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7 min read

How I Customize KDE Plasma

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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. 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, 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 (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. 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. 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. 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 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.

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. 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.

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. 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 yeah, I keep “show hidden files” on.

Dolphin: Fish Out of Water

I know dolphins aren’t fish. Anyway, the default file manager in KDE is Dolphin. And keeping in theme, it’s the best file manager I’ve ever used. Tabs, split view, embedded terminal, different view types, it’s got it all. I extensively use the “details” view, which lets you see and open directories as a tree. I like to keep the “Information” panel open. It shows you file metadata for the selected item, like the modified and created datetimes.

I modify the toolbar, too. I like to always show the “Open in New Tab” button, which opens your currently selected item in a new tab. I also replace the default search with KFind, which is a much more powerful file search. For the Location Bar, I set it to always show the full path.

How I like Dolphin set up.

Tiling: Oh My!

KDE has a concept of “KWin Scripts”. KWin is the window manager, and as it turns out it’s incredibly extensible. I only use one script: Mouse Tiler.

I configure it so that the overlay pops up on the top of the screen whenever I drag a window. Then, I can quickly snap the window into whatever arrangement I like. The arrangements are fully customizable, but I keep mine simple. It also features auto-tiling, but I almost never use that. Plasma itself also features tiling zones and arrangements, but I like the script a teeny bit better.

Tiling in action.

Drop It Like It’s Hot Terminal

I use an application called Yakuake for my drop down terminal. It’s a bit like Tilda for days of GTK past. I have it bound to F12. I love having a drop-down terminal. It’s nice to just be able to quickly summon a terminal on top of everything. I also give a fancy slightly-blurry effect. Not too blurry, because unlike Apple’s Liquid Glass, I like actually being able to read text.

Yakuake, my drop down terminal.

Closing

The beauty of KDE is how flexible it can be. This setup is very productive for me, but I encourage readers to try out their own customizations. You don’t have to conform to the dock-or-panel dichotomy. Do your own thing. And, if you haven’t used KDE, please try it out. P.S. if you’re coming from GNOME, it’s trivial to configure KDE to work just like GNOME.