Linux has plenty of different desktop environments to chose form. Lately, I have wondered what KDE is up to and after trying the latest Plasma desktop, I was instantly hooked. I have not used KDE for a long time so it took me a little while to find the settings for changing the timeout for the screen look.
By default, the lock screen setting is set to just 5 minutes. Since I work with multiple computers at the same time, this setting is too short. In order to change it, I had to google and to help me save time when I reinstall, I am publishing my notes here.
KDE Change lock screen timeout
- Open System Settings
- Search for “lock”
- Chose Screen Locking
- Lock screen automatically after 15 minutes
I’ve also increased the allow unlocking without password setting to 90 seconds. This way, I can just move the mouse to add another 15 minutes without entering my password.
Bonus KDE Plasma Tip
Use single mouse click to open directories
Many people hate the single-click method but I actually prefer it. Dolphin, the default file manage for KDE does not allow to change that value via the preference settings. So where is it?
To switch from double-click to the faster single-click method, find:
Workspace > Workspace Behavior > General Behavior as shown in the image below.
I think that KDE’s wording / labeling is a bit confusing but since it’s a setting I change once and then forget about it, I can live with it. The magic happens as soon as I switch from the “Selects them” to the “Opens them” option. Another important step which KDE uses is that all changes must be confirmed before leaving the settings window. Hopefully the developers will reconsider that relic from the 90’s since, to the best of my knowledge, most configuration pages dropped that extra step.
All in all, KDE is definitely worth checking out. XFCE is also an amazing window manager but setting up a WACOM tablet to only use one monitor is tedious. KDE Plasma reduces the drawing tablet configuration to a couple of mouse clicks and that’s it.
Manjaro has done an excellent job implementing the K Desktop and the snappy overall performance is always welcome. I’m also happy to say the Blender, FreeCAD and my usual tools of the trade are nicely integrated and over the next few days I will try to master Kate. Kate is the default text editor and hopefully capable of replacing Codium which is my current code editor. Since I am only interested in writing Python, Javascript and PHP code, Kate should do the trick. I will report about Kate in a few days.
If you have suggestions for advanced or little-known KDE Plasma tweaks then please leave a comment. Thank you for reading.
