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!
I made myself a kwin script to arrange and rotate focus to specific windows (livestreams) on my second monitor, https://github.com/tarzasai/kwin-script-director
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.
I’m curious to hear what are some favorite things to change in any DE.
I like using a tiling wm instead of a traditional de which is keyboard-centric and lays things out nicely instead of overlapping everything which is kindof stupid. niri and noctalia v5 is my current stack. I also have the settings defined in Nix and synced to other user accounts.
Any particular widgets that you would recommend?
I have the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp monitors in my bar so that I can keep tabs on the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp on my computer and if a freeze or lag spike occurs I have a better idea of what’s going on.
Do you have a favorite theme?
Catppuccin, which has a Nix module that styles my apps as well. For font I use Inter and JetBrains Mono Nerd Font set through the Stylix module
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.
I always install Guake. It’s a drop-down terminal emulator and it can be heavily configured with hotkeys. I have it pop open/close with one key and I can split the terminal horizontally or vertically as many times as I want with a couple other hotkeys.
It’s so ridiculously efficient (as a developer) that I can’t stand to not have it installed at this point.
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?
Love my drop down terminal. I use Yakuake.
Once you get used to it, you’ll never go back haha
this is gold, thanks for sharing
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
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.
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.
I like that there are different layouts available, meaning different logic how a window should be placed and sized. I can switch between layouts on the fly. Every virtual desktop can have their own layout by standard, in example my fourth desktop is always untiled like a normal desktop. Exceptions to specific windows or applications to not tile them can be added too. 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 be always at the edge or screen, similar to the KDE bar; basically making the screen area to tile windows smaller. Super cool.
Edit: Rephrased a bit to make it more clear and added some more info.
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.
Installing the Intel One Mono font, so much easier to read
