My mother is not a very advanced computer user, she only uses the web browser (Firefox), LibreOffice Writer, a media player (SMPlayer), and plays KPatience. She uses Plasma on Arch Linux, which I regularly update and maintain. While Arch Linux may seem like an advanced distro, it is a perfect fit for her, because it is easy for me to maintain, difficult for her to break, and she has no idea she is using an “advanced distro”. And Plasma is very comfortable for her.
The new update to Plasma 6 broke the Legacy Kickoff launcher she was using. It was a perfect application launcher for her, because I disabled all the tabs except Favourites and Leave. In Favourites she had only the applications she uses regularly and that’s it. Now she is forced to use the new, fancy Application Launcher, and frankly, she is terrified of it. It’s full of applications she never knew existed: Qt Assistant, Qt Linguist, Avahi SSH Server Browser, etc… She is afraid she’ll click on something inadvertently. I told her there is nothing to worry about, but she really hates all of that clutter.
So, I’m begging you, as a son who loves his mother, please port Legacy Kickoff to Plasma 6.
As someone still using Plasma 5 on Debian 12, I love my Legacy Kickoff. I’m thankful to be on a distro that gives much more time to make the jump to new software with massive overhauls because it allows me to wait things out until the little things like this are ironed out.
Legacy Kickoff has been around since KDE 3 and it’s been that way because it’s a great launcher that gives people an experience that feels similar to a Vista/7 Start menu. That style of Start menu was very popular and is regarded as one of the best. Giving people back a menu like that in Plasma 6, but more optimized for the new frameworks and under the hood things would ensure people can keep up their productive workflow while using the latest and greatest software!
That does look super simple and easy to configure for his mother. One concern is whether the mother occasionally accesses applications outside of her favorites. But if she only requires a very specific set of applications, this would really make things dead simple.
It’s a bad idea having chosen for her a rolling distro and you already know it, she should be better using a simple Kubuntu 22.04 stripped from Snaps and using backports for the latest 5.27. It’s what I do for my older folks, it’s not that difficult to pull off, 5.27.10 is solid, they are happy and there’s almost zero maintenance needed, I only do some apt upgrading remotely via a ssh.
You mean you can’t just delete those entries from the menu, but some people should invest precious time and effort for your bizarre reasonings? Please come to your senses , otherwise it was a good trolling
The OP is just requesting for THIS alternative menu widget be ported to Plasma 6.
I am sure there will be more menu widgets ported or created once more people are actually using it. Not sure if this will be, but you never know. We do have 3456.7 Windows 11 menu clones for Plasma 5, so there may be enough people out there to create new ones, or port some to Plasma 6.
Instead of porting a complete launcher so you can use a tiny fraction of its functions (Favorite and Leave), it would be easier to just develop a new 3rd-party applet (“favorites”) for Plasma 6 with only what you need.
Is that the menu similar to windows 95 start before it later–windows 98–had animations? If so, I want it back also, though we’re not using KDE Plasma 6 (KDEP6) until FreeBSD UNIX or Slackware or Kubuntu or Mint GNU/Linuxes upgrade to it, but if you can’t have a classic non-animation menu all our family personal computers (PC) will definitely switch to XFCE, though still use KDE programs like Konsole, Dolphin, KATE.
Also, you can hide all that stuff on the current app launcher as well
Right click its icon, select “Edit Applications…”, then go to Settings, tick “Show hidden entries” and move unwanted categories into “.hidden [Hidden]”. That’s how I get rid of all the clutter that arch pulls in as dependencies
Which is pretty much the same as Cupnoodle’s one which I’ve been using since forever. There are hardly any third party menus ported to 6. Two, three, four at most.
Not the exact solution you are wanting, but if she uses a really limited set of applications, could you either put shortcuts on her desktop or create a new panel that has just her apps on it? e.g. a dock panel? For “leave” you could then also add the Lock/logout widget.
I wonder if a better solution is to make new Kickoff’s sidebar collapsible, perhaps able to be re-opened with a little button. Then when you open it, by default the only thing it would show is the favorites grid and the power/session buttons, just like how you have legacy Kickoff configured.
, otherwise it was a good trolling 