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.
Caps Lock recapped to compose. Much more useful, especially for those of us who sometimes need to type “other” letters, but prefer US dvorak keyboard layout.
I don’t really need the compose key, but rebinding caps does sound tempting. But what to bind it to… Hmm
I bound it to normal shift, because I fat-finger caps instead of shift all the time anyway lol
I have it activate a layer when held where all the other keys are remapped.
I also use a 45% keyboard (https://wilba.tech/jd45) and its done in the keyboard’s firmware (https://qmk.fm/), so I need the extra keys.
I have an older model of the JD45 with a full bottom row.
I’ve been meaning to get my hands on a QMK board, but didn’t get around to it yet. Having an extra layer with macros or something sounds super powerful. I wonder whether I’m able to replicate a similar behavior without touching the board’s firmware. But I guess with enough registered keybinds it should work lol
what’s the compose key? never heard of it but any excuse to not waste a key on caps lock sounds great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
Works in X11 and Wayland.
Not as powerful as Emacs’s input methods, but it covers a lot of common cases.
Basically, hitting compose causes the next two keystrokes to “combine”. For example, / + o = ø, as well as the other letters that are useful to us with extra letters in the alphabet. In addition to that it provides a myriad of other characters such as copyright, trademark, just to name a few.
While I agree with the general premise that Caps Lock is in a terrible place – that’s prime real estate and people just don’t use it that much, I swap Caps Lock and Control and have Menu remapped to Compose. If you’re typing English, you’re gonna use Control a lot more than Compose.
Yes, love the compose key. My native language (Dutch) uses accents occasionally, but typing on a regular Dutch layout with dead keys is awful, especially as a software dev who uses loose quotes a lot.
It’s also great for symbols. No more ddg’ing “euro symbol” and copying from Wikipedia, just type compose, e, =.
Does dutch have ß as well?
Also, noggie keyboard is alright for normal typing, but once you get into more geeky computery, some characters are awfully placed. ’ " / { > just to name a few. That’s why I started using US layout to begin with, and I later migrated to YS Dvorak because I’m that guy (PS: You should totally switch to Dvorak, bro)
No thankfully Dutch doesn’t have any additional letters, just accents.
I have been wanting to try different keyboard layouts for a while. The issue is that my employer probably wouldn’t be super happy with like 50% output for some days or weeks.
- super+u shows a wofi menu allowing me to fuzzy find a credential from my password manager and copy its username
- super+p same thing but for passwords
- super+o same thing but for TOTP codes
- super+t allows me to select an area of the screen, take a screenshot, run it through OCR, translate it to English via the deepl API, and then pop up the result as a desktop notification and also copy it to the clipboard. (I’m not fluent in the language of the country I live in)
- ”lock” and „request” based suspend management, so my backup scripts or other long running jobs can keep the computer from sleeping until they are done.
Grim, slurp, tesseract, and apparently the deepl SDK for Ruby? That was an interesting choice, younger me.
#! /bin/zsh
# Select an area of the screen, Screenhot, OCR, and translate it to english.
temp_image=$(mktemp --suffix '.png')
grim -g "$(slurp)" "$temp_image"
# DPI of 120 seems to work OK for screenshots.
source_text=$(tesseract "$temp_image" - --dpi 120 -l pol+deu)
translated_text=$(~/scripts/translate "$source_text")
wl-copy $translated_text
notify-send 'Translation: ' "$translated_text" --expire-time=60000 --category 'translation'
rm $temp_image
Translate script:
#! /bin/ruby
require_relative 'deepl_request'
puts Translator::DeeplRequest
.new(ARGV.join ' ')
.translation
This script is a bit hacky and one-off, I wouln’t just copy-paste it.
I haven’t had any detailed experience or suggestions, but if your considering anything, what about backup features.
Some sort of automatic remote realtime backup might be useful to some people.
Minimalism.
kde kinda just comes like that, taskbar and important apps (system stuff, browser, etc.) only. I’ve added some stuff but only things I use or anticipate using.
I meant more like not taking up shit tons of hard drive space, memory, or CPU, not having a billion dependencies, starting instantaneously, low cognitive load, etc.
It was kindof a sarcastic dig at KDE. I deserve downvotes.
this kind of angst is valuable; I had considered looking into KDE until I read your comment and now I’ll pass on it
I feel the sentiment though, my daily driver is built off of ubuntu-server headless. I find it’s just the right amount of “has searchable solutions for near everything” and “is properly minimal” to base my workstation off of. I run X11, pulse, awesomewm, firefox, lxterm… fairly standard stuff but without gdm, gnome/kde even installed it’s pretty lightweight. The entire os uses ~780mb of ram (+23gb for firefox tabs lmao). It gets the job done, keeps my skills relevant maintaining the automation that builds it, is dead simple to troubleshoot, and has very few black boxes.
in my experience plasma 6 and gnome (idk what the newest one is but I’ve tried the newest in the last couple days on a couple distros) both boot just as quick and use about the same amount of resources.
KDE Frameworks used to be a single package (I think with KDE 4?) that people complained about because it contained unnecessary features for the software they want to use. They split it into different packages because of that, so software could only depend on the part of Frameworks that it actually used. And now people complain that KDE software has “a billion dependencies”. Unbelievable.
I never really looked into Linux or any alternate OSs before now. This thread is super interesting and a very fun read.
if you ever feel like trying it, Linux is easy to try in a virtual machine or on real hardware (do not install it to your main machine when you first try it except in a vm, which does not change your system). I’d recommend trying fedora workstation and fedora kde because they are decent examples of the best two desktop environments. mint exists as well, but I personally wouldn’t recommend it. btw, there is no “best” distro, just find one that works for you and ignore the tribalism.
download a virtual machine app (I’d recommend virtual box, boxes is great too but iirc its Linux only), download the .iso file (this is the installer) for the distro you want to try from the official website, in your app of choice create a virtual machine and select the file you downloaded. from there you just follow the installer. it may help to look up how to use the app you chose bc VMs can be a little iffy. if you’ve ever used an emulator, it’s a similar process but with ISOs instead of roms.
