Textbook of Linux

KDE (originally the K Desktop Environment, now a broader community producing many applications) and its flagship desktop KDE Plasma offer a highly customisable, feature-rich Linux desktop built around the Qt toolkit. Founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, KDE is the other great Linux desktop environment alongside GNOME—often characterised as "GNOME is minimalism; KDE is maximalism".

Plasma's hallmark is customisation. Nearly every aspect of the interface—panels, taskbars, themes, window behaviour, keyboard shortcuts, animations—is configurable through comprehensive settings dialogs. For power users who want to tweak their desktop to match their workflow, Plasma is paradise. The defaults are sane enough that people who don't want to tweak need not.

KDE's application suite is one of the largest in the Linux ecosystem: Dolphin (file manager), Konsole (terminal), Kate / KWrite (editors), Gwenview (images), Okular (documents), KDevelop (IDE), Kdenlive (video editing), and dozens more. Most work equally well outside Plasma, but they share a consistent look inside it.

Plasma supports both X11 and Wayland sessions, with Wayland becoming the default on newer releases. It is the default on Kubuntu, KDE Neon, openSUSE (optionally), Garuda, and Manjaro KDE, among many others. Its resource use has come down significantly from the bloated days of KDE 4, and modern Plasma is remarkably light on modern hardware.