Discovering KDE - Part 1 - The Plasma Desktop - The KDE Experiment
984In this new series, I'll take a look at KDE and how it works, comparing it to my experiences to other desktop environments. I'm starting this one with the Plasma Desktop, running on KDE Neon for the purest KDE experience !
1 - The experiment:
I'll be using KDE NEon, to try and get as close as "pure" KDE as possible. I won't be reviewing the distro in itself, purely the plasma desktop environment and the KDE applications. I'm using this on my Core i5 7300HQ, with 8gb of RAM, and a GTX 1050Ti. I updated everything to the latest version, and it's running fully installed on an SSD.
2 - First impressions
When you open the KDE desktop, it looks crisp and clean. It's reminiscent of Windows, with the use of a bottom bar with a menu on the left, and indicators on the right. The desktop itself is very clean, with no extra icons, panels, or junk floating around.
Everything appears soflty, smoothly, with nice animations, which are a bit slow to my taste, by default.
Apart from the bottom bar, you also get a button up top, which shows options to add panels and configure your desktop.
It generally feels nice and welcoming.
3 - The bottom bar
It is pretty simple, really, very similar to what you'd get on Windows: a main menu, a task manager and indicators, complete with a clock. At the end of the bar, you get a button, similar to the one up top, which allows you to customize the height, width and settings of the bottom bar.
4 - The menu
The KDE menu is a delight to use. It's divided into 5 main categories: favorites, which shows your favorite apps, applications, which opens an application list sorted by categories, and computer, which shows some system apps and your favorite places on your filesystem. The menu is completed by a history tab, and a "leave" tab, which offers options to lock the session, log out, shut down, reboot, or suspend the computer.
Obviously, it has search baked in right from the start, and it works perfectly.
You can configure that menu by right clicking on it, and this is where the power of KDE starts to show.
THis menu is, in my opinion, the best I've used on any system, very clear, simple, and powerful.
5 - The task manager
Nothing very special here by default: you see all your open windows, complete with a preview of the window on hover, which was not very legible on my system, the miniatures being very pixelated.
6 - The indicators
By default, there are a lot of indicators. Clipboard, plasma browser integration, bluetooth, internet connexion, battery if you're on a laptop, vaults, which seems to be an encryption feature, sound, and a little arrow, which displays even more: notifications, updates, printers, keyboard, kde connect, and a device notifier.
7 - Widgets
KDE's desktop, Plasma, uses widgets for everything. If you remember mac os X's widgets, or windows desktop gadgets, they are the same thing except you can place them wherever you want, and combine them. A panel, like the bottom bar, is a widget, and you can add widgets to it. To access the widgets, you click on the top button, and select add widgets, then simply drag the desired one onto the desktop. SOme are not very descriptive, but once you've added them and resized them to the desired size, you can pretty much do anything you want.
8 - Plasma Activities
These allow you to change the desktop behaviour and look based on wich activity you're using. For example, I can add certain widgets on a specific activity, which won't show up on the other activites. THis allows you to completely personalize the way your desktop behaves depending on what you're doing.
It's handily hidden by default, to not confuse users, but once you're familiar with KDE, I can see this becoming a very useful feature.
9 - Look and feel
THe default theme for the desktop looks very pretty, with smooth gradients on panels, and subtle transparency. Animations are smooth and fluid, and really give a sense of what is happening when you click on something.
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Also Watch my Experience with Manjaro Budgie on a Full AMD Linux Build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZdj4Q08fBg
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