The Linux Experiment

2022-12-13 18:16:45

KDE Plasma is WASTING its POWER. Let's fix that!

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#kdeplasma #linux #desktop

00:00 Intro
01:04 Sponsor: Extend the life of your PHP applications
01:53 The Power of KDE
02:43 Activities: split your use cases clearly
04:01 Kwin Scripts: manage your window manager
04:58 KDE Connect: the unsung hero of Phone integration
05:53 Other "hidden" things you can do
07:24 The Welcome App: good idea, but bad direction
11:00 For more advanced features? Banner and callbacks
12:57 KDE's power is wasted because no one knows it's there
14:52 Sponsor: grab a device that runs Linux perfectly!
15:44 Support the channel

Let's start with Activities, something KDE never really talks about or promotes in any way.

An Activity is a group of virtual desktops. You can switch activities easily with a keyboard shortcut, and they have their own switcher tool. Each activity can have its own name, wallpaper, set of plasma widgets, and virtual desktops.

WHich means you can create a work activity, with a certain set of widgets that let you work more easily, and a less distracting wallpaper, and a personal activity, where you can have all the anime characters you want as a background, different widgets, and even different apps running.

Now let's talk Kwin, the window manager / compositor. You can extend it, thanks to custom Kwin scripts. It can force background blur on certain windows, have sticky window snapping, so you can resize 2 adjacent windows in one go, there's Krohnkite, a script that turns Kwin into a full blown tiling window manager, you can maximize new windows to a new virtual desktop, like on mac OS, or shake a window to minimize all others.

By default, KDE Plasma also has KDE Connect, a wonderful tool that lets you basically replicate what apple does with their iOS and macOS devices: install the companion app on your Android phone, or iPhone, and pair the 2.

And that's just a few things most KDE users probably never even knew existed. There are tons more, like Krunner. Press Alt + space, and you get a full on search box. You can have an application launcher as a right click on the desktop, instead of a context menu. You can apply a whole theme in just one click from the appearance tab. You can replace any plasma widget by another through the "show alternatives" menu item. You can replicate any desktop from any other operating system.

Thing is, no one ever told KDE users they could do that, and that's the main problem with KDE.

Fortunately, KDE devs seem to have understood that problem, because they're already working on a Welcome application: invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-w…

But that doesn't solve our power problem: it only addresses the basics everyone already knows they'll be able to do in any OS. It doesn't tell people about what they can do specifically on KDE.

The welcome app should offer predefined layouts to let people know that this is a capability they have. Or, even better, have a "+" button to let someone create their own layout.

The Welcome app should probably also be the entry point for themes. KDE has a few out of the box, just as a dark or light mode, or midnight mode, but you could also use that opportunity to tell people about the "Get new stuff" buttons that permeate all the customization throughout the desktop.

DIsplay these default all in one themes, and a very visible "get more themes" button right from the start.

The Welcome app is also the perfect entry point to talk about KDE Connect.

For activities, there's a simple path as well. When a user enters the settings for Activities, or maybe uses virtual desktops for a while, you can just prompt them with a small notification, easily dismissed, or just a simple banner in the settings that might be related to virtual desktops.

Same goes for all Kwin scripts and all extensions: instead of hiding the kwin scripts in their own settings page, you could also make them more visible in the default window options.

The Linux Experiment

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