I finally got KDE looking the way I always wanted — and it starts with one setting most people skip

KDE isn’t particularly pretty looking out of the box. The desktop is minimal, but still quite functional, and that comes at a cost — a rather ugly out-of-the-box experience. That being said, KDE’s built-in theme engine is quite powerful and supports a variety of cool-looking effects.

Installing and configuring it can be a bit of a nightmare, though, and not a lot of these things ship by default on most Linux distributions. The core component is a package known as Klassy, which completely overrides the native KDE windowing system, and to great effect, even if it might be a bit bloated for my tastes.

Installing the necessary packages

Getting the basics right

By default, KDE doesn’t ship with many tweaks out of the box. While the Theme Store does exist, it is in no way feature-complete, and there are a few additional packages that make things a lot cleaner.

To begin, you’ll want the following packages, all sourced from the Arch User Repository (AUR):

• kvantum
• qt5ct
• qt6ct
• klassy-bin

This also applies to CachyOS, in which you can use the Paru command to download and install these packages.

paru -S kvantum qt5ct qt6ct klassy-bin

Breaking it down, we have Kvantum first, which is a KDE theme manager. KDE’s built-in theme manager is woefully stripped down, and there are many more tweakable configs you can configure in Kvantum.

Qt5ct and qt6ct are your qt5 and qt6 packages, respectively, and offer a bit more consistent theming all around when deployed.

Klassy, on the other hand, is where the meat of the customization lies. It’s essentially a custom window/titlebar tool, and has a bunch of preinstalled themes to tinker with. Klassy also has a bit of additional tweaks in regard to the whole KDE windowing system, such as being able to add in borders and swapping out the title bar action buttons (close, minimize, and maximize).

Configuring KDE to actually look good

Tweaks, tweaks, and more tweaks

Of course, just installing the packages isn’t nearly enough. I had to tweak some deviously hidden settings to achieve a cleaner, more consistent look, centered on minimalism.

The first thing I did was enter Klassy’s theme menu. The main parameters to tweak here are icons, shapes, and window radius. I opted to go for a uniform look without any rounded corners.

I also added a small 4px yellow border around each window, which I’ve gotten used to with tiling window managers. I also managed to keep animations a bit snappier by increasing its speed.

Finally, all that was left to do was adjust the icon packs and cursor themes, for which I opted to go with the Pop Icon and Bibata Cursor themes respectively, which managed to look fantastic overall.

Don’t shy away from the Theme Store

Easier installs

Of course, configuring a bunch of tweaks manually isn’t exactly easy, nor is it beginner-friendly. It’s not reasonable to expect someone new to KDE (and Linux in general) to understand and tweak these settings.

Thankfully, KDE does come with a rather neat built-in theme store, which can be extensive. There is a seemingly endless number of user-submitted themes here, ranging from macOS clones to something a bit more exotic, like Windows Vista’s Aero theme.

Accessing the theme store is as easy as navigating to the settings menu and selecting it in the Colors and Themes section. You should find a “Get New” button on the right side of the user interface that opens the theme store.

Once within, give it a moment to initialize, and search for keywords specific to your theme. Hit download/install and wait until the process finishes. You’ll have to manually set the theme for it to be applied.

While it's a much simpler process, it should be kept in mind that KDE doesn’t exactly monitor all the packages submitted through its theme store. As such, it would be wise to exercise caution when downloading random scripts off the internet.

A word on tiling for KDE

KDE is perfect ... almost. One thing I greatly miss from KDE Plasma is the lack of any distinctive auto-tiling options. Yes, it does technically have a manual tiler, but it is far from being intuitive. Not to mention, KDE’s built-in tiling requires you to manually place windows, which can be a bit of a pain to use.

This is where a few extensions like Polonium and Kronhkite come into play, both of which attempt to automate the whole process. When combined with something like Klassy and Kvantum, it enables very, very powerful theming.

Unfortunately, tiling on KDE is still a miss. Some things just don't work well, and I personally wouldn’t recommend sticking with a proper tiling WM for the task.