I do love some transparency.
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- KDE Plasma can be highly customized.
- If you want KDE Plasma to look like Windows 11, you can.
- It only takes the addition of a theme and a widget to make this work.
KDE Plasma is a remarkably customizable desktop environment. On top of being highly flexible, it’s also fast and stable, so it would make perfect sense why you might want to migrate from Windows to a KDE Plasma-powered desktop distribution.
But if you want to carry over the look and feel of Windows 11, how do you do that? With a bit of tweaking.
Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as hard as you might think it is; you just have to know where to look, what to add, and how to set it up.
Changing the theme
What you’ll need: I’ll demonstrate this via KDE Neon, which includes the most recent release of the KDE Plasma desktop.
First, open System Settings and go to Colors & Themes > Global Theme.
You’ll find all kinds of themes that can be added to your instance of KDE Plasma.
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If you don’t find a theme you like in the preinstalled list, click Get new. In the resulting window, search for Win and see if you find a theme you like. There’s one called Windows Eleven Plasma 6 that’s quite nice. Once you find the theme you like, click it and then click Install.
Install as many themes as you like.
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After the theme is installed, go back to Global Theme and select it. When prompted, click Apply.
Adding a Windows 11-like menu
The next thing we have to do is add a new menu to the mix. For this, we’re going to use Menu 11 Enhanced, which can be found in the KDE Store. Here’s how to install it.
1. Download the file
Download the Menu 11 Enhanced file and save it to your downloads directory.
2. Extract the file
Open your file manager and navigate to the Downloads directory. Right-click the downloaded file and select Extract.
3. Install the menu
Change into the newly created menu, right-click on an empty space, and select “Open terminal here.” Once the terminal opens, issue the command:
The install should happen instantly (all it does is move the files to the necessary location).
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Log out and log back in.
4. Add the menu
Right-click the panel and select “Add or manage widgets.” From the resulting pop-up, click and drag Menu 11 Enhanced to the panel. Once you’ve taken care of that, click Exit Edit Mode.
You can add as many widgets as you like.
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Almost done.
5. Add a separator
At the moment, all of the panel widgets are probably situated on the left side of the panel. We have to change that.
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Right-click the panel and select Show Panel Configuration. From the pop-up, click the Add New drop-down. Click Spacer and drag it to the left side of the panel. You might have to add 2 spacers to get everything moved to the center.
You’ll probably have to add two spacers on the left side.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
After that, click Exit Edit Mode, and you’re done. You should now have a KDE Plasma desktop that resembles Windows 11.
