Linux

I always install Guake. It's a drop-down terminal emulator and it can be heavily configured with hotkeys. I have it pop open/close with one key and I can split the terminal horizontally or vertically as many times as I want with a couple other hotkeys.

It's so ridiculously efficient (as a developer) that I can't stand to not have it installed at this point.

I like to set up klipper actions to do automation on certain clipboard actions. I have them for sending certain URLs to special programs, converting credit card charge emails into a new item in a spreadsheet, doing 2 bandcamp things. I used to have some cool automation set up with starting and stopping activities, but they removed that functionality and now I have a worse one with the command output widget. I also love using window rules to customize my programs and where and how they appear.

blur

Focus follows mouse and unchecking the option to auto raise the active window. Couldn't live without it and being used to it has made me extremely clumsy when I do pick up my Windows work laptop.

I change the taskbar clock to be a one-line MM/DD HH:MM:SS format, drop in my customized locale (based on en-US for maximum compatibility, but without having to deal with US formats and units that I'm not fond of), and point the taskbar shortcut for my text editor to a script that creates a pre-named file and launches the editor with autosave enabled. Because having to manually save and come up with a name for your spur-of-the-moment notes sucks, automatically generating 20260831_text_1 is so much better than a, b, a2, etc.

XFCE specific, I get rid of the second panel full of launchers. Acquired taste, but also Chicago95 theme and icon pack.

KDE here.

Icons: Candy; Plasma Style Sweet; Window decs : sweet-dark; Autohide Icons-only task manager at the bottom (RIP Latte :( ), always on top panel for my secondary monitor, autohide top panel on the primary.

I actually use and like Activities, I have General, Game, Code, System, Work all with their own workflows and pinned apps etc.

I lean pretty heavily on mouse gestures using logid with a MxMaster 3. Switch activities, control music, switch apps etc.

I have the gesture button pop up Kando which can do ALL sorts of things, basically I can do 90+% of things super fast without touching the keyboard. Not that I dislike the keyboard, using it now, but sometimes I don't want to bother.

Top centre of panel has a command output widget with cat CurrentShort.txt which pulls local temp/humidity from a couple of sensors via HomeAssistant. Hover has weather scraped from Aus BoM and a bunch of other informative stuff and if I click it it runs a script with

kdialog --geometry 1024x1024 --textbox /dev/stdin <<< $(cat CurrentInfo.txt)

which pops up a dialog with a weeks forecast among other things. I also use the command output widget for cpu/gpu temps and fan speeds to the left of the status bar, which is on the right.

The Wunderground widget is pretty cool too, find local weather stations and pop them in a panel.

In KDE my favorite is an extension to the window manager, for auto tiling: https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite or install it from Settings > Window Management > KWin Scripts, then click "Get New" and search for "Krohnkite" by anametologin. Development is a bit slow at the moment, but it does the job well.

I like that there are different layouts available, meaning different logic how a window should be placed and sized. I can switch between layouts on the fly. Every virtual desktop can have their own layout by standard, in example my fourth desktop is always untiled like a normal desktop. Exceptions to specific windows or applications to not tile them can be added too. So the usual stuff. It comes with some features not seen in other tiling window managers. In example I can convert any window into a "Dock". A dock would then be always at the edge or screen, similar to the KDE bar; basically making the screen area to tile windows smaller. Super cool.

Edit: Rephrased a bit to make it more clear and added some more info.

Haven't had a vanilla install since KDE 5 came out, but the biggest thing I use far from the default install is Karousel

The colour scheme. White screens are one of the things that trigger my migraines.

This in turn leads to my modifying several other visual aspects of the desktop, because a lot of widget set themes come with scrollbars that don't work well with really dark colours. I also turn animations and automagic snapping and desktop navigation facilities off, because I find them annoying. Kindly behave like it's 1999 and don't do anything I don't explicitly tell you to do, Mr. Desktop.

And then I embed a conky instance in the second desktop for general monitoring—CPU activity (composite and by thread), memory in use, disk space, network usage, temperatures, fan levels, and greediest processes all conveniently in a single view that doesn't require me figuring out what I did with the window.

kde plasma

Mouse: increase pointer speed to 0.8

Sound: change volume increment to 2%

Sound: mute notification sounds

Colours:

Breeze Dark

Material Black Blueberry Icons

Oxygen Neon Cursors

KDE-Story-Blue-SDDM (login screen) with a different background

Screen Locking:

Never

Power Management:

When inactive: Do Nothing

Dim automatically: Never

Turn off screen: Never

Session:

Ask for confirmation: Deselect

On login: Start with an empty session

Panel:

Long date

Date beside time

Modify system tray settings to show what I want

Widgets:

On panel:

Thermal monitor (1 for cpu, 1 for gpu)

Memory Usage

Desktop Folder

Folder View (set to a folder where I keep docs and spreadsheets)

Wastebin

Shutdown or Switch

Setting Caps Lock as the Hyper modifier key.

Setting a keyboard layout that is comfortable for both typing programming symbols and the own language (I use UK international). Consistency is king here.

And configuring the compose key.

Otherwise, I don't customize much, I think of it as a time sink.

I’m curious to hear what are some favorite things to change in any DE.

I like using a tiling wm instead of a traditional de which is keyboard-centric and lays things out nicely instead of overlapping everything which is kindof stupid. niri and noctalia v5 is my current stack. I also have the settings defined in Nix and synced to other user accounts.

Any particular widgets that you would recommend?

I have the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp monitors in my bar so that I can keep tabs on the CPU/RAM/Swap/Temp on my computer and if a freeze or lag spike occurs I have a better idea of what's going on.

Do you have a favorite theme?

Catppuccin, which has a Nix module that styles my apps as well. For font I use Inter and JetBrains Mono Nerd Font set through the Stylix module

Try wobbly windows, like in Garuda Linux

in m$win/kde-style-env: two row taskbar, titles always visible (like on win2k/kde3)

also sloppy focus and autoraise for mouse. extremely useful when you use many windows.

It's been a while since I've done a clean install, but I think the only thing I do to KDE is install Yakuake and set up 4 virtual desktops. Very handy when I'm working on my more involved projects.

Installing the Intel One Mono font, so much easier to read

I made myself a kwin script to arrange and rotate focus to specific windows (livestreams) on my second monitor, https://github.com/tarzasai/kwin-script-director

I've been using the CoW compositor lately and it has a neat, but possibly accidental, feature:

You get that "virtual desktop with additional screen space" feature, as was common on older X11 setups, with a little minimap that shows the real screens within the context of the virtual space. What's unusual is that it's possible to move the individual screens on a multi-monitor rig independently, rathrr than as a group.

Mine.

My biggest customizations are all of the software I install and use to do things with the computer.