Second thoughts about moving to Plasma 6
| ~3 minute read
Moving to KDE got me thinking if there is a middle ground. I miss tiling window management a lot, but there are some features in KDE that make me don't wanna switch back.
The KDE Taskbar
On a WM you don't really need a taskbar because you have shortcuts for your favourite apps and there is no need to minimize anything. While I don't minimize apps anyways because I'm just not used to that kind of behavior, the other features KDE has are too good.
The System tray
KDE's clickable system tray and all those icons are just awesome. The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other menus with the uniform look is totally something I've fallen for. The music player icon in the tray with all the players, I'm not sure if I can get that in a window manager.
KDE is not "Scary"
One thing I've noticed is when I'm showing someone something on my laptop or just using it in my college, people don't get "surprised" at my ArchLinux setup. Even if someone has seen linux they usually know about ubuntu; seeing KDE instead of Gnome (or in my case my terribly themed window manager) they think that Linux is actually usable so that's kinda interesting.
I care more about my usability but people not always asking wtf I'm using is always good. But I don't wanna have KDE alongside a window manager for that reason.
The KDE Apps
KDE's UI is gorgeous. No other DE can compete. And their apps are very good and stable enough, not to mention Dolphin is the best file explorer. KDE as a whole may be kinda buggy (maybe I'll write about that) but its software suite is awesome. While I don't wanna leave that, leaving KDE would mean leaving these things behind since they only seem to look well inside Plasma.
What I've lost
From my rambling above, you might have guessed that I love KDE. But there's still a catch! I don't have the control over KDE as I had over XMonad, the finger movements, the dynamic scratchpads, anything everything being managed by keybindings, the haskell configuration, those things are equally as important to me, which makes it a very tough decision.
KDE is very customizable but I don't wanna go through a GUI menu, I like to just edit my xmonad.hs and stuff. I'm starting to miss my window manager, but also do NOT wanna switch.
The eye candy KDE Desktop or the minimal and fast AF XMonad? Maybe the answer is something else....
This is post 15 of #100DaysToOffload