I’ve distro hopped quite a bit over the last few years. I’ve realized recently that I tend to gravitate toward KDE Plasma as a desktop environment, but I don’t take advantage of the customization as much as I could.
As I sit here looking through the KDE Plasma settings I’m curious to hear what are some favorite things to change in any DE. Please share what you like to do when you get a vanilla install. Do you have a favorite icon pack? Do you have a favorite theme? Any particular widgets that you would recommend?
I’m sure there is more out there than I can think of. Please share!
Kind of a small thing, but I use an Ultrawide monitor with Sway, so I wrote a oneliner to swap to a higher or lower display scale depending on the workspace I’m on. I like to game in full rez while I’d write code or read with a HiDPI resolution that’s easier to squint at. Also adding hotkeys to change scaling on demand is nice
Great example of something I’d never think of. Thanks!
Haven’t had a vanilla install since KDE 5 came out, but the biggest thing I use far from the default install is Karousel
I’m a regular auto tiler, but tried a few alternatives such as Karousel to see how it works out. Its not really for me, but it worked fine and did what it should in my experience. So another recommendation if anyone wants a Niri like experience with Karousel addon. Another curious one is Mouse Tiler, which is a completely different method of manual tiling.
Amazing 🤩
this is gold, thanks for sharing
In KDE my favorite is an extension to the window manager, for auto tiling: https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite or install it from Settings > Window Management > KWin Scripts, then click “Get New” and search for “Krohnkite” by anametologin. Development is a bit slow at the moment, but it does the job well.
As you would expect, it does tile the windows automatically. I like that there are different layouts available, meaning different logic how a window should be placed and sized. I can switch between a layout when needed, and add exceptions to specific windows or applications to not tile them. So the usual stuff. It comes with some features not seen in other tiling window managers. In example I can convert any window into a “Dock”. A dock would then make the window be always on the top, bottom, right or left side of the window, similar to the KDE bar. And a window is tiled accordingly, so its always visible. Super cool.
I always used this but sometime in the past few months, it started ha ing a bug where I can no longer click on 90% of the title bar (vertical direction) and I have to until and retile all windows open to be able to close anything. Very annoying and I am about at the point to stop using it lol.
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Love my drop down terminal. I use Yakuake.
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Do you prefer Guake over Yakuake because you use Gnome or other GTK based DE, because of specific features, or because it’s what you’re used to? Or something else?
I’ve only used Yakuake (and I’m on KDE) so I’m not familiar with Guake, but I’m curious
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What’s better with a drop down terminal vs a normal terminal invoked with global short key?
It’s a genuine question, never heard about drop down terminal and looked it up. As I understand they are just normal terminal with a visual effect when they open. Am I missing something?
I’ve used a drop down terminal before and I find the position convenient. I can never lose it among other windows and it’s always on top. If I want to see below, I just slide it back.
Your point is correct, it is functionally nearly identical. Since the terminal is arguably the most important or most central piece of software, I do find it convenient to always have it in the same place and to give it priority over other windows.
This is definitely a matter of opinion, I do admit
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Installing the Intel One Mono font, so much easier to read
Check out Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono from the Braille Institute
That reads super well but looks a little stiff to me. I like that the Intel font has a little bit of character if you know what I mean? I’ll definitely save this one tho, thank you very much!
KDE here.
Icons: Candy; Plasma Style Sweet; Window decs : sweet-dark; Autohide Icons-only task manager at the bottom (RIP Latte :( ), always on top panel for my secondary monitor, autohide top panel on the primary.
I actually use and like Activities, I have General, Game, Code, System, Work all with their own workflows and pinned apps etc.
I lean pretty heavily on mouse gestures using logid with a MxMaster 3. Switch activities, control music, switch apps etc.
I have the gesture button pop up Kando which can do ALL sorts of things, basically I can do 90+% of things super fast without touching the keyboard. Not that I dislike the keyboard, using it now, but sometimes I don’t want to bother.
Top centre of panel has a command output widget with cat CurrentShort.txt which pulls local temp/humidity from a couple of sensors via HomeAssistant. Hover has weather scraped from Aus BoM and a bunch of other informative stuff and if I click it it runs a script with
kdialog --geometry 1024x1024 --textbox /dev/stdin <<< $(cat CurrentInfo.txt)which pops up a dialog with a weeks forecast among other things. I also use the command output widget for cpu/gpu temps and fan speeds to the left of the status bar, which is on the right.
The Wunderground widget is pretty cool too, find local weather stations and pop them in a panel.
kde plasma
Mouse: increase pointer speed to 0.8
Sound: change volume increment to 2%
Sound: mute notification sounds
Colours:
Breeze Dark
Material Black Blueberry Icons
Oxygen Neon Cursors
KDE-Story-Blue-SDDM (login screen) with a different background
Screen Locking:
Never
Power Management:
When inactive: Do Nothing
Dim automatically: Never
Turn off screen: Never
Session:
Ask for confirmation: Deselect
On login: Start with an empty session
Panel:
Long date
Date beside time
Modify system tray settings to show what I want
Widgets:
On panel:
Thermal monitor (1 for cpu, 1 for gpu)
Memory Usage
Desktop Folder
Folder View (set to a folder where I keep docs and spreadsheets)
Wastebin
Shutdown or Switch
Love this. Thanks for the breakdown! Some of these options are things that I only set if I happen to pass them. I don’t always comb through every option during a fresh install
I have distrohopped a couple of times, so the settings only take me a minute. It is possibly what drew me to kde plasma in the first place, the settings are very accessible.
Planning on going back to xfce though, since they are (I assume) much less likely to embrace ai crap.
I do love the idea that a desktop environment covers most of what you interact with. I feel like DE and package manager are like 90% of what makes me choose a distro
basically the same for me, although after a while (for me at least) the package manager gui is just mainly for updates. I rarely add new programs.
The operating system isn’t meant to be the feature/focus, it is just meant to work, and stay out of the way. Choosing a de you like is the best way to start distrohopping/finding a distro.
What do you use for the thermal monitor?
This one:
Thanks! I’ll check that out, been needing a good temp monitor
My biggest customizations are all of the software I install and use to do things with the computer.
Setting Caps Lock as the Hyper modifier key.
Setting a keyboard layout that is comfortable for both typing programming symbols and the own language (I use UK international). Consistency is king here.
And configuring the compose key.
Otherwise, I don’t customize much, I think of it as a time sink.
What do you use your compose key for? I never feel a need for it
Mine.
The colour scheme. White screens are one of the things that trigger my migraines.
This in turn leads to my modifying several other visual aspects of the desktop, because a lot of widget set themes come with scrollbars that don’t work well with really dark colours. I also turn animations and automagic snapping and desktop navigation facilities off, because I find them annoying. Kindly behave like it’s 1999 and don’t do anything I don’t explicitly tell you to do, Mr. Desktop.
And then I embed a conky instance in the second desktop for general monitoring—CPU activity (composite and by thread), memory in use, disk space, network usage, temperatures, fan levels, and greediest processes all conveniently in a single view that doesn’t require me figuring out what I did with the window.
If you don’t use it already, be sure to check out Dark Reader. As someone who also suffers from screen induced migraines, this thing has been a game changer.
I chose a slightly different way of achieving what that extension does, and long ago set my browser not to allow websites to choose their own colours. That does partially break a few sites that don’t handle their images properly, but overall it’s workable and gives me white on a slightly different dark colour for each browser profile.
Interesting method, I didn’t even know that was possible. Would you mind sharing how you achieved that? I would be interested in comparing the two. Dark Reader does add some overhead which is noticeable on my older machines
It’s a normal browser setting left over from the early days of the Internet, when most pages did little or no theming (or did it badly). My primary browser is Pale Moon, which exposes the setting as a dropdown under Preferences > Content > General > Colors. Firefox also exposed the setting on its settings page the last time I checked, although it may be a checkbox there. It’s also a boolean in about:config,
browser.display.use_document_colors.Chrome-family browsers may not have such a setting, unfortunately. The only one I keep handy is Vivaldi, which doesn’t have it but does have a “Force a dark theme on all websites” checkbox (under Settings > Appearance > Website Appearance).
in m$win/kde-style-env: two row taskbar, titles always visible (like on win2k/kde3)
also sloppy focus and autoraise for mouse. extremely useful when you use many windows.
I don’t keep much in my taskbar at a time but I do remember using that back in Windows ME I think?
I totally forgot about mouse focus. I’m used to Windows for work but maybe I’ll change to sloppy. I’ll definitely give it a try
btw sloppy focus is also available on m$ windows. they call it x-mouse,you can enable manually thru registry or use a feature in some freeware called winaero tweaker
I’ve been using the CoW compositor lately and it has a neat, but possibly accidental, feature:
You get that “virtual desktop with additional screen space” feature, as was common on older X11 setups, with a little minimap that shows the real screens within the context of the virtual space. What’s unusual is that it’s possible to move the individual screens on a multi-monitor rig independently, rathrr than as a group.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a clean install, but I think the only thing I do to KDE is install Yakuake and set up 4 virtual desktops. Very handy when I’m working on my more involved projects.
Do the Desktops persist between reboots? As in each work space can become a running working space on its own or they reset and it’s just organization?
It’s more an organization thing.
The desktops themselves persist however I have it set to reset to empty desktops on boot. There is an option in KDE settings to automatically restore previously open applications when you boot up, but my workflow is never the same from project to project.
I’m not sure anymore which is the default behavior. I think I remember having to change the setting at some point and that’s how I know it exists.
There’s also activities, which are similar but can have different start menus, task bars, and themes
Probably can do more than that with them too, but I’ve never gotten that deep into them, unfortunately
