How I Customize KDE Plasma · streanga.comSkip to content
The KDE K-Gear logo. KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are registered trademarks of KDE e.V.<br>Why I Like Plasma
I’ve been using KDE Plasma for a long time, and it’s by far the best desktop environment. And I don’t mean on Linux, I mean period.<br>It’s fast, incredibly full-featured, and productive right out of the box. But what people really love KDE for is the customization.
Foreword: I Hate Docks
There, I said it. Docks freaking suck. Docks have the worst UX of just about any desktop panel design:
They do not allow you to read window or even application titles.
Icons aren’t distinct enough for quick visual reference. It’s even worse if they’re all those terrible squircles, Apple.
Docks require a supplementary panel for the system tray, time, and other basic utilities.
Docks are HORRIBLE at grouping windows. Stacking windows by app means you need to go aaaaaaall the way down to the dock and hover.
Auto-hiding is stupid and annoying and also I hate it and it’s stupid.
The only reason you need auto-hide is because docks take up too much vertical space. It’s tempting to make the icons tiny, but then good luck finding anything!
So there. Docks suck, whatever, take me to court.
A Panel That Doesn’t Suck
The default KDE panel is… okay. It’s better than a dock but then again so is anything. Application titles are easy to read. Everything, system tray and launcher included,<br>exists within one panel. You can put widgets like weather, too. And the best part is that it’s very efficient on vertical space, much more so than any dock.
Introducing: The Vertical Panel
But you know what’s even better than being very efficient on vertical screen space? Using no vertical screen space at all.
My desktop: a vertical panel on the left, no wasted vertical space.<br>I didn’t come up with this, GNOME did actually. Or maybe Canonical’s Unity. But it’s a great design. Horizontal space is abundant on the common 16-by-9 monitor.<br>We can take it even further using a very special Plasma widget: the “Icons-and-Text Task Manager”. Okay, bad name. But it’s really neat, it’s a Windows XP style task manager.<br>That means apps don’t show their name, but a description of the window itself. This is incredibly useful if you have multiple windows open of the same app.<br>No hovering, no thumbnails required. You can read, right there on the left, what each window is. We just have to make the panel a little bit fatter.
This is also very efficient on screen space. You can easily have 25 windows open and read ALL of their titles. It’s so efficient you can even elect to show windows on other desktops<br>(of course that’s configurable, this is KDE). Grouping and hovering is dead, ding dong.
Krunner: I Love You
Krunner is the best desktop search engine, end of sentence. Windows’ search makes me want to hurt myself, Apple’s Spotlight Search is good, and Krunner is the best.
It doesn’t just do application search. It searches your files, too. And yes, even the content, for real. Bookmarks? Yeah it searches that. Open windows? Of course.<br>The system settings? Sure. Killing applications? Mhm. The web? I mean… yeah, but I turn it off because web search in your desktop search is evil. Seriously, who likes that? But it’s not just search.<br>It also has utilities. It has a calculator, and the parser is actually impressive. I can type something like “=15% * 1112” and get the result: 166.8. Percentage math hurts my brain, so thank you KDE.<br>It also has unit conversions. I can type “1.15 cups” and see that’s 9.2 fluid ounces, or about .27 liters. It has a fuzzy spell checker, so I can type “spell nesarry” and get “necessary” back.
So, how do I utilize Krunner? Well, I bound it to the super key (that’s the Windows key for y’all on that side of the pond). Yes, it’s true, my precious super key is bound to a search engine instead of the<br>application launcher. I’ve found it’s faster to type 90% of the time, and Krunner unlocks so many search capabilities outside of apps. Of course, the app launcher actually uses the same Krunner search engine… but I like Krunner’s interface. I like that I can tell it to pop up in the middle of the screen, where I can’t miss it.
Using Krunner.<br>Widgets: Why Did We Stop Doing This?
Desktop widgets are great, guys. Why did these die off? I like being able to quickly see whatever by just peeking at my desktop.<br>So, I’m a bit maximalist on widgets. I mean, my desktop background is nice, but not that nice. I basically get a full view of my entire system state:
All my desktop widgets.<br>Those usage and temps widgets are provided by the system monitor, by the way, and yes: it’s the best system monitor I’ve ever used. It was completely redone a few KDE versions ago.<br>I didn’t have to install anything for all these sensors and monitoring; it just works out-of-the-box, temps included.
I also really enjoy the folder view widget. It’s like having icons on your desktop but not awful. And...