1 - Plasma widgets Plasma is built on widgets. Everything you see, from a menu, to a notification icon, to a panel, is a widget. You can arrange them however you like, resize them and add them to a panel. The best thing about this is that you can pretty much make a desktop that looks any way you want, combining widgets in any number of ways. A nice feature is also activities: activities kinda work like virtual desktops, except you can have a different desktop behaviour and different widgets between each activity. 2 - Panels Panels are the base of KDE Plasma's layout. A panel can be created on any screen edge, top, right, left, or bottom. TO create a panel, you can just right click the desktop, and select Add Panel. You'll get the option to add the default panel, with its menu, taskbar, notifications, and clock, a menu bar panel, which is just en empty panel on the top of the screen with a global menu bar added, or and empty panel for you to fill in with widgets. 3 - Widgets Adding a widget is simple: just right click on the desktop, and select "add widget". A sidebar will show up, and let you search or browse available widgets. Just drag the one you want to add, where you want it to be: on the desktop, or on a panel. To resize or move a widget, you can click the main desktop menu up top, with the three lines. This will make a few icons appear aside every widget. The first one allows you to resize by dragging it to the desired size. The second one will let you rotate the widget, also by dragging the icon. The third icon is the one you'll want to click to configure the widget's behaviour. Finally, the little red trashcan icon removes the widget. By default, Plasma ships with a ton of widgets. A few highlights are these ones: - Application dashboard: this one allows you to get a button that, when clicked, will display a dashboard much like what GNOME offers by default. It allows you to search applications or widgets and start them with one click, as well as providing sytem commands, such as rebooting or shutting down. - Application Menu: for those who don't like the default Kickoff KDE menu, the Application menu might do the trick: it stores your favorites on a bar on the left, and only displays app categories, which you can navigate quickly to start any app. It of course has search integrated. - Color picker: for graphic designers, this is a handy one: just drag it on the desktop or on a panel, and it allows you to pick any point of the desktop, grab the color, and save it in a little menu for later reference. - Display configuration: this one is a new addition to KDE Plasma 5.14. It allows you to quickly switch between display layouts, and enable presentation mode if you're giving a lecture or a talk for example. - GLobal menu: mac os x fans will love this options: adding a global menu to a panel allows you to get the menus out of your windows, and into a unique zone on your desktop. It will work with GTK Apps and KDE apps, but some apps might require an optional package or not work with it at all. - Icons only task manager: the default task manager has the older Windows style: it hosts windows with the icon and text. If you want to get closer to a dock style panel, or to windows 10 way of doing things, this one only displays the icons of the applications that are running. - Present windows: want to get a quick button to see all your open windows at a glance ? The present window widget will do just that, mimicking the "expose" feature of mac os X. - Quicklaunch: if you want to have quick access shortcuts to some applications, the quicklaunch plasmoid will do the trick: just drag and drop apps from the menu onto it, and it will create handy shortcuts for each application. - Web browser widget: want to keep an eye on a particular webpage ? Just add this widget to your desktop, and select which URL you want ! 4 - Changing the layout Now, it's up to you to try and experiment with the layout you want. Here are a few examples I made: - Mac OS X clone: for this one, I just added the new panel "Menu bar" to my desktop, on which I dragged the application menu, the notification tray, as well as the clock and the user switcher. For the dock, I installed latte-dock (sudo apt install latte-dock on KDE neon). - Windows 10 style: I just replaced the standard task manager with the icons only task manager, and added a show desktop icon on the far right corner of the panel, and the "present windows" widget on the left. - elementary OS style: For this one, I created a top panel, on which I added the "simple menu" plasmoid, the digital clock on which I added the date in long format, and the notification tray on the right, with panel spacers between each widget to allow me to center the clock. I added a small panel with latte dock, on the bottom of the screen, to get the dock experience. I configured it to disable the zoom, and everything was set ! Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP