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!

  • wallwood@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 days ago

    I don’t fiddle with my KDE much, but with every fresh install I always set the dock to auto-hide and fit-content.

    • psilotop@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 days ago

      “Indulge in nostalgia with useless 3D effects.” Is all I needed to read on that page ❤️

  • Sickday@kbin.earth
    14·
    7 days ago

    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

    • psilotop@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      7 days ago

      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!

      • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        7 days ago

        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.

        • psilotop@lemmy.worldOP
          3·
          7 days ago

          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

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
    3·
    6 days ago

    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.

  • flameleaf@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Papirus icons, Phinger cursors, $HOME/.config/xfce4 copied from previous install.

  • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    So, one thing that Windows 11 did that I think was half good was moving the taskbar stuff to the middle.

    I hated it at first (have to use it at work, and still some at home for specific things), but then I used Start11 for a little bit to try to get rid of the shitty start menu changes and noticed an option to keep the icons in the middle but move the start button itself back to the left. And honestly… I think that’s perfect. Puts the programs that are open front and center while keeping the start button in a fixed location next to a corner border so it’s easy to move the mouse to it without hardly even looking.

    Anyway, while I didn’t keep Start11 (I never do… Like the program but it’s always been buggy as hell going back at least as far as Start8 (edit: it ate the 8 in Start8, fixed), I did make my Cinnamon, and later my KDE Plasma, taskbar look like that.

    Also moved the sys tray next to the start button instead of next to the clock, and with a couple other monitors on the clock side (CPU and memory usage), the taskbar on my system is pretty balanced.

    Maybe not as flashy or interesting as what you’re looking for, but it’s a layout I’ve really come to like

    (ETA: the centralizing of the taskbar in Windows I think was bad only because it made the one part that should be in a fixed and easy to hit location, the start button, move around based on how many programs are open… I think if they’d gone with centralized programs and left side start button, it would have been much better received overall… But, this is just my opinion so do with that what you will)

    • ericwdhs@discuss.online
      1·
      5 days ago

      On top of @psilotop@lemmy.world’s bit about monitors today being bigger, multi-monitor setups are also more common. I haven’t used a single monitor system as one of my main PCs (work or personal) in at least a decade. Being able to “slam” down and left to hit Start is a big part of why the corner was originally chosen, but if that’s just gonna get you to some random position on the bottom of an adjacent monitor, you’re back to requiring mouse precision, and the button may as well be moved more toward the center to get average travel distance down.

      • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        That’s fair enough, though sticky corners are a thing, and my multi monitor layout it would still work (big ultra wide main on bottom, three smaller above)

        But I think there’s even value in it just staying in the same place. One big frustration I have with modern UI design is shit moving around, often trying to anticipate what you want, but I’m lost looking for it the last damned place it was. The start button moving a little left and right isn’t nearly as bad, but it’s along the same lines

        • ericwdhs@discuss.online
          1·
          1 day ago

          True. I typically pin all the apps I regularly use with spacers to categorize them, so there’s maybe half an icon of left/right movement maximum with the odd unpinned app at the end, but I understand that trades in clutter others may not find desirable and doesn’t fit all workflows.

    • psilotop@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      6 days ago

      I think I agree with you about the taskbar, but I would have to try it. I think because monitors are so much bigger than they were years ago, the center makes more sense most of the time. I’m definitely going to play around with moving the components to see where I really like them

    • Breadhax0r@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 days ago

      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.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      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).

  • monovergent@lemmy.ml
    3·
    7 days ago

    Focus follows mouse and unchecking the option to auto raise the active window. Couldn’t live without it and being used to it has made me extremely clumsy when I do pick up my Windows work laptop.

    I change the taskbar clock to be a one-line MM/DD HH:MM:SS format, drop in my customized locale (based on en-US for maximum compatibility, but without having to deal with US formats and units that I’m not fond of), and point the taskbar shortcut for my text editor to a script that creates a pre-named file and launches the editor with autosave enabled. Because having to manually save and come up with a name for your spur-of-the-moment notes sucks, automatically generating 20260831_text_1 is so much better than a, b, a2, etc.

    XFCE specific, I get rid of the second panel full of launchers. Acquired taste, but also Chicago95 theme and icon pack.

  • nyan@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    7 days ago

    The colour scheme. White screens are one of the things that trigger my migraines.

    This in turn leads to my modifying several other visual aspects of the desktop, because a lot of widget set themes come with scrollbars that don’t work well with really dark colours. I also turn animations and automagic snapping and desktop navigation facilities off, because I find them annoying. Kindly behave like it’s 1999 and don’t do anything I don’t explicitly tell you to do, Mr. Desktop.

    And then I embed a conky instance in the second desktop for general monitoring—CPU activity (composite and by thread), memory in use, disk space, network usage, temperatures, fan levels, and greediest processes all conveniently in a single view that doesn’t require me figuring out what I did with the window.

      • nyan@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        6 days ago

        I chose a slightly different way of achieving what that extension does, and long ago set my browser not to allow websites to choose their own colours. That does partially break a few sites that don’t handle their images properly, but overall it’s workable and gives me white on a slightly different dark colour for each browser profile.

        • digitalhippie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Interesting method, I didn’t even know that was possible. Would you mind sharing how you achieved that? I would be interested in comparing the two. Dark Reader does add some overhead which is noticeable on my older machines

          • nyan@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            6 days ago

            It’s a normal browser setting left over from the early days of the Internet, when most pages did little or no theming (or did it badly). My primary browser is Pale Moon, which exposes the setting as a dropdown under Preferences > Content > General > Colors. Firefox also exposed the setting on its settings page the last time I checked, although it may be a checkbox there. It’s also a boolean in about:config, browser.display.use_document_colors.

            Chrome-family browsers may not have such a setting, unfortunately. The only one I keep handy is Vivaldi, which doesn’t have it but does have a “Force a dark theme on all websites” checkbox (under Settings > Appearance > Website Appearance).

    • psilotop@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      7 days ago

      Totally agree on dark themes, my eyes can’t take bright white screens.

      The performance monitor is a nice touch, I think I’ll include that. Thanks!

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    1·
    6 days ago

    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.