Pretty (Inter)face
Tutorial – Plasma
If you want features, bells and whistles, and configurability in spades, your best choice of desktop is probably KDE's Plasma desktop. Navigating and discovering all that's on offer can be a challenge, though.
While many user interface designers advocate simplicity and simplified decision-making for users (which often results in no decision-making at all), the KDE community [1] has stubbornly gone the other way, jam-packing all manner of features and doodads into its Plasma [2] desktop (see the "KDE Is Not a Desktop" box).
That said, if you want simple, Plasma can do simple, too. You can ignore all the bell and whistles and just get on with your life. But where is the fun in that?
Camouflage
A default Plasma desktop looks like Figure 1. Usually, you will find a panel at the bottom of the screen, a start button holding menus at the bottom left, and a tray on the right – all quite conventional, boring, and even Windows-y.
[...]
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