I’m Ubuntu enthusiast. However, since Gnome introduction as default in Ubuntu, I’ve been experiencing stability issues. I don’t mind to reboot my laptop from time to time, but my workstation is a different story – often many weeks without reboot.

After many discussions with my friend, I’ve decided to give a try to KDE. I’ve been experimenting with KDE years ago and I found it not straightforward to use. But apparently since version 5 it’s possible to customise KDE to look & feel nearly whatever you like. And I have to admit, I got sucked by it after just a few hours. First of all, it’s very stable, quite lightweight and very practical. It’s also pretty – it doesn’t matter that much for productivity, but it’s nice add-on. I felt in love with drop-down terminal. Setting everything so migration from Gnome was smooth took me a few hours for the first time. But it paid off rather quickly, cause I’m way more productive than before. That’s how my screen looks like more or less.

If you want to try it, I’d recommend trying KDE Neon instead of Kubuntu, as Neon is developed by KDE Community, therefore it’s the purest KDE experience you can get. Below, you can find a list a widgets, applications and customisations which made my life easier (again, big thanks to Maciek for helping with the migration!).

Widgets:

• (Add widgets)
  • system load viewer [set compact view]
  • Global menu
• (Add widgets > Get new widgets > Download new plasma widgets)
  • event calendar (replace standard clock & calendar)
• from github
  • https://github.com/jsalatas/plasma-pstate

Applications (installed through Discover)

• thermal monitor
• redshift + redshift control
• latte
• dropbox
• netspeed widget

Terminal

• yakuake (drop-down terminal activated with F12)
• workrave

sudo apt install yakuake workrave htop
yakuake &
latte-dock &

Tweaks

• Hide titlebars in all windows (you can move windows by holding left-Alt)

I’ll try to keep it up-to-date. Hope someone will find it useful. I did already, while installing Neon on the second and third machine 😉