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!
Edit: I can’t respond to everyone, but this is a great discussion. So many good suggestions and ideas. Keep them coming!
So, one thing that Windows 11 did that I think was half good was moving the taskbar stuff to the middle.
I hated it at first (have to use it at work, and still some at home for specific things), but then I used Start11 for a little bit to try to get rid of the shitty start menu changes and noticed an option to keep the icons in the middle but move the start button itself back to the left. And honestly… I think that’s perfect. Puts the programs that are open front and center while keeping the start button in a fixed location next to a corner border so it’s easy to move the mouse to it without hardly even looking.
Anyway, while I didn’t keep Start11 (I never do… Like the program but it’s always been buggy as hell going back at least as far as Start), I did make my Cinnamon, and later my KDE Plasma, taskbar look like that.
Also moved the sys tray next to the start button instead of next to the clock, and with a couple other monitors on the clock side (CPU and memory usage), the taskbar on my system is pretty balanced.
Maybe not as flashy or interesting as what you’re looking for, but it’s a layout I’ve really come to like
(ETA: the centralizing of the taskbar in Windows I think was bad only because it made the one part that should be in a fixed and easy to hit location, the start button, move around based on how many programs are open… I think if they’d gone with centralized programs and left side start button, it would have been much better received overall… But, this is just my opinion so do with that what you will)
I think I agree with you about the taskbar, but I would have to try it. I think because monitors are so much bigger than they were years ago, the center makes more sense most of the time. I’m definitely going to play around with moving the components to see where I really like them
I’m super boring and really like vanilla gnome but without fail I always install Blur My Shell. It’s so pretty and it doesn’t mess with the paradigm at all. On my laptop I also have found Bluetooth Battery Meter to be super helpful since I use more wireless devices with it.
Mouse Tiler is nice
I like to set up klipper actions to do automation on certain clipboard actions. I have them for sending certain URLs to special programs, converting credit card charge emails into a new item in a spreadsheet, doing 2 bandcamp things. I used to have some cool automation set up with starting and stopping activities, but they removed that functionality and now I have a worse one with the command output widget. I also love using window rules to customize my programs and where and how they appear.
The email to spreadsheet idea is fantastic! I have my credit card email me for every purchase so the format is uniform no matter where I buy…
Papirus icons, Phinger cursors,
$HOME/.config/xfce4copied from previous install.Both of those look nice. I’ll try them out
blur
A must!!
I have a bunch in my KDE:
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Karousel for arranging windows
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Klassy for window decorations/general theming
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Panel Colorizer for customizing the panel/dock
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Kvantum for general theming
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And then a few general things like Wobbly Windows etc.
Panel Colorizer
🤔A KDE application with a name that uses C instead of K?
I know, it really stands out on that list lol
Oh awesome. Do Klassy and Kvantum overlap? Seems like they both modify the windows.
You’re not the first person to mention wobbly Windows. I definitely have to give it a try, sounds fun!
I’m not 100% sure, there might be a bit of overlap between them but I’ve never personally had any trouble running them side-by-side.
And yeah I love wobbly windows. I’m so used to them now that if I have to use Windows or something with non-wobbly windows it feels wrong now lol.
Oh yeah, another one I’ve recently discovered that looks interesting is Quickshell. I haven’t used it much yet though, I made a semi-functional panel with it and that’s as far as I got. But it looks like you can do a lot with it once you get the hang of it.
Quickshell looks interesting, basically building your own desktop environment. That’s probably the next step after I figure out what customization I want.
Thanks for the input! Much appreciated
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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!
Focus follows mouse and unchecking the option to auto raise the active window. Couldn’t live without it and being used to it has made me extremely clumsy when I do pick up my Windows work laptop.
I change the taskbar clock to be a one-line MM/DD HH:MM:SS format, drop in my customized locale (based on en-US for maximum compatibility, but without having to deal with US formats and units that I’m not fond of), and point the taskbar shortcut for my text editor to a script that creates a pre-named file and launches the editor with autosave enabled. Because having to manually save and come up with a name for your spur-of-the-moment notes sucks, automatically generating
20260831_text_1is so much better thana,b,a2, etc.XFCE specific, I get rid of the second panel full of launchers. Acquired taste, but also Chicago95 theme and icon pack.
Amazing 🤩
this is gold, thanks for sharing
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
Totally agree on dark themes, my eyes can’t take bright white screens.
The performance monitor is a nice touch, I think I’ll include that. Thanks!
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?
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
It really has nothing to do with the opening animation, in fact, I’m not even sure if Guake has an animation. It’s about having a self contained terminal “window” where all of your terminals live and you can quickly navigate between them. Then you can hide said window just as fast as it arrived and get back to what you were doing. Keep in mind, these drop down terminals are not treated as traditional windows and are always-on-top.
The problem with traditional terminal windows is: let’s say that I have 4 terminals up for different tasks; it causes a little friction to my workflow when I have to deal with which window is which. That friction is just not present with a drop-down. Of course, you can have a traditional terminal emulator that supports tabs and splitting and set a hotkey to bring the one window into focus with an always-on-top flag; at that point though, you’ve just recreated another drop-down.
Love my drop down terminal. I use Yakuake.
Once you get used to it, you’ll never go back haha
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
Try wobbly windows, like in Garuda Linux
Whoa! That feels like something from the early days of the internet. Is it useful for anything or just fun?
Just fun
Awesome, love it 😁
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
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.
