Plasma or not Plasma?

I do not know why, but I’ve never tried kde, or maybe a loooooooot of yers ago :smiley:
should I give it a chance?
if yes, why? :smiley:
which are pros and cons?

For me, this is pretty unanswerable. We all use our machines so differently that what makes a DE great for one person will make it a miserable experience for the next. The best thing to do is try it for yourself.

What I like about plasma is how configurable it is. I can bend it to meet my workflow rather than before forced to adapt my workflow to how it works. Do you like docks or panels? plasma can do both. Do you prefer global menus? No problem. Easily manage gtk and qt theming? check.

For me, the biggest con of plasma is how kio currently handles accessing large files over the network. You pretty much have to mount your network shares if you want applications to be able to seamlessly access large files over the network. It is a pretty minor workaround but I wish they would address it. I think I remember seeing something that indicated that a fix was planned.

At the end of the day, just try it and see what you think. Do remember though that almost everything can be changed so if there is something you don’t like there may be an setting/application/plasmoid somewhere to help.

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I agree that it looks like a huge time sink to set it up as you want.

If you’re looking for something similar to Windows 10 cinnamon is worth a try.

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You certainly don’t have to customize it, you can use it as it is like with any DE. You just have the option to do so if you want it.

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I’m using two versions. One debian based and this one(arch). There both good, but I think I prefer the way Endeavouros sets up the arch version a little better.

This is/was a test to see which one I liked best. I was using Kubuntu, but had some issues. One thing I’ve noticed is how light it is compared to a few years ago. Don’t know what happened, but is very responsive now.

The only con I have is not being able to run root using Dolphin. The debian version I can, with this hack:
pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dolphin

It doesn’t work on Arch KDE.

A couple of years ago, kde put some substantial effort into lowering their memory footprint. It definitely made a difference.

Because running Dolphin as root has some unsafe side-effects, the developers have gone out of their way to make it difficult to do so. The alternative is the root actions plugin which is available in AUR.

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I installed it, but I couldn’t get it to work at all.

There typically isn’t much to it. It adds an element to the right click menu.

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Yes, that part worked. What didn’t work was after clicking on root access, I noticed the root file changed color, but wouldn’t allow access.

Hello . I’m for a long time now on EndeavourOS plasma and it works perfect for me .
Nice you click a video and the mplayer starts to play , the welcome screen is very good and i see no sense i have to leave to another distro ore chance to another desktop .
I use Gradio and it’s a wonderful app , strange i don’t hear much about this one .
If you like radio streams , you find it all .
Greetings to you all

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I googled gradio and came across this:

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I just installed Shortwave from AUR. Very good usability and it works flawlessly. Thank you for showing that one.
shortwave

I like having access to the BBC radio station’s as I now live in Thailand… because I’m old I especially like BBC Radio 6

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Auswahl_100

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Thanks for the tip , i installed shortwave and it works also good

I have installed Plasma :smiley:
and now, which is your favorite dock?
latte or cairo?

latte. No question. It can be used as a drop in replacement for the plasma panel, configured as a dock or both. Fully integrated with both it’s own and standard plasma widgets.

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I think Plasma and XFCE are both 10/10 DEs

Try both if you haven’t

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Latte is good on Plasma.

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KDE Plasma 5.19 is just around the corner also with some more new features. Small incremental changes and refinements i read.

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