Borgy Bloggy

How to switch between Gnome and Plasma (KDE) desktops

Using the GNOME desktop, but you want to try out the KDE desktop without totally switching? here's how:

1. install plasma-desktop:

sudo apt-get install plasma-desktop
OR:
sudo yum install plasma-desktop

2. create a script for running the plasma-desktop. we can call it plasma-desktop.sh. open up your text editor and paste the ff lines:
#!/bin/bash

killall gnome-panel
killall plasma-desktop
plasma-desktop &

3. create a script for running the gnome-desktop. we can call it gnome-desktop.sh. open up your text editor and paste the ff lines:
#!/bin/bash

killall gnome-panel
killall plasma-desktop
gnome-panel &

4. make theme executable:
chmod +x ~/PATH/TO/plasma-desktop.sh
chmod +x ~/PATH/TO/gnome-desktop.sh

5. prevent gnome-panel from restarting after it has been terminated. open gconf-editor and navigate to desktop/gnome/session/required_components. double-click the "panel" option and remove "gnome_panel" from the entry.

Now if you want to switch to the KDE plasma workspace, just run plasma-desktop.sh. to revert back to the GNOME desktop, run gnome-desktop.sh You can transform your desktop from this...


to this:

posted by borgy @ 6:48 PM