDE Frameworks 5.75.0 Qt 5.15.1 (built against 5.15.1) Plasma 5.20.0
I'm getting the same issue on latest Fedora 33 KDE spin. The "Default" profile seems a hard-coded option for "Switch Profile" and "New Tab". I have another laptop using Fedora 32 /KDE Plasma 5.18.5 has no such problem (upgraded from F28 or F29, installed a few years ago), once I remove all other profiles and make the current profile "default" one, then they won't show "Default" profile option / sub-menu when clicking on "File - New Tab"
Things have changed over the years, the current situation is: - Profile name "Default" is reserved for the Default/fallback profile, which is hardcoded and created by Konsole on the fly from C++ code, it can't be "edited" per se, i.e. you can create a new profile based on it. When you run konsole and there are no .profile files in e.g. ~/.local/share/konsole the Default profile is used, and when you "edit current profile", it will let you change the settings and will pick a name, e.g. Profile 1, when you try to save the settings. The intention is that the "Default" profile will always be there, hardcoded/immutable as a fallback profile. - The Default profile now shows up in the context menus, you can switch to it... etc - There is a patch to make the Default profile show up in the Profile Manager dialog, see bug 433210 - The UI won't let you create multiple profiles with the same name *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 433210 ***