KDE Plasma

Your KDE Plasma desktop is a very advanced dashboard for improving your home office productivity. It is an aesthetically pleasant, high performance framework to work with and includes a powerful set of tools, which are all integrated into the plasma desktop.

A lot of Linux users like a more command line approach to using Linux. I like the graphical desktop because, I do not have a lot of academic education about computer programming and the graphical tools enable me to find my way around Linux.

You can add tiling windows and window gaps to KDE if you want to. Use the tiling window manager extension and tile gaps. I don’t really like my windows to be tiled like that. I’ve tried it a couple of times and now, I’m back to having the windows open with the same configuration they were in when I last closed them. I don’t like it when I open an application that normally has a relatively small form, like SimpleScreenRecorder, and it takes up the whole desktop. Plus, I like to be able to click back and forth between applications that are optimally sized for each one.

Desktop

KDE Plasma, the Kool Desktop Environment, is an advanced, graphical desktop technology for increasing your home office productivity. It has a ton of features that make Linux very powerful, visually attractive and much easier to learn and fun to use.

KDE has more visual cues on it’s Plasma desktop and applications with easy to use Graphical User Interfaces (GUI), which helps new users, like me, find our way around Linux. Your KDE Plasma desktop is the platform upon which all your other KDE tools work. KDE is the dashboard for your Linux operating system and for your personal cloud of artificial intelligence. Linux, with KDE Plasma installed, is a high performance portal into the global cloud of artificial intelligence.

The Plasma desktop starts with a highly customizable canvas where users can place widgets (Plasmoids), manage virtual desktops (Activities) and interact with the system via icons or folders.

Configurable to any edge of the screen, the panel hosts the application launcher, task manager, system tray and can include other widgets. It’s akin to the taskbar in Windows but with far more customization options.

KWin (Windows Manager) manages window decorations, animations and effects. It supports advanced compositing with features like window snapping, desktop effects (like wobbly windows, desktop cube) and sophisticated window tiling.

Plasmoids (Widgets) are mini-applications or data viewers that users can place anywhere on the desktop or panel. From simple clocks to complex system monitors, Plasmoids enhance both functionality and user interaction.

Activities are KDE’s take on virtual desktops, but with steroids. Each activity can have its own set of widgets, wallpapers and even specific applications pinned to the panel, allowing for highly focused workspaces.

Dolphin file manager, while not part of Plasma per se, is KDE’s default file manager, integrated with Plasma to provide a seamless file navigation experience with features like dual-pane views, tabbed browsing and extensive file operation capabilities.

How KDE Plasma Works

Plasma is built on a modular system where each component can be individually updated or replaced. This modularity extends to themes, allowing users to change the entire look and feel of their desktop with a few clicks.

Plasma leverages the Qt application framework, which provides a robust toolkit for GUI development. This ensures that Plasma applications look consistent and perform well across different hardware.

Upon login, Plasma loads your saved session, including open applications, window positions and desktop layout. If Activities are used, it recalls the state of each, offering continuity in your work environment.

Dynamic configuration enables Plasma to allow real-time changes to the desktop. You can add, remove or resize widgets, change panel layouts or switch themes without needing to log out or restart.

While Plasma can run any Linux application, it’s designed to work seamlessly with other KDE software, providing features like drag-and-drop between apps, shared settings and a consistent look.

Plasma has been progressively adopting Wayland, a modern display server protocol intended to replace the decades-old X11. This offers better security, performance and multi-monitor support, although X11 remains available for compatibility.

Users can choose from numerous themes that dictate the appearance of windows, icons, cursors and more. Beyond the default set, users can download or create new Plasmoids from the KDE Store, adding functionality tailored to their needs. For advanced users, Plasma can be scripted with JavaScript or QML, allowing for custom behaviors or integration with other services.

KDE Plasma has made significant strides in performance, particularly with Plasma 6.x releases. Memory usage has been optimized, startup times have decreased, and overall responsiveness has improved. Stability has also been a focus, with less frequent crashes and better handling of hardware diversity.

KDE Plasma isn’t just a desktop environment; it’s a community-driven ecosystem where users are empowered to mold their digital workspace. Its blend of beauty, productivity and flexibility makes it a standout choice in the Linux world, appealing to those who appreciate the control and customization of their computing experience. Whether for daily computing, development or artistic endeavors, Plasma offers tools and features that cater to a broad spectrum of needs, all while maintaining a commitment to open-source innovation.

Some History

Designers and programmers started developing Qt in 1992. Trolltech is an international company, founded in 1994, in Oslo Norway, with offices in Australia and California. It produces Qt, a cross platform, C++ GUI toolkit. The first commercial version of Qt was released in 1995.

In 1996, Matthias Ettrich used C++ and Qt to develop the Kool Desktop Environment (KDE). KDE is designed to be friendly for all users, rather than just professional computer programmers. The KDE Free Qt Foundation was founded in 1998, to insure that Qt and KDE remain available as free and open source software.

In 2006, Trolltech issued an IPO. In 2008, Trolltech was acquired by Nokia. Qt Creator was launched in 2009. Digia acquired the Qt commercial licensing business in 2010. By 2012 Digia had acquired all rights to Qt. Qt 5.0 was a major redesign of Qt technology. In 2014, the Qt company became a distinct subsidiary of Digia. In 2016, Qt Group plc became an independent company listed on the NASDAQ in Helsinki.

A lot of work on KDE was accomplished during the first decade of the 21st century and KDE progressed through KDE 4.0. Around 2010, the KDE Software Compilation was being developed and marketed as a compilation, a set of tools, rather than individually developed tools.

In 2010 the team brought the KDE Software Compilation together and in 2013, separated it into three separate releases. Workspaces, Applications and Platform updates are released separately.

The KDE Manifesto was published in 2012. It introduces core values guiding the KDE community: open governance, free software, inclusivity, innovation, common ownership and end-user focus.

The first stable version of Plasma 5 was released in 2014. KDE Plasma 5 uses Qt 5, Frameworks 5 and the QtOpenGL graphics stack as a foundation. The Plasma Mobile interface for smartphones also uses Qt, Frameworks 5 and Plasma Shell technologies.

KDE v5.5 is released with support for OpenGL ES in KWin, and progress towards supporting Wayland. The KDE Neon operating system, based on Ubuntu, was released in 2016. In 2017, KDE announced the KDE Slimbook laptops, with KDE Neon installed natively. Now, KDE is working with Purism to deliver the Librem 5 smartphone, using KDE Plasma Mobile technology.

In 2024, KDE is in the process of slowly rolling out KDE 6.0. It looks like it will primarily be the completion of the switch from X11 desktop environment to the Wayland desktop environment.

Source: https://timeline.kde.org/

In 2022, I’ve finally made the switch from Kubuntu to KDE Neon. This system is the best computer operating system I’ve ever had, by far. Not only is Linux and KDE improving, but my knowledge and skill about computer science and website development is improving rapidly.

KatePart

KatePart is one of the main components of the KDE desktop environment. Many KDE applications are instances of KatePart. KatePart is like a template, upon which you can build a variety of applications. The applications are all variations of the KatePart template. Each one specializing in different tasks. Dolphin, Kate, Konsole and Kontact are all instances of KatePart. Because of that, they all resonate with each other very well. You can open up Konsole from within Kate or Dolphin.

There are other free and open source Qt applications, such as Scribus, that are developing outside of the KDE ecosystem. So, while Scribus is written with the Qt tool kit, it is probably not an instance of KatePart. I don’t know that for sure, I just know that KDE and Scribus do not mention each other in their documentation and do not seem to be at all related, other than being designed with the Qt tool kit.

You can use the KDE Development package and Katepart to build crossplatform applications that will run on any computer and help you improve your home office productivity. Think of a tool you want or need and get your computer setup for development work and get started developing applications to solve whatever problem you are trying to solve. Figuring out how to develop applications will make you a valuable computer programmer.

It’s going to take years to get really good at it, so relax and take your time and enjoy playing with this amazing technology. It is a powerful weapon, a versatile tool and a wonderful toy. It’s an incredibly complex puzzle for sure and every piece of the puzzle is a complicated puzzle.

Grok says that KatePart serves as the core editing component in various KDE applications, including Kate, KWrite and even within larger applications like Konqueror for displaying text files. KatePart is built on the KTextEditor interface, providing a standardized set of functionalities for text editors within the KDE environment. This allows for uniform behavior across different applications while also permitting customization and extension through plugins.

Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 300 languages, making code in diverse programming languages easier to read and maintain. This feature automatically applies different colors and styles to code elements based on their role, enhancing readability.

Users can collapse and expand blocks of code, which is particularly useful for managing large files or focusing on specific parts of the code. This is controlled through the folding pane on the editor interface.

Kate offers automatic indentation which can be tailored through scripts. These scripts can define how code should be indented based on language-specific rules, improving code consistency and readability. Users can write their own indentation scripts or use those provided by default.

KatePart applications can be extended with plugins, which can add new functionalities like additional syntax highlighting, custom commands or integration with other tools like version control systems. The scripting API primarily uses ECMAScript (JavaScript) for creating these extensions.

For enhanced productivity, Kate supports editing with multiple cursors or selections, allowing simultaneous editing at different parts of the document. A powerful search tool allows for searching within projects or across multiple documents, supporting regular expressions for complex queries.

Users can configure nearly every aspect of KatePart, from hotkey bindings to the appearance of the editor through color themes, bookmarks and line number displays. Custom filetypes can also be defined, adjusting editor behavior based on file extensions or MIME types.

How KatePart Works

When you open a file in an application using KatePart, it reads the document’s MIME type or file extension to apply appropriate syntax highlighting and settings from defined modes or filetypes. If multiple filetypes match, the one with the highest priority is used.

KatePart’s interface includes a text area for editing, scrollbars for navigation, an icon border for bookmarks and a line numbers pane. These components can be toggled on or off as needed to customize the editing environment.

To extend functionality, users or developers can write scripts that run within KatePart. These scripts can automate tasks like code formatting, quick text manipulation or even integration with external tools. Scripts are stored in specific directories and can be reloaded without restarting the application for immediate effect testing.

KatePart’s integration into various KDE applications underscores its versatility and robustness, offering a consistent, powerful editing experience across different software contexts. Its modular design through the use of KTextEditor interfaces and the support for scripting makes it adaptable to both simple text editing and complex programming tasks.

KatePart is the whole KDE application template. KTextEditor is the original core of Kate and all the other applications, like Dolphin, Kontact, Konsole and Konquerer.

Konquerer is an all in one application, combining many KatePart applications into a file browser, Internet browser and search engine. So far, it has failed because it uses the KHTML and KDEWebKit, instead of the Chromium Web Kit that is so popular and common these days. Many websites do not trust KDEWebKit.

Konquerer features webbrowsing using KHTML or KDEWebKit as rendering engines. It accomplishes file management using most of Dolphin’s features (including version-control, service menus and the basic UI). File management on ftp and sftp servers is available. Konquerer includes a fully featured FTP-client (you can split views to display local and remote folders and previews in the same window).

Applications to preview files, e.g. Okular and Calligra for documents, Gwenview for pictures, KTextEditor for text-files, are embedded in Konquerer. Service-menus, KParts (embedded applications), KIO (accessing files using special protocols like http or ftp) and KPart-plugins (like AdBlocker…) are all part of the all-in-one application. It’s like KDE’s answer to Emacs, the GNU Project’s all-in-one text editor.

My main objection to Konquerer is the name. And the one time I tried it many years ago, it took over my computer like it was konquering me. You can probably customize it and the feeling like I was being konquered was just a result of the transition to a new system, however, I like free and open source software because I want to liberate people, not konquer anyone.

System Settings

To get started customizing your KDE Plasma desktop and Linux operating system, right click on your desktop and find a beautiful picture to use as your desktop background. You can use one of KDE’s examples or you can search the web from the selection menu. You can also select one of your own pictures from your files and use that as your desktop background.

The panel is the strip along the bottom of the KDE Plasma desktop. I like leaving it on the bottom of the screen, near the keyboard and leaving the rest of the computer’s screen open. Put a beautiful picture on your desktop and do not ruin it with a bunch of application icons. Put icons for the applications you use most often on the panel. All of the rest of them are on the Application Launcher, located on the far left end of the panel.

Customize your panel by right clicking on it and using the list to make adjustments. Customize your KDE Plasma start menu, the little KDE icon on the far left end of your panel, by right clicking on it and then, selecting Alternatives.

I like to make my KDE panel narrower than the default size, by right clicking on the panel, selecting edit panel and then clicking on it and dragging the height button down. You can also lock and unlock the widgets and move them around, by right clicking on the panel and selecting Edit Panel. You can also move the panel to any edge of your computer’s screen.

Getting the look and feel of your KDE Plasma and the applications you run on it configured, is another adventure. Settings>System Settings>Appearance is a good place to start. There are many options you can choose, to configure Linux any way you want to.

Navigate to System Settings > Workspace Behavior > Virtual Desktops to set up your four virtual desktops. You can set as many up as you want to. I like to set mine up with four virutual desktops that I can switch back and forth between.

Kcolorchooser is always one of the first applications I install on Linux. You can use the color selector on the app or you can use the color picker, to find out exactly what a color on your screen is. Use your left mouse button to select the color and then copy the html color code, to use that color in your settings.

You can select and use one of the color schemes that KDE has installed in the settings dialog. You can also download more options. You can also customize the option you choose, by selecting edit and editing the colors and then saving it as a custom color scheme.

Browse around the Appearance and Workspace sections and create a beautiful, intricate work of art on your desktop. Make your KDE Plasma Desktop a high performance workstation that you enjoy working with and can play like a piano.

• Set the time your screen turns off during inactivity in your Power Management settings.
• Set your, keyboard, mouse or touch-pad behavior in Input Devices.
• Set NumLock on Plasma Startup at: System Settings > Input Devices > Keyboard.
• Set single click to open files in Workspace Behavior > General Behavior.

KDE already has a pretty good set of default shortcuts. You can add shortcuts to start Kitty or Dolphin or Brave or any other application, by going to system settings > shortcuts.

In the shortcuts window, click on Global Shortcuts and then click on the Add button below the list of components. It’s a plus sign on my computer. If a shortcut is already assigned, KDE will warn you and ask you if you really want to reassign it.

Select the application you want to start up and then, click on the Konsole or Dolphin or whatever the application you want to create a shortcut for is. Many applications already have a shortcut and they will show up in the shortcut form. You can keep the default shortcut or replace it with one you prefer.

Click on the button and then, press the key combination that you want to be the shortcut to launch that application, usually Meta-K or Meta-D or something like that. Then, click apply. Most of the Ctrl combinations are already being used by the system, so most of my custom shortcuts use the Meta key, which is the key with the Microsoft symbol on this HP Envy. You may have to restart the computer for the shortcuts to become active.

You can easily exchange your ESC and Caps Lock keys in KDE, to improve your work flow. Navigate to System Settings > Input Devices > Keyboard > Advanced. Click on Configure Keyboard Options. Expand Caps Lock Behavior and the bottom option is Swap ESC and Caps Lock. Select that and click apply.

Now, instead of having to find the ESC key, all the way up in that far top left corner of your keyboard, especially while you are using Neovim, you have easy access to it right next to your ASDF keys; and you can use the original ESC key when you do need the caps lock function.

You can add XKBOPTIONS=”caps:swapescape” to your /etc/default/keyboard file if you can’t find the graphical method. You can also add the command setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape to your .zshrc file.

Kate

Kate is one of my favorite Linux tools. I use it all the time. Mostly for taking notes and writing stories. You can also use it for editing files on your computer. Any time you need to copy and paste a snippet of code or text, just open an instance of Kate and save it. Use it as a simple visual clipboard.

You can use Kate for programming in a wide variety of languages. C is not the easiest language to learn, but it is a good place to start learning computer science. Understanding C will help make learning shell scripting and other programming languages a lot easier.

I’m not sure why there is a Kwrite and Kate. I think Kwrite was the original KDE application and then Kate was developed as a much more advanced alternative. One big difference between Kate and Kwrite, is that you can open several different stories, in different tabs, in one window of Kate. With Kwrite, every story you open is in a separate window. I rarely use Kwrite at all.

Kate is a fully featured, high performance text editor. You can open a shell and a file browser within Kate. It uses colorized syntax for many different programming languages, such as: C/C++, Rust, Lua, Python, Zsh, HTML, and Ada.

Kate includes configurable syntax highlighting for several languages. It has the ability to create and maintain projects. A multiple document interface (MDI) enables you to have several documents loaded into different tabs. It also includes a self-contained terminal emulator.

I’m not sure what the difference between MDI and Tabular Document Interface (TDI) is. I think that MDI is more than just the tabs of different articles I’m working on. I think that MDI enables you to save a session, so that all the tabs open automatically, when you restart the session. TDI is the tabs, MDI is the session, kind of like the wheel and the tire.

Kate is one of your most important tools for building a high performance holistic home office. It resonates with the KDE Plasma Desktop and all the other KDE tools. Learn how to use them all together to increase your office productivity.

Dolphin

Use Dolphin to find your way around Linux. Figure out where the configuration files for all your applications are and learn how to edit them to get your Linux OS to work the way you want it to. Most of your global config files are in the /etc directory, some of them are in the /opt directory. Typically, you require or import an app.d file near the top of the default configuration file, put your custom configuration in the app.d file. That way, it overrides your default configuration and will not get clobbered when you update or upgrade the system.

Normally, you will not customize the system configuration in /etc or /opt, you will customize your personal settings which are located in hidden files in your home directory. You can set Dolphin to show hidden files by clicking the hamburger, the three lines or dots in the upper right corner of dolphin, and selecting Show Hidden Files. Find your configuration files and once you get them set up the way you like them, create a Source Forge, Bit Bucket or GitHub account to store them all, so you can easily install your configuration files on any computer.

I don’t know much about these different options. I’m thinking I prefer Source Forge. I like GitHub and it is the most popular git repository. I am just skeptical about it, ever since Microsoft bought it. I don’t hate Microsoft and they have been very friendly towards the Linux community and free and open source software lately, I just don’t trust that massive global corporation to not try to control computer technology.

Reading the Microsoft Windows 95 User agreement is what led me to start using Linux in the first place. I do not agree that Microsoft owns the operating system on my computer. Source Forge seems to be oriented towards free and open source software. Source Forge supports both free and open source software and proprietary software. That’s what I like.

Learn how to create symlinks to properly link the files on your computer to each other when you need to. There are soft links and hard links. A soft link is a pointer to a separate file. A hard link is a copy of the file, with the same inode as the file you’re linking to.

ln -s /home/linux/Music /home/linux/Desktop makes a symbolic link from your desktop to your Music directory. You can do pretty much the same thing to link to any particular file. cd into the file where you want the link, such as the Desktop directory in the example above. Create the link in your terminal, just like the example and there will be a link from your desktop to your Music directory or whatever file you want to link to. Don’t forget to remove the link if you remove either one of the files or directories.

Set your git repository up. Git keeps a record of the changes you make to files you are working on. Your initial Git Repositories are stored on your computer. You can also set up remote repositories on SourceForge, Github or Bitbucket, etc. There are self hosting options and that may be best for you. I prefer commercial hosting, because it is professionally secured and accessible by your team. git enables teams of people to work on the same program without interfering with each other. Its called collaboration and there are at least two versions I can think of right now, git and svn.

Apparently, Nextcloud is a free and open source way to synchronize your files on all your devices. I don’t know much about it yet, but its worth taking a look at. Nextcloud is a self hosted git repository. I’ve been using Microsoft OneDrive for years and it works fairly well, especially now that I’m working on this new Windows 10 desktop. Setting up a nextcloud or owncloud repostitory on Linode may be the best git repository and collaboration solution.

I suspect that setting up free and open source git repositories is really simple, once you figure it out. I like having my files backed up on a commercial server. Commercial servers are way more secure than my own computers and I can access them from any computer. This is part of building your own private cloud of artificial intelligence.

Work on keeping your files well organized and neat and clean. Be on guard against creating a jumbled mess of files on your computer, with many copies of some of them. Keeping your files well organized is a never ending process. First, get them well arranged. Then, develop habits and processes that keep them neat and clean. Focus on not making a mess to start with.

Kontact

Kontact is another one of KDE’s all-in-one Katepart applications, which combines several other Katepart applications; KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressBook and Akregator, into one very versatile and useful tool, your personal information management and communications center.

While using Kontact is fairly simple and easy to begin with, getting Kexi, Dolphin and Falkon integrated into Kontact is going to be a complicated project. Create a set of well organized, integrated documents for your business using Calligra Sheets. Neat and clean and well organized is a good idea for increasing your home office productivity.

When you update a person’s contact info in any application, it will automatically update in all the applications. The best strategy is to concentrate on learning how to use Calligra Sheets. Get your calendar and financial documents set up and then link your Calligra Sheets into Akonadi and manage your PostgreSQL databases with your Kexi database management application and Kontact.

Akonadi is a program that Kontact uses to enable all the programs that run in Kontact, like Kmail, KAddressBook, KOrganizer and Akregator, to communicate with each other and the database where all the data is stored. Kexi is Calligra’s database management application.

Learning how to use Kate, Kile and Kexi with all your other applications and your KDE Plasma desktop, will make you an exceptionally advanced computer programmer and it will make your computer a very high performance dashboard for managing your artificial intelligence. Remember, all the KDE applications resonate with KDE Plasma very well, and especially with KDE Neon.

Use Kontact to increase your productivity and profitability. The big advantage of using Kontact is you can manage several email accounts from the one application. Use the KOrganizer calendar to remind you of your appointments. Experiment. Kmail is your email client. Sometimes, you have to install Kontact, KMail KOrganizer, KAddressBook and Akregator individually. It depends on what Linux distribution you are using.

Read the KDE documentation. Do your research. Learn how to use these tools effectively. Learn how to install, operate, maintain and repair your Linux installations. Learn how to configure your KDE technology. Spend some time learning how to control your computer, instead of being controlled by it.

If you ever decide to get into programming KDE, work on getting a smart phone app that automatically links with your KDE Kontact. The KDE Connect extension is a step in the right direction. Make it a really versatile, secure and stable way for you to access KDE Kontact, your Personal Information Management system, on your computer, with your smart phone. You’ll want to be able to make notes on your smartphone and access them in KNotes in Kontact and vice versa.

I recommend a redundant system, with a copy of your Personal Information Management system on a remote service, such as Linode, and synchronized with at least one other copy on the main desktop computer in your home office. A truly distributed system would have a synced copy of your data on all of your computers. They will all be synchronized with each other. You will be able to log into your private cloud of artificial intelligence from any computer, anywhere in the world.

The Desktop and the remote server will remain automatically synced with each other. You will have redundant copies of all your data, in case either one of them is destroyed for any reason. Get Kontact cloned in your local development environment and work on getting Dolphin, Kate, Kile, Konsole, Falkon and KDE Connect integrated into Kontact.

Kile

You can certainly write stories with Kate. It is very simple and easy to use. Kate is really a code editor. You could use KWrite for writing stories. If you want to be a high performance writer of mathematics, chemical formulas and English or whatever your native languages is, then start investigating Kile and LaTeX. LaTeX is hard to learn, but if you want to write all kinds of professional documents, then, take the time to learn how to write with LaTeX. It is well worth the effort.

Markdown is more like a note taking language. Learning how to write markdown is another valuable skill. Learn how to write Markdown in your text editor, Kate or KWrite. You can write Markdown in any text editor, like Kate or Neovim. You just have to have texlive, or some other version of LaTeX, installed on your computer and save your LaTeX documents with .tex extentions. It is probably best to learn how to write LaTeX in a LaTeX editor like Kile or TeXstudio. That will enable you to see the PDF output, while you are producing the document. Once you learn how to write LaTeX using Kile, you will be able to write it in any text editor.

Markdown is relatively easy to learn and use. LaTeX is much more complex, harder to learn and much more powerful. Each one of these languages is going to be a big learning project. It is worth it to take the time to study and learn them as soon as possible. Start with Markdown for note taking and small writing projects. Learn LaTeX to write math formulas, lists, charts, images and books. Being able to write professionally formatted documents will be a very valuable skill in your content creation workflow.

The way I study topics like this is; find some literature about the application and read it. Watch several different videos about the topic. Then, start exploring and experimenting with the software. Use it in your workflow. Find a project and use the tools to complete the project.

Kile is a KDE application, so, it integrates into the KDE Plasma desktop environment very well. Use it to learn how to use LaTeX and get in the habit of using Markdown and LaTeX to improve your home office productivity.

Ocular

Ocular is KDE’s PDF reader. I assume it is another Katepart application. I’ve used it for years to read PDFs. It works very well. There’s not that much to say about it. Document readers don’t need to be very fancy. Readers are interested in the document they are reading, not the application they are reading it in. The most interesting thing about Ocular is that it is fully integrated into the KatePart ecosystem

Calligra

Unfortunatly, I cannot recommend Calligra Words. KDE’s office productivity suite. Perhaps one day, the bugs will be repaired and it will rival any office productivity software. Right now, there are just too many glaring defects that make it almost unusable.

OpenOffice is the original Linux, GTK based, office productivity software. It works very well. LibreOffice is another alternative. The most valuable tool in these suites of office productivity tools is the spreadsheet tool. You can use LibreOffice to create a set of financial documents to help you keep track of your home office productivity. The presentation software works fairly well, but you can create presentations in Latex and I encourage you to do so. Get in the habit of using Markdown and Latex for all your writing projects. The more you use it, the faster you will develop your expertise in that skill.

I’ve never really used Calligra Sheets much. Maybe Sheets and Stage work just fine and KDE is not working on getting the bugs out of Calligra Words to encourage people to use Kile for producing documents. The developers of KDE probably use Kwrite, Kate and Kile and Markdown and LaTeX and are not interested in working on the bloated word processors.

KDE Plasma is an advanced dashboard, for your personal cloud of artificial intelligence. Get the source code for Calligra cloned in your local development environment and start working on making it an advanced, high performance information processing system. Practice developing software by improving the code of KDE, Konsole, Calligra, Kontact, Falkon, Kate, Kile and KDevelop. If it is possible, I would like to see Konsole redesigned to run on the GPU, like Alacritty and Kitty, as soon as possible. In the mean time, I use WezTerm to help me increase my home office productivity.

Calligra Words is the word processing application. You can use Calligra Words to produce PDFs or ebooks, flyers or letters for your business. Calligra could be the easiest way to start writing, if it wasn’t for the weird bugs, like not being able to set the default font. I recommend using Kate and Kile to produce your written content.

Calligra Sheets is your spreadsheet application. You can use it to produce your financial documents and contact lists and all kinds of things that you can do with a spreadsheet. Calligra Stage is definitely a valuable tool. Learn how to use both of them in your high performance, holistic home office.

Calligra Stage is KDE’s presentation application, enabling you to present information with attractive slides. I’ve used Calligra Stage a few times and have never encountered any obnoxious bugs, like I have in Calligra Words. Once you figure out how to use Calligra Stage, figure out how to produce custom templates and then, Calligra Stage will be a powerful addition to your content creation workflow. You can also create presentations in Kile and Latex.

Kexi is the Calligra database application. I haven’t used Kexi for anything. It is available and I recommend learning how to use it to manage your databases. It is a database management tool, rather than a database, like PostgreSQL. Kind of like Kile is to Latex, Kexi is to PostgreSQL. You may want to use Kexi to help you manage Akonadi and your other PostgreSQL databases. I’m pretty sure that Akonadi is an SQLite database.

The whole point is, I am recommending and showing you how to develop and use a high performance Linux and KDE Plasma based computer operating system for improving your home office productivity, because that’s what I want to do. It will be up to you to seek the truth about these applications and get them installed and configured and then, learn how to use them by using them.

Scribus

Scribus is a desktop publishing application, which enables you to take the documents you produce with Kate, Kile and Calligra and make them into documents ready for production at commercial printers. You can also use Scribus to design flyers, business cards, magazines and books and send the files to your printer.

Make sure GhostScript is installed before installing Scribus. That way, Scribus will autodetect it during installation. Otherwise, you will have to manually show Scribus where Ghostscript is. The way to do that is to open a document in Scribus, in GhostScript format.

Scribus is one of your very important tools. I used Scribus to produce the first edition of my book, Holistic Home Office. Use Scribus for typesetting your books and self publishing them. IngramSpark, BookBaby and Lulu are three self publishing options you can use. Lulu is the simple, do everything yourself version. BookBaby is the medium and IngramSpark is the most helpful version.

Learn C/C++, Rust, Lua, QML, Html, CSS and Javascript and use them to configure your programmable computer operating system, to produce high performance web applications for your personal cloud of artificial intelligence.

I’m just showing you a path. It’s up to you to make the effort to learn how to use this high performance platform and these high performance tools. And my recommendations are just options. There are many other options you can use.

Falkon

Falkon is KDE’s web browser. It seems very simple and minimal and it works very nicely. The one complaint I have is that, I can’t seem to get an easily accessible favorites menu set up, without putting a whole extra tool bar across the top.

As of September 2022, I have set Falkon as my default browser. So far, it is working just fine. Just like any application, you have to get used to its idiosyncracies. Let’s start developing Kontact and Falkon into that all-in-one office productivity tool I’ve been writing about. Like a combination of Kontact, Kate, Falkon and KDE Connect. We should be able to open Kate, Dolphin and Falkon up in Kontact and we should be able to connect to Kontact with our smart phones.

Falcon looks a lot better than the old Konquerer. In keeping with my preference for Swiss army knife style applications, I don’t mind combining the web browser with the file browser. On the other hand, I wonder about the security of having my file browser and web browser in one application, because I don’t want to inadvertently give anyone access to my private files, through my web browser.

With Konsole, Dolphin, Kate, Kontact, Kile, Kexi and Calligra, Falkon would round out an awesome KDE operating system. KDE Neon could end up being a completely new fork of Linux. KColorChooser, KMyMoney and KDevelop are some other intriguing applications. I use KColorChooser all the time. Explore these tools. Which ones you should use depends on your interests.

KColorChooser works as well as any other color chooser. It helps you find really cool colors for your desktop and your website.

Go to the GitHub repositories and clone the source code for these applications into your local development environment and start working on improving them. Calligra, Kontact and Falkon all need work to improve them into very high performance applications. Work on integrating them all together into one advanced dashboard for your personal cloud of artificial intelligence.

There are other powerful tool sets out there. The commercial ones are probably easier to get started. They do a lot of things automatically, that you have to do manually with the Katepart tools. Doing things manually is part of having the fine grained control that KDE enables.

And the best part is that it is not owned by some giant corporation that can interfere with your operations or cancel your account if they don’t like your attitude. I suppose that KDE can do that too. I hope and pray that we never do. I hope KDE stays true to its own Manifesto, Code of Conduct and Vision.

KMyMoney

KMyMoney is another Katepart application that you can use to help you manage the cashflow in your holistic home office. For security reasons, I use my bank’s Account Management tools, so I don’t have any experience using KMyMoney.

I’ve installed it a few times, because it seems like a valuable tool, and then I never get around to using it. You might want to use it to help you manage your holistic home office well. GnuCash is a more well developed alternative. KMyMoney is more for personal finacial management, GnuCash is for small business applications.

Work on using Calligra, Kexi and Kontact to develop a very high performance record keeping, document production, data processing and communications system. You’re going to have to find the .config files in your home directory and configure all of your applications to work well with each other. Learn how to use Kate and KDevelop to contribute to developing all of these KDE applications.

You can create configuration directories for bash, zsh and neovim, etc., in your .config directory and then link them to the default directories in your home directory. The .config directory was created after .bashrc, .zshrc and .vimrc were created, so the config directories for those applications are in your home directory.

Konsole

Konsole is KDE’s native terminal emulator. It is a very well designed terminal, which is integrated into the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

Konsole has been under development for as long as KDE has been under development, so it is designed to run in the central processing unit. Modern terminal emulators, like Alacritty, Kitty and WezTerm run on the graphical processing unit and are much faster than terminals running in the CPU. I have WezTerm installed and selected as my default terminal. I keep Konsole around because the integration with KDE Plasma and the other KDE tools is valuable.

Kitty has multiplexing capability built into it, so there is no need to use Tmux for that. Kitty is lightning fast, stable and extendible. You can plug extensions, called Kittens, into Kitty to extend its capabilities or you can design your own Kittens to extend Kitty any way you want to.

KDE Developer

I’ve been using KDE for almost 20 years now. I first saw it way back in the 1990s. KDE has been my default desktop environment since about 2004. I’ve wandered off and tried other desktops many times. I keep coming back to KDE.

One of my objectives in writing these stories about Linux and computer science and website development is that I want to learn the subjects myself. Every time I edit and polish these stories, I learn more about Linux and KDE and WordPress.

As I read through this story and edit and polish it, the thought comes to me that building and using a high performance KDE desktop system is a very valuable enterprise. Rather than trying to learn and use Neovim and all the other options, I should just start using the KDE Plasma desktop exclusively. And work on improving it.

The one most important impediment to that idea is that Konsole, running on the CPU, is not going to be able to keep up with terminals running on the GPU. Scribus is built with the same Qt tool kit that KDE is written with. You may be able to use Kile and Latex to accomplish the same thing Scribus accomplishes. Krita is a raster painting tool, like Gimp. Karbon is a vector drawing tool similar to Inkscape. Krita does also have some vector drawing capability. digiKam is the KDE photo management tool.

Focus on using Kate, Kitty and KDevelop for programming your programmable computer and work on improving them. Use Karbon, Krita, Kile, and digiKam in your digital artisan workflow. Specialize in using the KDE desktop environment to improve your home office productivity.

While exploring how to use Linux, I’ve become interested in contributing to the development of Linux and KDE in particular. Learning about QT and QML, in order to understand the applications I’m using, has sparked an interest in developing a very high performance KDE Linux distribution. I’ll be working on that from now on.

KDE Plasma Video

Photo by Bob Mccoy using KDE Spectacle screen capture
Photo by Bob Mccoy using KDE Spectacle screen capture
Video by Bob Mccoy using Note9, SimpleScreenRecorder and Kdenlive


Photo by fauxels from Pexels
Photo by Bob Mccoy using KDE Spectacle screen capture
Photo by Bob Mccoy using KDE Spectacle screen capture
Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels