you know it's already been a while since KD plasma 6 released earlier this year and even though it already went through two major updates when it comes to more extensive customization like getting transparent windows or different panels to work it's still a bit more difficult many distributions used to offer the tools you need via their package manager but nowadays with the update to qd6 it's not always as simple so in today's video we are going to talk about some of these more advanced customization tools and how you can run them on KD plasma 6 but also at some of its already built in functionalities which you might not know about and without any further Ado let's get straight into it let's start off with the more obvious customization options adjustments to the panel start menu and of course themes and how you can get their transparent backgrounds I don't think it's wrong to say that KD plasma shows at least some resemblance to the Windows desktop in terms of layout and overall visuals a classic start menu with a taskbar or also called panel that stretches across the lower screen and of course quick menus to adjust some settings or see notifications but for many myself included this is not really the way how we always want to operate our desktop but this is not really a problem on Linux and especially with KD plasma since you can easily enter the edit mode move the panel around adjust its elements add margins or adjust more panels if you want you can make it look like Windows 11 Mac OS a different desktop environment or create your own unique look can feel one particularly important element is of course the start menu now if it's just the categories that are bothering you then you can edit them but it's not really changing much in terms of the layout itself now what KD plasma does offer Alternatives which you can access with a right click on the start menu icon it gets a lot more interesting once you head over to the software Center discover in here under plasma add-ons and plasma widgets you can find a couple of different start menus mixed in with other useful widgets that you can place on your desktop now one word of caution some of these widgets including the start menu are able or even have to execute some code to make them work properly usually not that big of a concern but maybe you should try look them up before you install them especially if they look a bit odd nevertheless with these widgets you can basically change the feeling of the desktop quite a lot and if you weren't sure which desktop environment you should go with in terms of design then KD plasma might be able to help you find your own personal workflow and perfect did let's move on to themes so first of all Global themes now a while back these have received some backlash since like some of the widgets from earlier they are allowed to execute code which has resulted in some problems my general recommendation for theming then is that you go through each category and install the theme or a mixture of them separately now many of you might have notic that a lot of themes show these beautiful frosted glass backgrounds but when you install the theme it's actually not transparent whatsoever now some elements like the right click menu can actually be made that way if you edit the theme application style but for once not every theme offers this and it also doesn't really go any further than that if we look at some of these themes again then you often notice the term quantum theme but what exactly is that well it's for an application called Quantum engine and it's a tool which allows you to edit a lot more properties including our background blur so the way how this works is that you first download the Phantom theme via the given link instead of just installing it and by the way I also like to do this step via a regular web browser since sometimes the inbu one doesn't open the link for some reason then you simply go ahead and download the theme file now the next step is of course installing the Phantom engine this depends a lot on distribution you're using so it's best if you just look up the steps for your specific one Fedora distro I use personally does have a native package available and you can preferably install it via the command line since finding it in the software store can be kind of difficult it should be noted however that some distributions separate the old qt5 version from the qt6 one which is the one needed for KD plasma 6 if you can't find anything related to qt6 or a default version like on Fedora don't worry there are also other ways how you can make Windows transparent but let's continue with Quantum first first you want to extract your download theme into a folder then you open up Quantum select the directory and press press install this theme now under the change delete Theme tab we want to select it from the drop- down list and configure the properties in order to make the changes actually apply to your applications you need to head over to the system settings and select either the Quantom light or dark theme in the application style category and after that it should apply to your system now again if quantum isn't available you don't want to use it or it simply doesn't work then there are of course Alternatives now some in the Linux Community recommend lightly but the problem is that it is somewhat unmaintained even the updated forks from the original now you can still install it and some dist rows also offer it in the repositories but it's no guarantee that it will work if you want to compile the application yourself then you can of course do so but due to its complexity it would go beyond the scope of this video different distributions different troubleshooting steps and all that the nuclear option is of course bluring everything and that's where kwin effects for blur comes into play it's a relatively new and more unknown project and can mostly just be installed by building it yourself unless you are on Arch or nyos it is however quite well documented for a couple of disos and you shouldn't really run into many issues simply copy the commands for your drro and let it work its magic once it's finished make sure that you disable the KD plasma native blur effect apply it and then you can go ahead and enable better blur instead very nice one more customization tool that was quite popular on K plasma 5 was L do but the problem is that it's not really compatible with plasma 6 like at all now one not really replacement but slight enhancement to Plasma's default panel is the panel colorizer now like the kwin effects Force blur it's not really compatible with most dis Ros out of the box and it does change some default configurations around so I wouldn't really recommend it unless you know exactly what you're doing but just for completeness I thought it would be a good idea to at least mention it in this video As for the rest of KD plasma you probably know it dynamically changing the lock screen wallpaper like on Windows zooming or using the magnifier tool enabling Hot Corner actions when moving your mouse there changing the task switcher everything you can dream of is probably here somewhere and you don't necessarily need to rely on external programs to make plasma look beautiful the right theme with the right color combinations does not necessarily need transparency in my opinion and it's also not like plasma doesn't have it at all but hey if you want more effects then now you know how you can get them but that's enough from me I really hope that I've provided you with some useful information on more advanced customization techniques on plasma X and if I missed something then please let me know down in the comments before I end this video I quickly wanted to mention that if you want to support the channel make even better videos then please feel free to check out our membership program as well as our online shop whereas each sale helps to support various open source projects if you if you've liked this video then please make sure to show it with a like and also don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on any future videos I really had a blast making today's video so thank you so much for watching and all that's left to say now is good morning good afternoon or good evening wherever you are I'll see you around