With each new release of Ubuntu, I’ve stuck with the default desktop environment. These have worked well for me over the years, but thought I should see what else there is.
The only way for me to do it justice is to run KDE Plasma as my only desktop environment for a minimum of 2 weeks. So both my work station and my personal laptop are use KDE Plasma installed alongside Gnome 3 Shell on Ubuntu 19.10.
If I’m unhappy after the 2 weeks, I can always go back to Gnome. Or maybe try something else, like lxde or xfce.
I started on Sunday evening, and it’s now Wednesday afternoon. The following are my findings.
This is likely to be updated as I find new things or ways to fix niggles.
Likes
- When an application shows in the “Task Manager” bar, one can click it to minimise the active window.
- All icons showing in the “Task Manager” bar (Autokey is a GTK application, but can’t show its icon in Gnome 3, but manages to in KDE Plasma?).
- Simple music controls on lock screen.
Dislikes
- Even at max mouse sensitivity, it feels slower than on Gnome 3 – not good for a 3 monitor set-up – this may be subjective and not be an issue in time.
- No option to locate the mouse cursor by pressing [ctrl].
- Some windows don’t respond to a mouse wheel scoll until the window is clicked – this may be an issue only with GTK applications running on KDE Plasma.
- Being asked for my SSH key in the terminal for every action – is there a key manager like in Gnome that I need to enable? Manually resolved by running `ssh-add` against each key required. Gnome does handle this a lot better 😐
- Scrolling in an application window does not respond while a OSN is displayed – example: Spotify changing tracks
Things I’d like to see ported from Gnome 3 Shell
- The option to only switch the central monitor when changing between virtual desktops.
- Change between virtual desktops using [ctrl]+[alt]+arrow keys.
Things I’d like to see in all desktop environments
- Option to have the cursor colour to invert as it passes over other colours – Windows does this.
- Automatic window scaling based upon the native resolution of the monitor in use. If a window is moved from one monitor to another, and the resolution changes, the scale should adapt to keep it readable – Windows does this.