Tweak KDE Plasma
Be the envy of all your neighbours (who can peer into your home study).
K DE is one of the most configurable desktops and offers a wide range of parameters to help you adapt it to your needs. KDE will look and feel familiar even to users from non-Linux operating systems. The layout and behaviour of the desktop and the app launcher will certainly help new users feel at home.
KDE Plasma 5 is the current generation of the desktop environment and offers many options to customise your environment. In fact, unlike the other desktops that have a consistent look, you’ll routinely find KDE distros that look different from each other. Room with a view KDE ships with different interfaces or Views. These are designed to make the best of the available desktop realestate for regular screens and netbooks, and don’t force the user to stick to either. To switch Views, right-click the desktop and from the context-menu select the Default Desktop Settings option. In the window that opens up, select the View tab and check out the different views from the Layout pull-down list. With the Folder View, you can place files and folders on the desktop. The default layout is the Desktop View, which encourages you to place widgets on the desktop.
Widgets play an important role on the KDE desktop. The KDE desktop ships with dozens and you can download additional ones. Many distributions place the Folder View widget on the desktop by default. This widget displays the contents of a folder in a neat little box that you can place anywhere on your screen.
Widgets are your best bet for customising the KDE desktop. Right-click the desktop and select the Add Widgets option to bring up the list of available widgets. The Plasma desktop has quite a few widgets to play around with, such as analog clocks, sticky notes, comic strips, CPU load monitors, and more. Use the Get new widgets button to fetch more from the Internet. You can drag any widget to the Plasma desktop or to the panel.
Most widgets offer at least some configuration options. To get to these, double-click a widget on the desktop. This will bring up a flap with several icons. Click the wrench icon to display that particular widget’s configuration options. You can also click and drag the flap to reposition the widget. After you’ve configured it, right-click the desktop again and select the Lock Widgets option to prevent accidental changes and removal. Swim with the fishes While you’re on the desktop, you might as well switch to a different launcher. KDE has a launcher that lists all programs alphabetically instead of rolling them into categories. To change launchers, right-click the launcher icon and select the Alternatives… option, to bring up the available options. All the launchers have their own settings as well that you can access via the Application Launcher Settings... options.
Another desktop-related customisation is defining actions for hot corners. The KDE desktop has eight hot
spots that you can customise to perform over a dozen predefined actions. Head to System Settings>Desktop Behavior>Screen Edges and then select one of the hot spots. This will bring up a list of available actions and you select one to assign it to the hot spot. It works well to quickly lock the screen or bring up an Exposé like list of all open windows in the current workspace or across all workspaces. If you’re using KDE on a computer with touch screen, there’s a different earmarked section for you to define actions for the hot spots. To trigger the defined actions, you’ll have to swipe from the relevant edge to the centre of the screen.
KDE’s Dolphin file manager offers far more functionality than its counterparts on other desktops. To alter its behaviour, launch Dolphin and head to Settings>Configure Dolphin. You’re in the Startup tab from where you can change the location of the startup folder and turn on the editable location bar and the filter bar to locate content easily. Then switch to the View Modes tab from where you can customise various aspects of the three different views.
One of Dolphin’s most useful features is the rightclick context menu, particularly the Actions sub-menu. It offers options to encrypt files, extract archives, burn files to optical media and more. Besides these options, KDE also enables you to add new actions to this menu. Switch to the Services tab in Dolphin’s configuration window and then select the list of services you wish to add. You can also click the Download New Services button to fetch more useful actions from the Internet.
You can also add a terminal to the file manager. Head to Views>Panel and toggle the Panel option. Another useful feature is the ability to peek into folders and list the number of items it contains. Navigate to View>Additional Information and select the Size option. Gloss and bloom If you’ve got the resources to spare, you can enable some desktop effects that, if used correctly, can also increase productivity. For example, in addition to the artistic window and desktop transitions, some KDE desktop effects help you distinguish between foreground and background tasks, locate inactive windows, and even gauge the performance of your desktop. Head to System Settings>Desktop Behavior> Desktop Effects to list all the pre-installed effects. Many of these effects also have adjustable parameters.
Another aspect of the desktop that can be enhanced to look visually pleasing and also improve productivity, especially if you constantly juggle between multiple windows, is the task switcher. KDE includes lots of alttab task switcher options. Head to System Settings> Window Management>Task Switcher to bring to change the default behaviour.
You’ll be presented with various options to influence the behaviour of the task switcher. In the Main tab, use the pull-down menu under the Visualisation section to change the animation. The Alternate tab also contains the same options that you can use to define the behaviour of an alternate set of keys besides Alt+Tab. Above and beyond KDE has the most elaborate System Settings wizard among its peers. However, it’s been a source of some pain as well, especially for new users who become lost in its wide range of parameters. Over the years, KDE has streamlined this crucial component, which is now better laid out and easier to navigate.
Instead of manually navigating to the exact options you’re looking for, you can use the Search box at the top of the System Settings window. Once you’ve entered some text, the wizard will only display the options that contain a module that matches the text you’ve entered.
You can extend the options available in the System Settings manager by installing KCMs (KConfig Modules), which power the actual interface for the settings. There are several KCM modules available in your distro’s repos such as kcm_systemd that’ll help you manage your installation’s systemd init system.
There’s literally no end ( really?!–Ed) to KDE’s customisation options and you don’t need to set up or review each and every option before using the desktop. Instead, think of customising KDE as an ongoing process rather than a one-time affair.