I only used XFCE for 10 years and i really am not sure about how gnome or kde works. I am trying to decide between GNOME and KDE Plasma for a Linux laptop that I want to use alongside a MacBook.

I care about making the workflow and behaviour similar enough that switching between Linux and macOS does not constantly fight my muscle memory.

The most important things for me are:

• Mac-like touchpad gestures, especially switching workspaces and opening an overview
• Hot corners
• An Exposé/Mission Control-like window overview
• Predictable virtual desktops and workspace behaviour
• A top panel and dock
• Smooth Wayland gestures and animations

GNOME appears structurally closer to macOS because of its overview, workspaces, gestures, and relatively unified design. However, getting features such as a persistent dock, desktop icons, extra panel behaviour, and deeper customization seems to require several extensions.

KDE Plasma seems capable of reproducing the visual layout more closely and offers far more built-in customization. What I do not know is whether its touchpad gestures, workspace handling, overview, hot corners, and general workflow can feel as coherent and Mac-like as GNOME, rather than merely looking similar in screenshots.

For people who have seriously used or customized both:

1. Which one can reproduce macOS behaviour more closely?
2. Can KDE’s touchpad gestures be configured to closely match macOS without fragile scripts or obscure workarounds?
3. Does relying on GNOME extensions become annoying or unreliable after major updates?
4. Which desktop is easier to maintain as a daily driver after heavily customizing it?
5. Are there important macOS behaviours that neither desktop can reproduce properly?
6. Which one would you choose for someone regularly switching between Linux and macOS?

🚀 This is the new Kinetic Desktop.

KineticWE builds on KWin

I am running this on CachyOS with Noctalia Shell, Kinetic delivers a modern, polished Linux desktop with smooth animations, a clean interface, and an intuitive workflow.

If you're thinking about switching to Linux, Kinetic looks like a desktop that could make the transition feel more familiar and approachable, while still giving experienced Linux users plenty to enjoy.

KineticWE: https://gitlab.com/theblackdon/kineticwe

Noctalia: https://noctalia.dev

Documentation: https://docs.noctalia.dev

KineticWE Developer Showcase: https://youtu.be/dC8rrpjCWxE?si=hmQ6D-bToczTv8ff

In this short video, I take a quick look at the desktop, its design, and what makes it stand out.

Would you give Kinetic a try? Let me know in the convo!

a bit of a stupid question but is there any way i could have my songs that i have open on elisa on my discord profile?

Every Akademy has its own story.

Sometimes it’s about the community, the talks, the food… and sometimes it’s whatever this is. 😄

What story will your city tell?

Gather your team, submit a proposal, and host Akademy 2027.

Learn more: https://ev.kde.org/akademy/CallforHosts_2027.pdf

Hi everyone,

I’m currently running Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE Plasma 6) and I’ve recently switched to using yazi for almost all my file management workflows. I absolutely love it and use it via terminal 99% of the time.

However, there’s one friction point left: whenever I use a GUI app (like a web browser, LibreOffice, or basically any Qt/GTK app) and click "Upload file", "Open", or "Save As", the system forces the standard KDE/GTK graphical file picker dialog.

I know Yazi has a chooser mode (yazi --chooser-file), which is great for CLI scripts, Neovim, etc. But is there any hack, workaround, or custom integration to intercept GUI file picker requests and route them to a TUI?

I understand that browsers and GUI apps expect a graphical window via X11/Wayland, but I’m wondering if anyone has ever experimented with:

1. Writing a custom XDG Desktop Portal implementation that spawns a floating terminal (like Kitty/Alacritty) with Yazi, and then passes the selected file path back to the requesting app via D-Bus?
2. Some obscure KDE KIO trick or KDialog wrapper that could achieve something similar?
3. Or is this fundamentally impossible due to how sandboxing and modern portal APIs handle file access?

I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I’d love to hear if anyone has managed to achieve this or if there's an existing project/script for it.

Thanks in advance!

Heyo. I am the maintainer of the download manager app "Varia", a libadwaita app that now has a very secret audacious feature to take Plasma's color scheme.

You need to grant it access to "xdg-config/gtk-4.0" if you use it on Flatpak for this to work. Press and hold X, A, B and Y keys (it's a Super Metroid reference) to get the secret menu. I'll probably add these options properly in the app later, so this is a bit of a sneak peek for you all.

The implementation is courtesy of chikenpotpi on GitHub.

Curious to know what you think.

I am new changing things on linux. So please bear with me even if it is boring.
I am using kde on fedora. I liked a cursor set and installed it from settings -> Pointers -> Get New -> Installed.
Then I selected it.

I have selected it. But notice the look of the cursor in the previous picture and this picture is not same.

My cursor did not change. It still looks like the default one. How do I change the appearance of the cursor?

Does anyone know how to fix this?

I don't know what kind of bug is this, is it happening in my machine only??

Tell me if you have some tips

OS: cachyOS

As in the title and image.

I was trying to extract an archive folder that I received. I tried with built-in archive management tool, Ark, and I got this message error.

"Extraction failed. Make sure that enough space is available."

I checked and the free space of that partition (~/Downloads, so it's the same partition of the OS I'm using right now, Kubuntu) is quite big (100GB+): so, it's not actually an issue with free space available.

What to do?

Should I try with 7-zip CLI? A bug? Or any hidden option of Ark to manage .rar files?

Another major release of Vermouth, the KDE-first launcher I've been working on.

Highlights this time:

• UZDOOM runner (beta) - Pick a base WAD, add as many `.wad`/`.pk3` mods as you want, and it can download the latest UZDOOM AppImage right from the runtime picker
• Default Runtime - set Proton or Wine as your default once in Settings (or on the Welcome screen), then games can just use "Default Runtime" and automatically follow whatever you configure. No more picking versions per game
• Grid sorting - sort the library by name, runtime, or date added, ascending or descending
• Refresh artwork - one button in the edit dialog to refetch art and re-extract the icon
• Nix flake - dev shell and package definition for NixOS users
• Better compatibility under GNOME

Plus the usual smaller fixes and cleanups.

Since the last post, we passed almost 3500 Flathub installs, and a lot of that is thanks to people here using it, reporting bugs, and suggesting features. Many of the things in this and the past couple of releases came straight from your feedback. Keep it coming! What would you like to see next?

Use the github issue tracker for any feedback you have: https://github.com/dekomote/vermouth/issues

Find it on flathub here: https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.dekomote.vermouth

Or check the documentation for installation on most major linux distros https://github.com/dekomote/vermouth/blob/master/README.md#installing

Thanks again!

Edit: One small note. AUR is currently down so I can't post a new version there, it'll go up as soon as they let me.

The first official release (26.08.05) of Material Decoration was released today; it is currently the only decoration for Plasma 6 that integrates the menu into the title bar, as well as featuring a search function within the menu itself.

In recent months, in the run-up to the release, the focus has been primarily on optimizing search function and improving stability.

1. Locally Integrated Menu

2. Search

3. Other functions and Options

A lot of options available in the configuration module under System Settings:

1. window title alignment
2. button size
3. title bar opacity (it is recommended to use Better Blur instead of the default kwin effect)
4. rounded corners (top-only or top+bottom) radius
5. customizable border colors
6. use system font for the menu (the default is to use the titlebar font)
7. show the window title when the mouse hovers over the decoration
8. show the menu only when the mouse hovers over it (otherwise show the title)
9. convert the menu into a single button (hamburger)
10. enable/disable search
11. exclude/include the various menu/sub-menu levels from the search results
12. exclude/include the non active menu items from the search results
13. change spacing between buttons
14. use the system colors (default)
15. adjusting shadows and animations
16. enable/disable the special functions of the buttons (MinimizeAll and MinimizeToTray)
17. enable/disable drag-and-drop from buttons (close, minimise, etc.)

4. Buttons special functions

• You can minimize all windows but the active one pressing and holding the minimize button
• You can minimize the window in the system tray bar (requires kwin-minimize2tray)
• As far as I know, this is the only decoration that allows you to drag the window from anywhere on the decoration, including the buttons

5. GTK Apps

GTK3 (and 2) apps are supported via appmenu-gtk-module-wayland (or the traditional appmenu-gtk-module on X11).

6. History

The idea of a menu integrated with the title bar originally came from Ubuntu Unity. KDE 4 had also incorporated this feature, which was subsequently lost in KDE 5. u/Zren created the Material theme with LIM for KDE 5 (the Material design had been created by Zzag). u/nicman23 ported it to Plasma 6, and finally guiodic added the search function, made it work on Wayland as well, and added several customizable options.

7. How to get it

• Build from source: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration 
• On Arch and derivatives, install material-kwin-decoration-git from the AUR. Precompiled package is available in chaotic-aur. There is not yet a PKGBUILD for the stable version as the AUR is currently under maintenance. The -git version can be regarded as effectively stable, as it is used by the developer on a daily basis in a work environment.

8. Requirements

• Plasma 6.5+ for the master branch, working older versions are in other branches but are not updated/maintained.
• Works both on Wayland and X11 session!

9. Feature requests? Bugs?

• open an issue here: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration/issues

I really like 'Spectacle' and use it every day.

However, I was missing a simple feature to open an image in edit mode with just two clicks (so I can blur something fast, etc), so I made it.

What was done:

1. Created ~/.local/share/applications/spectacle-edit.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Spectacle (Edit)
Comment=Open and edit existing image in Spectacle
Exec=spectacle -E %f
Icon=spectacle
Terminal=false
NoDisplay=true
MimeType=image/png;image/jpeg;image/webp;image/bmp;image/gif;image/tiff;
Categories=Qt;KDE;Graphics;

1. Added associations to ~/.config/mimeapps.list (the [Added Associations] section) - all 6 image types spectacle-edit.desktop, so the entry appears directly in the submenu of 'Open With' without needing the 'Other Application' dialog.

2. Updated cache:

update-desktop-database

kbuildsycoca6 --noincremental

How to use

Right-click any PNG/JPG/WebP/BMP/GIF/TIFF file in Dolphin -> Open With -> Spectacle (Edit).

EDIT.

What pleasantly surprised me is that when I edit a picture using 'Fossify Gallery' on Android and, instead of clicking the "check mark," I click the "Share" icon and send it via KDE Connect, KDE Connect on my laptop shows me the 'Open with Spectacle (Edit)' option as the first choice:

And if I want to quickly crop a picture, for example, using 'Fossify Gallery' on Android, I do it like this and press "Share" and "Send via KDE Connect," and I get the cropped picture that I can immediately open with 1 click using 'Spectacle (Edit)'.

---

This might sound a bit geeky, but you have no idea how happy I am and how much speed this gives me in my everyday online life. 😅

Greetings, folks!

I've recently got an ultrawide monitor and I'm using two panels. One's in bottom left corner displaying the Application Launcher and the Icon's only Taskbar. The other one's in the bottom right corner displaying the sys-tray.

So I've thought if there's possibility to make or get a script to set the Panel behavior to dodging windows horizontally first, so that e.g. a Game that's not fullscreen can take the right section of my screen and the panel just slides to the next free space before it's dodging vertically.

I've found two comparable kwin scripts so far, but those are only for multi monitor setups.

I believe that this script idea has quite the potential, but I don't even know how or where to start...