How many of you daily drive KDE? I started running Kubuntu 23.04 as my daily driver late last week and I’m excited! It’s like I got a brand new computer to play with.
I’ve dabbled with Kubuntu here and there over the years but always stuck with Gnome as it was my first foray into Linux and what I got comfortable with/used to. KDE has so much customizability baked right in. New themes, extensions, etc are all very easy to find right from the settings app.
Off the top of my head, Kate (text editor), Yakuake (drop down terminal), and Gwenview (Image viewer) are my favorite. Kate is like a swiss army knife for text and coding. The drop down terminal is just cool. The Gwenview image viewer has a decent set of editing tools baked right in.
KDE Connect is really cool with my Pixel 7. Unfortunately my daily driver is an iPhone so it’s not very useful to me at the moment.
As you can see I’m easily amused but it’s nice to have something new to play with that doesn’t cost a dime.
Any suggestions for apps/settings I should take a look at on the KDE side?
Kubuntu daily for many years now.
When Ubuntu made some changes that upset my work flow I changed over. Really - I cant Ive had any trouble (other than a few things Ive cause ).
I tried Kate but stuck with Gedit because of snippets. I couldnt get what I needed to work with Kate. The major downside with KDE (for me) has been help specifically with KDE apps.
Connect is getting better. Been using it for a long time and more and more stable.
All my computers are for work and I require stability. The only thing that I lack is battery issue control with my laptop. Other than that - I really dont touch anything after I get setup.
All my computers are the same:
Vivaldi browser, Telegram, Gedit, Libre Calc, FireFox and Caprine.
Hi Dan (@DanTheManDRH),
To answer your question, I use KDE every day, but I also use Cinnamon and Xfce every day.
Is my answer confusing? I’ll explain…
Note: what I’m going to write below is a strictly personal opinion, I don’t recommend anyone to do it.
The “Linux World” gives me the freedom to choose the distro I like or want to use and also the DE I want to use, so I have decided to have distros and DEs that I find suitable for my daily use.
I see distros and DEs as tools and I should use the right tools for what I want to do.
I love KDE, but it’s a “hammer”, but I also need a “saw” or a “screwdriver”… You know what I mean?
I use several distros and even different architectures with several DEs.
This way of working is personal and might be ridiculous, but it’s a practical example of someone who uses Linux (perhaps) in a different way.
BTW: It pleases me to see these posts and read how people really like Linux, it doesn’t matter if it’s “X” or “Y”, it’s the pleasure they show in using a distro, a DE, a program, a script, etc…
Thanks for creating this thread and for giving me the opportunity to show how much I enjoy belonging to the “Linux world”.
I hope my answer counts in the statistics of those who use KDE on a daily basis
I have been daily driving KDE Plasma for about 8 or 9 months now. I love it! I do kind of want to try Budgie or COSMIC when it becomes available.
I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with the various themes for everything, but the best thing I can probably suggest is that you can really customize the bottom bar (called the Icons-Only Task Manager). I don’t just mean you can add shortcuts to programs you generall use, but you can do a lot more than that.
I do game quite a bit, so I have several version of the System Monitor plasmoids showing different aspects of my computer, such as RAM usage, CPU Usage, GPU usage and CPU/GPU temperatures. You can definitely set up something similar to other aspects of your computer hardware (I know, for example, there are widgets that will give you accurate up to date versions of your internet speed).
Also, any plasmoids you add to the Icons-Only Task Manager you can also add to your desktop as well. To add a new plasmoid right click on the Icons-Only Task Manager → Add Widgets. To reposition your widgets, right click on Icons-Only Task Manager → Enter Edit Mode. There are a lot of plasmoids you can find through KDE Plasma itself, although you might have to download them. KDE Plasma itself already has the functionality to search for and download new plasmoids.
I’ve used KDE for 10 or 15 years. I’ve tried cinnamon, gnome, xfce, bungie, and some others always went back to KDE. I can’t wait for KDE 26. KDE on Wayland had it’s bugs, but they have all been corrected. KDE rocks. All the widgets available really add to the features of KDE. ksystemsettings5 is amazing. My favorite text editor is KATE - K Advanced Text Editor. I use KATE to write PHP code for web design and it has automatic features that make it so much easier to see where your code starts and where it ends. It’s fantastic. I installed KATE on most of those other DEs. I can’t live without it.
For graphical work, I like Kolourpaint. Its a simple image editor with the ability to resize images and change their data type (e.g.: as .png, .jpg, et-al). While it has its limitations (which I can overcome with the Gimp), it is much simpler for completing all those less complex image management tasks. I think its worth checking out,
KDE is almost my favorite. If I could figure out how to add a workspace switcher to the panel, I’d be thrilled. MATE and XFCE default to a 4-space switcher, but I can’t figure out how to add one to KDE. PCLinuxOS features one, but I can’t seem to make my old Canon printer work with that one. Anyone have an idea?
When you say “panel” do you mean the Icon-Only Task Manager? So you’re looking for some kind of widget to do that?
By workspace, I am not sure if you mean Virtual Desktop or Activities, I found shortcuts for you!
If it’s just different Activities you want to shift between, you can use either Meta+Tab to walk forward through activities or Meta+Shift+Tab to walk backward (btw, Meta is what KDE calls the Windows/Mac button). In either case, it will show all of your current activities and you could physically click on the one you want.
If you mean Virtual Desktop, there are a few shortcuts preset as well. Ctrl+F8 shows a list of all of your virtual desktops. Ctrl+F1-F4 will switch you to a specific virtual desktop. You can set other shortcuts here as well (all the way to Desktop 20) as well as Switch to Next Desktop, Switch to Previous Desktop, ect.
If you want to change the shortcuts, you can go to System Settings → Shortcuts. Inside of Shortcuts, to change Activities shortcuts you can go to the Activity Switching section. For Virtual Desktops, that is under KWin.
I appreciate the tips, but they miss the question. The ‘panel’ is across the bottom of the screen, like most *buntu distros (MATE has it on top, I think). The leftmost place is given to the default menu icon. Usually at the far right are four boxes, blank icons to switch to four virtual desktops. I’d like that function in KDE. Or I can just dump it and go to MATE or XFCE. Thanks for trying.
Synonyms will confuse us forever. Right now I’m using Peppermint Debian; there’s a band of screen real estate across the bottom with all of the clickables necessary to run things. I call it a panel, as does XFCE in this Peppermint distro. Near the right end is a 2x2 grid which allows me to switch between four workspaces. In Windows, the right side is called a system tray but here it’s a panel.
I can’t find a way to create the same group of four boxes for workspace switching in KDE. PCLinuxOS can do it, but I can’t.
You say the system tray is at the top. Upper right for me is Minimize/Maximize/Close. When I right click the bottom band, it offers me a menu for configuring the panel. KDE/Plasma has a column of available widgets that runs vertically up the left edge, but I can’t figure out how to choose the workspace switcher and place it in the bottom panel.
I like the workspace switcher in XFCE and MATE. I don’t like the equivalent in Gnome3 or Unity–not intuitive. I’ve wasted enough time and space here, so thanks for the interest, but I’ll just limit myself to desktop that contain my choices by default.
I did find a plasmoid, and it seems to come default with KDE Plasma. It is called Pager. There are also a few ones that are available to download for KDE Plasma that are slightly different (e.g., a compact Pager, a thin Pager), although I have already tried out the default one.
I don’t use virtual desktops normally, although after playing around with this I might start doing so. Here is what it looks like by default. The amount of stuff colored in is how much of your screen on that virtual desktop is taken up…I have two screens, and I have Firefox open to full on one, with the screen capture program on the other.
If you right click on the Pager, and click ‘Configure Pager’ you can change certain things. For example, show the Desktop number or Desktop name, ‘Show application icons on window outlines’, ‘Show only current screen’ (this one gets rid of the feature that shows how much screen is taken up on that virtual desktop)
You described blank boxes, so I did this, as I think it is close to what you want.
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