Hey! I am a long term Mac OS user who installed Linux (Fedora Asahi Remix 43) a few days ago and have been having fun customising KDE so far. To be honest, I am blown away by it - never realise Linux was so ‘polished’ when it comes to the desktop experience. Dophin is really great too (slightly odd for me that the ‘finder’ system is an ‘app’ but feels very well integrated so all good.
One thing i’m REALLY missing from MacOs however is the spacebar ‘quick look’ ability. I didn’t realise just how much i relied on that on Mac and took it for granted for many years. Working on Linux without it feels like having one arm removed.
Is there anything I can install that gives that functionality? The closest i’ve come is to enable Dolphins preview pane, but that’s not really quite the same thing…
Hi @askewd , and welcome to the wonderful world of linux (and KDE)!!
I don’t really know what this ‘space bar quick look’ thing is, but since you mention the Dolphin preview pane, you may find PreviewQT (https://previewqt.org/) a good alternative?
no idea what “quick look” does but F11 in dolphin will provide a lot of information and you can customize what is shown from the context menu
you might also make sure in dolphin settings > context menu > that you have previews turned on for the file types you are interested in (including text files, which is off by default on my distro).
I contacted the author and he has opened a MR upstream, but the author hasn’t been active very much. It is also very much tied into dolphin. The code uses OpenGL whereas we’d rather implement things with Qml/Quick:
Given the age of the PR it could be a matter of timing.
Lots of universities have exam periods prior to Easter so if the author is a student they might be caught up in those.
True but the again you will need to start somewhere
Going for a generic solution can often be a second step.
Hey guys, wow thanks so much for the warm welcome and already a really helpful constructive thread! This really does feel like a positive & productive community! Happy to have found it.
Thanks for the links to the quick-look tools too, I will definitely try those out once i get a bit more confident navigating the platform & getting my head around the basics first.
On my journey so far, last night i installed the Orchis-dark theme and kvantum to get the nice blur effect - my goodness it’s beautiful. Nicest desktop i’ve ever seen - MacOsX could learn a lot from this!!!
@ngraham I will let you know as I go when I find any Mac things that I miss - but tbh, so far it seems that KDE has covered it all - and done it BETTER. Other than this quick-look thing. Also I’ve got the odd crackle when changing volume level, but I suspect that’s a Asahi thing and not KDE related…
But that might be just WIP. I think the author misunderstood my feedback.
Using OpenGL is not forbidden just not for dolphin codebase and we want the quicklook feature to be a separate project and maybe process.
QML/Quick is transparently accelerated with OpenGl or vulkan or even metal while simpler to write and maintain.
Just so you are aware, there are plasmoids. I’m sure they changed the name now, but these widgets go from a little extra in your desk to mini-apps sitting somewhere and doing stuff for you. I’d encourage you to check the “what’s new” button on Plasma. It’s a lot of fun! And if you don’t like them, you can delete them just fine.
I’m also a long time Mac user (since System 7.5.1, baby!) The customization is amazing. Re: Dolphin being an app, Finder on macOS is an app too and you can enable quitting it just like any other app. Just a little tidbit I wanted to share.
I’m also a long time Mac user (since System 7.5.1, baby!) The customization is amazing. Re: Dolphin being an app, Finder on macOS is an app too and you can enable quitting it just like any other app. Just a little tidbit I wanted to share.
Nice! From what I can tell my experience would have been smoother so far if I used an older mac (x86) rather than the M1+ which is only now being supported as a fringe project. It’s great but there are lots of niggles such as palm rejection issues on the trackpad etc. Hopefully this will be ironed out in time. I’ve come to realise that I may need to be patient on this journey
What do you mean with that? What crackle do you hear?
I guess this is another Asahi teething issue - when nudging the volume up and down, it kind cracks/clicks/pops. It soon settles.
Funny thing is in september i started my previous job with a company that used MacBooks. i tried whatever possible way to get Linux with KDE, but they wouldn’t allow it..”security” reasons..later turned out to be a lie. I think it was all to show to the world we use “MacBooks”.
I have nothing against MacBook, but using MacOS while using KDE for already a few years..its like typing on the keyboard using your feet..not even using your toes.
Those guys were thinking that i am being dramatic, while nobody there used KDE or had ever used KDE to ever understand my frusteration. KDE is on another level. Btw i left the job within 4 months..my whole working flow was down the gutter.
I am soo happy for you brother that you have seen the light . You will not my MacOS i can almost guarrantee you. Everything that MacOS has, KDE has it, better implemented, with performance and with WAAAY more features.
. You will not my MacOS i can almost guarrantee you. Everything that MacOS has, KDE has it, better implemented, with performance and with WAAAY more features.