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!
Wobbly windows!
I’m going to install wobbly windows as soon as I get home. So many people to keep suggesting it and it looks amazing lol
With KDE, you don’t even need to install anything. Just tick the box in settings.
Found the capslock user !
“Indulge in nostalgia with useless 3D effects.” Is all I needed to read on that page ❤️
I don’t fiddle with my KDE much, but with every fresh install I always set the dock to auto-hide and fit-content.
Kde made double click default, it used to be single click.
Put it back to single click. So much better.
Adjust focus stealing to your liking.
Adjust the color and width of the shadow to make active windows obvious in a dark theme.
Wobbly windows: but set higher than default.
I miss window shade. Hopefully it gets worked out and returns.
Taskbar on the left edge of the screen
E: also trackball instead of mouse.
For ages I’ve had my task bar on the side of my secondary monitor. When I first had to start using win 11 at work and I found out they had disabled the ability to move it I got so irrationally angry lol. It was the straw that broke the camels back and I went home and started down the linux rabbit hole fueled by sheer spite.
I ran taskbar on the right edge for ages back when I had the 32:9 super ultrawide, but since I changed to a 21:9 ultrawide I went back to bottom but have it centered instead of full width (and have it set to something like “stay out of the way” where it will hid if a window is over it, but otherwise is always visible).
Window Rules and Custom Shortcuts from KDE Plasma, just earlier today I binded Meta+Ctrl+k to start Konsole in the directory of my latest modified prototype, open a per directory script which e.g. opens a browser tab, opens Vim in the file to edit, positions those windows properly, here browser on left half, console on top right corner.
Window Rules with its window picker is very convenient to get conditions and properties to apply. Custom Shortcuts is just a list of shortcuts you can add to start anything from anywhere.
Also I added my own wiki as a KRunner Web search, so if I type Alt+Space then PIM keyword it searches directly to my PIM from the center of my screen, also from anywhere.
I’ve only tried Ubuntu, Mint, and CachyOS.
Didn’t like Ubuntu much, but probably because it was my first Linux attempt and I’d probably understand better now.
Mint is cool, my laptop is running it, but the system settings being individual apps is frustrating, especially when you can’t remember the name of the one you want and there’s 2 display ones? Grrrrr
I like Cachy a lot. I haven’t used it as much as I’ve only put it on a second laptop to use as a media centre in conjunction with Plasma Big Screen, but I’m thinking of switching my laptop over to it because it feels mostly the same in desktop mode, but the system settings are unified and a lot easier to deal with.
(My desktop is still a Mac, I haven’t converted completely sorry)
Capslock as control is life changing
Capslock as a layer key to turn hjkl into arrow keys. Easy to setup using Kanata!
I do that with left alt. Then I can use caps as control to move around 1 word
Capslock as control when held, esc when tapped. Best change I’ve ever made on a laptop for using vim keybinds
I use right alt for escape
Capslock as control and emacs keybindings in gnome
What do you use for capslock? Or do you just use shift??
If I need to type all caps I just hold shift. Having control right on your pinky is so much more useful. I never miss capslock
this is gold, thanks for sharing
Amazing 🤩
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!
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.
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
I’ll be real with you, it’s just familiarity. Whenever I’m setting up a new system, I just install Guake and throw my config file at it, so it feels the same as all of my other computers.
I’m sure that Yakuake is great and that all drop-down terminals probably have identical feature sets. However, I’m getting too old and impatient to distro/software hop. I just like my stuff to work and as long as it does, I don’t change it.
Concerning DE compatibility though: I run cinnamon on most of my machines and Guake has worked flawlessly for me for years on Cinnamon and Gnome. I’ve never been a fan of KDE though, so your milage may vary.
Perfectly valid
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.
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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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
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.
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.
There was a time when it was indeed very buggy. That was around the time when it transitioned to Wayland, and also when KDE 5 changed to KDE 6. Nowadays for me it is solid (with an exception of fullscreen issue with RetroArch). Granted I don’t have any title bars, so maybe I’m missing out on that bug. Looking at the Issues list, I could not find anything related to your description. So it doesn’t seem to be common problem. Also a few days ago an alpha version of the next version is released, so at least we can update soon. Maybe it works better then.
