kde

  1. software
  2. desktop

KDE

Works well! Like the "retro" look compared to GNOME.

I first returned to KDE in 2026 after getting a new "play laptop" in the form of the framework-12, which is a "2-in-1" laptop that I was hoping to use as a tablet but turned out to be too thick for that purpoes.

Seems like KDE's "touch mode" (which makes UI elements bigger) does not trigger? It's still relatively useable.

night mode is only night light, would like reverse video too (fixed in Forky!)

loving the info center, no idea how i got there or how to get back

On-screen keyboard

Plasma Keyboard is now mature enough, previously one had to install maliit-keyboard and it in the "virtual keyboard" dialog, which i found in this discussion.

Auto-rotation

Out of the box, auto-rotation doesn't work on the Framework 12 on Debian 13 trixie. It might be fixed in 14.

To fix the rotating display issue, you need to install iio-sensor-proxy hack at udev and then reboot:

sudo apt install iio-sensor-proxy
sudo sed -i 's/.*iio-buffer-accel/#&/' /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-iio-sensor-proxy.rules
sudo udevadm trigger --settle
sudo systemctl restart iio-sensor-proxy
sudo reboot

To see if the sensors work, try: monitor-sensor --accel. For example, a normally sitting laptop flipped to the side and back should show this:

anarcat@dorothea:~$ monitor-sensor --accel
    Waiting for iio-sensor-proxy to appear
+++ iio-sensor-proxy appeared
=== Has accelerometer (orientation: normal, tilt: vertical)
    Accelerometer orientation changed: left-up
    Tilt changed: tilted-up
    Accelerometer orientation changed: normal
    Tilt changed: vertical

In my case, after installing iio-sensor-proxy patching its udev, and restarting services, the above worked, but Plasma didn't pick it up, I had to reboot for the fix to be complete.

This is a known issue with some component part of Ubuntu and Debian

I filed this as a new topic before finding this.

Other settings

Part of my annoyance with desktop environments like KDE and GNOME is how hard it is to track changes across machines and carry my configuration around. I'm used to text file configs and while that might exist in KDE, I have mostly clicked-clicked my way through the (numerous) settings in KDE instead.

Thankfully, there's a little "Highlight Changed Settings" setting in the "hamburger menu" of the main "System Settings" app that shows a yellow dot next to each section where a non-default settings resides. So here's my poor-man's configuration management:

Created . Edited .