X&R

What is KDE Plasma and what does it do?

Categories: |*nix|

Hello once again! Today we will discus what is KDE Plasma and it’s defaults.

What is KDE Plasma:

KDE Plasma is an desktop environment created by KDE Foundation. Lets dissect that line first. What is a desktop environment?

A desktop environment is basically your operating systems graphical interface. It gets info from your computer and shows you as images and symbols. Without an graphical interface you will only see white letters on a black screen.

Now that we discussed about desktop environments let’s look at KDE Plasma.

How can I obtain KDE Plasma?

KDE Plasma comes with many distributions for free. If it didn’t came pre installed with your distribution you can install it later with a package manager.

Some of the distros I would suggest that comes with KDE Plasma pre installed are:

Fedora

Kubuntu

Opensuse Leap

There is also KDE Neon but that distro is aimed at testing the latest KDE software. Although I personally think It is well suited for beginners it’s main purpose isn’t just daily usage (Even though you certainly can).

For this review I’ll use Arch Linux for keeping everything to the default. Your KDE Plasma may look a little different depending on your distro of choice.

After Installing your distro of choice you will see a login screen. That login screen, called SDDM is also a part of KDE Plasma but you can use it separately as well.

Desktop overview:

Now that you log in KDE Plasma will welcome you with its sleek yet simple UI:

If you come from Windows everything should be self explanatory but lets examine it regardless.

At the bottom left most side we have our application launcher (or start menu in Windows jargon). After that we got our pinned program launchers and task manager. After a long spacer we get to our tray icons, clock and show desktop button.

One thing about KDE Plasma you should know is that everything you can see is customizable. For example, lets say you want to see your memory usage statics on your panel:

Just right click somewhere empty on your panel and select “Enter Edit Mode” and press “Add Widgets…”:

A menu will appear at the left side of the screen, from there at the top you will see a search bar, just type memory and you will see the “Memory Usage” widget:

Drag the widget to anywhere you want on your panel, in fact if you want to see it on your desktop drag it on your desktop! Click the exit edit mode button at the top right of the screen and voila! Now you have your memory usage info on your panel:

You don’t like it? Just right click and enter the edit mode again, then right click the widget you don’t want and press “Remove”. It’s that easy!

Application Launcher:

Next let’s look at the application launcher. Just press the Windows button on your keyboard or click the bottom left most icon you will see this menu:

Again, it doesn’t require much explanation but I’ll go over it regardless. The left side is your categories, and the right side is the applications in that category. On top of that is your search bar and at bottom of that is your session manager.

Once again don’t forget that KDE Plasma is extremely customizable. So if you don’t like this start menu just right click it, you will see the button “Show Alternatives”:

Just select the one you like and press “Switch”. Didn’t like any of them? Well that’s solvable too! Just enter edit mode by clicking the right mouse button and select the bottom most option “Enter Edit Mode”. Press “Add Widgets” once again and from there press “Get New Widgets…” from there select the first option. After that a window will appear, lets type “launcher” and see our options:

How about this one? If you want to see details of it just left click it. From there you can install it to your KDE Plasma, and here we go:

Not bad eh? Let’s get to our next topic shall we?

Settings:

Let’s look at our settings next. Just open the application launcher and start typing settings, you will see an application called “System Settings”, let’s examine that. This is the richest part of KDE Plasma, if you like customization you will love this program! In the first page you can see that you can change the primary color of your plasma. Essentially a light mode and a dark mode, let’s switch that to dark mode so that our eyes can stop burning.

Much better! You can change anything you want about your system here, press the search box and type whatever you want, for example, lets change… Ah yeah. Accent color:

How about pink on gray? Looks great in my opinion. Possibilities are endless with KDE Plasma

KDE Suite of applications:

Let’s look at KDE’s suite shall we? First let’s look at our file manager Dolphin:

Just type “Dolphin” to the search bar or simply press the file icon at the taskbar. And here It goes!

It’s quite familiar to Windows’s file explorer, no? Well there are of course differences for example the *nix file system doesn’t start with “C:/” or “D:/” instead you are at your Home folder which is like the User folder in Windows. Most of your actions will be here regardless so take a good look at the folders here. After you done let’s talk about the pluses of Dolphin.

I want you to do something: Right click the documents folder and select “Open In New Tab”. As you can see dolphin has tab support so you no longer need to open dozens of file managers to do daily activities!

Of course you can also customize Dolphin but I won’t get into details on that since we already explored customization in KDE Plasma. Just remember that everything you see in KDE Plasma is customizable.

Our next application will be Kate. Kate is a powerful text editor that can be used for both basic needs and advanced needs while staying lightweight. I mean it’s a text editor so I won’t get into details for it, but please take a good look at it.

Next on the list we have System Monitor, which used for looking at your system resource usage, seeing the running programs and processes. You can also end processes here if you get a non responding one.

And lastly I’ll talk about discover. Discover is a software center, so basically where you get your software and install them. Just search for anything that comes to your mind or select one of the categories. When you are done press on the package you like to install (not the install button but the package itself) and see it’s details.

There are much more default KDE Suite apps but these are the basics you need to know for now for everyday use. Take a good look at Discover and if you want to add more apps, go for it!