My KDE Setup

This is an article describing my KDE setup. It gets updated on new changes.

Brief background: I've been using the XFCE desktop environment for more than 15 years until 2025-08 when I wanted to try out something new with some additional armenities and better styling. Then I set up a new GNOME desktop environment with GNOME 48 of Debian 13 (Trixie).

However, I've face some issues I could not fix over a couple of months. So I tested Debian 13 Live KDE on 2025-10-26 and found out that most things I had to add GNOME extensions and manual workarounds were built-in with KDE 6. So I migrated to KDE and this is my system configuration just like I did with my GNOME setup before.

With the switch to KDE, I also started with a dotfile management tool called chezmoi. In particular for KDE ini file management, I also installed chezmoi_modify_manager. The latter allows for ignoring KDE ini file settings that are host/user-specific and should not be synchronized across hosts. My settings for chezmoi+chezmoi_modify_manager will not be public as they contain too much personal settings where I don't want to spend too much effort for obfuscating before publishing. So far, I really, really like this kind of dotfile management concept.

I was using KDE maybe 20 years ago. I can not recall why I left KDE as a desktop environment and finally ended up using xfce for so long.

After my issues with GNOME 48, I tested KDE 6.3.6 on my Debian 13 machine: Lenovo X13 Gen5 2-in-1.

When GNOME shines with extensions, KDE shines with "almost anything is possible with out-of-the-box functionality". I think that's the better approach for people like me who need to adapt their system to their requirements. There are less side-effects and its much better tested.

To my surprise, KDE is way faster than GNOME shell when it comes to switching windows, virtual desktops or opening up the "start something" windows. KDE adds an enourmous amount of nice-to-haves to the Linux desktop. I need to play around with:

• mobile phone integration
• Activities
• Window rules
• and many more

As of 2025-11-11, I'm running KDE just for a few days. I still need to test it for the upcoming weeks/months in order to come to final conclusions. So far, it's looking great. When the dock unplug instability, resume crashes and other oddities aren't happening any more, this could be a very promising environment to me.

Software-wise, the transition was quite easy to do:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade       ## update the whole system before migration
reboot                                    ## to make sure latest software is running
sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop sddm  ## install KDE and its login manager
reboot                                    ## reboot into sddm and KDE Plasma Wayland	  

There is some cleanup I could do but so far, I kept GNOME just in case:

sudo apt remove gnome-shell gnome-session gnome-shell-extensions gdm3
sudo apt autoremove	  

• Signal desktop config needed to be removed and new connection made from scratch as Signal was looking for GNOME keyring.
• OpenVPN credentials needed to be entered in Network settings in order to remember them.
• GNOME Evolution was asking for OpenPGP credentials since they were stored in GNOME keyring.
  • ssh-agent is now handling it and needed larger values for remebering credentials.

Here are my settings for KDE System Settings:

• Mouse & Touchpad
  • Touchpad
    • Scrolling: activate "Invert scroll direction (Natural scrolling)"
• Keyboard
  • Keyboard
    • enable Layouts
      • Add: "English (US)" → "English (US, intl., with dead keys)"
      • Key Bindings
        • "Caps Lock behavior": "Make Caps Lock act as an additional Ctrl modifier […]"
  • Shortcuts
    • KRunner
      • Launch: add "Ctrl-F8"
    • Spectacle
      • "Capture Rectagular Region": Print Screen
    • Accessability
      • remove shortcut from Screen Reader
    • Keyboard Layout Switcher: remove shortcuts
    • KWin
      • replace "Switch to Desktop 1-4" → Ctrl F9-F12
      • "Window to Desktop 1-4" → Shift Ctrl F9-F12
• Touchscreen
  • (nothing special here so far but I may add some gestures in future as I own a 2-in-1 device.)
• Disks & Cameras
  • Device Auto-Mount
    • enable: "All devices" → "On Attach"
    • enable: "Automatically mount removable media that have never been mounted before"
• Wallpaper
  • Wallpaper type: Slideshow
  • (replace the default background folder with my personal photographs of the month)
• Colors & Themes
  • Global Theme
    • "Breeze Twilight" (default) looks good and icon contrast and so forth is working.
      • I tested "Debian Breeze" but had display issues with low contrast icons (dark gray icons on black background). So I guess it's better to stick to defaults here.
    • Colors: "Breeze Light" (default) looks good and icon contrast and so forth is working.
    • Night Light
      • Switching times: Sunset and sunrise at manual location
      • (select location on map)
    • System sounds
      • disable notification sounds
    • Login Screen (SDDM)
      • I currently installed "WhiteSour-dark" because I dislike the look of the "maya" default.
      • Behavior
        • Automatically log in: (main user)
          • I do have full disk encryption on my devices so there is no need to authenticate the user as well on a single-user device. Make sure that (auto) screen lock protects you as well.
• Default Applications
  • Default Applications
    • (according to my personal taste)
• Window Management
  • Window Behavior
    • Focus
      • Window activation policy: "Focus follows mounse (mouse precedence)
        • I still need to test other "Focus follows mounse" variants though
      • Delay focus by: 0 ms
  • Window Rules
    • looks promising: needs investigation!
  • Virtual Desktops: create 4 virtual desktops
• Activities
  • Lean what this is and if it is an interesting feature to me.
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6HmmNi4LM This guy (also coming from xfce) is thinking great on Activities.
    • Activities in the KDE docu (link is about Plasma 5 I guess)
    • reddit discussion on usage of Activities → a great suggestion is this comment where somebody suggest that everybody is creating an activity for video conferences. However, I think I want to access all types of apps and windows from within a video conference. So I'm still thinking about what I may get from Activities.
• General Behavior
  • Animation speed: I prefer very fast settings here
• Search
  • File Search
    • (add folders according to your liking)
  • Plasma Search → very important to me as it defines search result order when looking for anything
    • "Windows" on top!
    • Applications
    • disable
      • Web Search Keywords
      • Terminate Applications
• Screen Locking
  • (to my liking)
  • Configure Appearance …
    • I currently like "Joy Lock Screen" but I've selected one particular lock screen background for each of my local users. This helps me remembering to enter the corresponding password and not a wrong one.
• Region & Language
  • Language: American English
  • Time: en_AT.UTF8
  • Currency: en_AT.UTF8
  • Measurements: en_AT.UTF8
  • Paper Size: en_AT.UTF8
  • Address: de_AT.UTF8
  • Name Style: de_AT.UTF8
  • Phone Numbers: de_AT.UTF8
• Power Management
  • On AC Power
    • Supend Session
      • When inactive: do nothing
      • When power button pressed: Show logout screen
      • When laptop lid closed: Do nothing
  • On Battery
    • Supend Session
      • When inactive: Sleep after 60min
      • When power button pressed: Show logout screen
      • When laptop lid closed: Do nothing
  • On low Battery
    • Supend Session
      • When inactive: Sleep after 5min
      • When power button pressed: Show logout screen
      • When laptop lid closed: Do nothing
  • Advanced Power Setting
    • Battery Levels
      • Low level: 10%
      • Critical level: 5%
      • At critical level: Hibernate
    • Charge Limit
      • Stop charging at: 65%
      • Start charging once below: 45%
• Software Update
  • Manually weekly
• Session
  • Desktop Session
    • Session Restore
      • Start with an empty session
  • Locations
    • set everything to $HOME except:
      • Desktop
      • Downloads → my personal download folder
      • Templates → my personal template folder
      • Music → my personal music folder

KDE 6 on Debian 13 comes with a wide variety of widgets. However, some functionality is still missing for me. You can install additional widgets using the "Get New Widgets" tool.

As with GNOME, the Widgets get installed for each user separately via its particular install mechanism. So updates aren't done via system update mechanism. Furthermore, each user has to update them separately.

I prefer a minimalistic indicator, showing only dots instead of previews/windows/... and thus, maximizing screen space for the "Icons-and-Text Task Manager".

I like this method to easily spot the mouse pointer when using multiple screens.

Note that by default, wiggling the mouse does highlight the mouse pointer by temporarily making it huge.

• context on task bar
  • Show Alternatives…
    • "Icons-and-Text Task Manager"
• context on virtual desktop preview
  • Pager Settings
    • General
      • General: disable "Show window outlines"
      • Text display: "Desktop number"
• context on Panel → "Show panel configuration"
  • Panel Height: 44 (default) → 20
  • Position: Top
  • Style: disable "floating"
• contect on "EN" (language)
  • disable "Show icon on system tray"
• context on "Clipboard"
  • General
    • disable "Save history across desktop sessions
    • History size: 50 entries
    • activate "Keep the selection and clipboard the same"
    • Text selection: Always save in history
  • Actions Configuration
    • This looks very nice → play around with it
• context on "Power and Battery" (might be hidden in a dropdown)
  • activate "Show Bettery Percentage on Icon When Not Fully Charged"
• System Tray Settings
  • Entries
    • switch to "Always shown":
      • Networks
      • Power and Battery
      • Clipboard
• context on "Digital Clock" Settings
  • Appearance
    • Date format: ISO date
  • Calendar
    • Show week numbers
    • first day: Monday
    • activate Holiday plugin
  • Holidays
    • set to Austria + other countries (customers)
• context on Panel: "Add or Manage Widgets" → add additional widgets:
  • Hard Disk Activity
  • Individual Core Usage
  • Lock/Logout
    • General
      • Show actions: deselect everything except:
        • Show logout screen
  • Memory Usage
  • Network Speed
    • "System Monitor Settings"
      • Sensors Details
        • remove "Total Sensors" (to get rid of percentage number above the panel chart)
• remove "Peek at Desktop" icon

This is the name of the KDE screenshot tool.

• Settings
  • Image Saving
    • Filename: <yyyy>-<MM>-<dd>T<HH>.<mm>.<ss> -- screenshots

• Super + . → Emoticon chooser (default)

• My OpenVPN connection does not reconnect after resume. While this is considered as normal, the process of re-starting is cumbersome. At the moment, my process is:
  • Click on "Networks" in the panel
  • Disconnect all network connections
  • Restart all network connections and enter password (was stored with GNOME 48)
  • If this doesn't help: open network preferences and switch VPNs until it's working
• Jitsi Meet: Custom background doesn't work: green/red lines instead of image.
  • Might be related to Wayland as I've had that same issue with GNOME 48 before as well.
• [2025-11-11 Tue] External sound card was not re-activated after plugging in to the USB-C/Thunderbolt dock.
• Wifi connection frequently (3-5 times per hour?) disconnects for a couple of seconds.

Unfortunately, I do have some issues which causes situations I have to reboot and kill all running apps during the process. This is not pleasant.

2 out of 3 Wayland user sessions crashed when I unplugged the USB-C/Thunderbolt cable of my dock.

Some lines from journalctl (there's a ton more and I'm unsure which ones are important):

[...]
Nov 11 08:17:34kwin_wayland_wrapper[22923]: kwin_wayland_drm: atomic commit failed: Permission denied
[...]
Nov 11 08:17:35kernel: audit: type=1400 audit(1762849055.148:154): apparmor="ALLOWED" operation="capable" class="cap" profile="Xorg" pid=274073 comm="Xorg" capability=12  capname="net_admin"
Nov 11 08:17:35kwin_wayland_wrapper[22923]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 11 08:17:35kwin_wayland_wrapper[22923]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
[...]
Nov 11 08:17:41systemd[17336]: plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service: start operation timed out. Terminating.
Nov 11 08:17:41systemd[17336]: plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Nov 11 08:17:41systemd[17336]: Failed to start plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service - Xdg Desktop Portal For KDE.
[...]
Nov 11 08:17:42sddm-helper[274255]: gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file
[...]
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[1799]: plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service: start operation timed out. Terminating.
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[1]: Stopping user@116.service - User Manager for UID 116...
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Activating special unit exit.target...
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Stopped target default.target - Main User Target.
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Stopped target sound.target - Sound Card.
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Stopping filter-chain.service - PipeWire filter chain daemon...
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Stopping pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio...
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[274137]: Stopping xdg-permission-store.service - sandboxed app permission store...
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[1799]: plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Nov 11 08:17:52systemd[1799]: Failed to start plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service - Xdg Desktop Portal For KDE.
[...]	  

On resume from suspend2ram, (the same) 2 or my 3 Wayland sessions crashed:

Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at ""
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at ""
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at ""
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_core: Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 device (No such device)
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[58967]: kwin_wayland_drm: failed to open drm device at "/dev/dri/renderD128"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[117301]: Initializing  "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt6/plugins/plasma/kcms/systemsettings/kcm_fonts.so"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[117301]: Initializing  "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt6/plugins/plasma/kcms/systemsettings/kcm_style.so"
Nov 12 kwin_wayland_wrapper[90062]: Failed to write to the pipe: Bad file descriptor.
[...]	  

On analyzing the situation with the 3rd remaining user, ChatGPT thinks:

• KWin’s Wayland compositor can’t re-open the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) device after resume
• On suspend, the kernel driver for your GPU unbinds and removes its /dev/dri/* nodes.
• On resume, the kernel recreates them — but only the active user’s KWin (user3) manages to reconnect to the re-appeared DRM device.
• The other Wayland compositors (for user1 and user2) still have file descriptors pointing to the old, now-invalid /dev/dri/renderD128.
• They keep running, but cannot render anything — hence the black screen / text terminal look.
• What’s going on technically
  • KWin Wayland runs directly on the DRM device. When that device disappears (e.g. GPU suspend/unbind), there’s no mechanism in current KWin to re-open /dev/dri/renderD128 for running sessions. Once it’s gone, the compositor can’t draw again without a full restart.
  • That’s why your sessions’ processes remain in memory but the display surface is dead.