I use a Linux distro with kde, so I have a lot of customization available. I like trying other distros in VMs, but stuff like windows (no need to copy really kde is similar by default) and Mac is a pain in the ass to use that way. so, I want to know what your os does that you think I should copy using kde’s customization. I’m looking for Mac in particular (bc I haven’t used it before) but any OS or desktop environment is fair game.
Hmm.
I have a manual screen-lock key combination. I have DPMS (auto power off when idle) on the monitor disabled when it’s unlocked and set to a short period when it’s locked. Powers on when I’m typing to unlock.
I haven’t touched KDE for a long time, but last I did, I believe that it was a stacking system. Back when I used a stacking window manager, I had the fourth mouse button set up to act as a “drag window” button. Could click anywhere on the window. I did like that.
I have a key combination set up to open a terminal with tmux with a shell, a web browser, and one of those dmenu text-based launcher clones (can’t remember which). Those are the things that I most frequently want access to.
I currently hide the status bar unless the Super key is held down. I’m not completely sure that this is the right way to go – it does mean that any important stuff needs to notify the user via the notification manager system. But it does provide a maximum of usable screen space.
No animations. They delay the time taken until what I just did is visually complete.
I have multiple numbered workspaces. I hit Super-q and then a number to jump to them, Super-c and then a number to move the focused window to one, and Super-1 and Super-2 to cycle forward and backward through them. There weren’t chosen to be mnemonic, but convenient to reach, as they’re operations that I do a fair bit.
Background is just a flat color (low-saturation medium blue, so not super-high contrast). I use sway, a tiling compositor, so I rarely see the background, so your mileage may vary. That being said, I started doing that years before I started using tiling. Background images were just more visual noise for me.
Killed window decorations (titlebar, close button, etc). This may not be reasonable for a stacking environment. They eat screen space and don’t display anything very useful. I use a tiling environment, so resizing and dragging isn’t necessary. I have a key combination to kill the currently-focused window, so I don’t need a close box. I don’t minimize windows – I do switch workspaces, which has some functional overlap – so I don’t need controls for that.
I have my mouse pointer auto-hide systemwide if I’m not moving the mouse or clicking its buttons for a few seconds.
I have a keystroke (Super-`) to dismiss notification manager messages from the keyboard. This may be the norm in desktop environments – I haven’t played with them since before notification managers were a thing.
The one thing that I’d kind of like to do that I don’t currently is to have a toroidal workspace model. Someone’s done this for emacs with buffer switching, which is where I saw it and thought “wow, that’s an excellent idea”, but it hasn’t been done for sway workspaces. Basically, normally you have a “ring” of workspaces that you can cycle through. I’d like to have a “ring of rings” (which in 3D, is a torus), since I normally I’m working on one project and have several workspaces (usually 1-4) associated with that project. I’d like to have a “ring” for each project, with different keystrokes to switch projects and switch workspaces within those projects. Sway probably could support that with just scripting, no core modifications, but I haven’t gotten around to it.