No previews or thumbnails

If you’re missing previews and thumbnails while browsing for files, either in settings or in Dolphin, install the following packages:

apt install ffmpegthumbs mplayerthumbs kffmpegthumbnailer kio-extras

External HDD and Plasma

Long story short: you should pay attention using external (mechanical) HDDs with Plasma. The bug is 8 years old and it’s just being ignored (or just not considered a bug).Plasma isn’t spinning down external HDDs and turning off them off while still being powered causes damage, so you have to pay attention on what happens when you mount/unmount them. Michael Heidelbach wrote a script to add an action to the Devices contextual menu that actually spins down correctly. Look here for more detailed instructions.

Use i3 as windows manager on the top of Plasma

It’s possibile and works well. Look here

Disable mysql and akonadi

You can disable the indexing editing ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc with StartServer=false.

Custom launchers in Icon-Only Task Manager (Taskbar)

If you want a custom command as a launcher in the taskbar, you’re gonna have a hard time.

Manually create your launcher in /usr/share/applications/ and drag-and-drop it to the taskbar when you are ready. KDE does some kinds of black magic validation on the file, so make sure that the launcher

  • has a .desktop extension;
  • has correct permissions -rw-r--r-- ;
  • complies with the following bare bones structure.
[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=
Exec=Command 'fileToOpen'
GenericName[en_US]=GenericNameenUS
GenericName=GenericName
Icon=/home/user/icon.png
MimeType=
Name[en_US]=Name_enUS
Name=Name
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

I have en_GB as locale but it keeps reading Name and Description from the en_US strings. I kept the placeholders so you can actually see where they are showing.

To force a reload of the launcher, remove it and drag-and-drop it again.### Custom launchers in Icon-Only Task Manager (Taskbar) If you want a custom command as a launcher in the taskbar, you’re gonna have a hard time.

Manually create your launcher in /usr/share/applications/ and drag-and-drop it to the taskbar when you are ready. KDE does some kinds of black magic validation on the file, so make sure that the launcher

  • has a .desktop extension;
  • has correct permissions -rw-r--r-- ;
  • complies with the following bare bones structure.
[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=
Exec=Command 'fileToOpen'
GenericName[en_US]=GenericNameenUS
GenericName=GenericName
Icon=/home/user/icon.png
MimeType=
Name[en_US]=Name_enUS
Name=Name
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

I have en_GB as locale but it keeps reading Name and Description from the en_US strings. I kept the placeholders so you can actually see where they are showing.

To force a reload of the launcher, remove it and drag-and-drop it again.

LibreOffice looks ugly in KDE Plasma

Install libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-kde packages.

GTK Themes not working as expected

You need these packages: gnome-accessibility-themes gnome-themes-standard-data gnome-themes-standard gtk2-engines-pixbuf. To make GTK applications integrate well into KDE you can use qtcurve or oxygen-gtk-theme (sort of uniform look).

And here’s some GTK2 and GTK3 themes (Arc Dark package).

If you still having problems with a theme, that’s probably because GTK 3.2 broke everything.