I recently added a secondary TV to my PC with KDE setup, in addition to the main monitor. I have it on a different position and angle and only turn it on for certain use cases, watching from different place. And I love the fact that I can create and build a dedicated panel with the widgets I want to have on that screen only. I don’t need every panel and functionality on that screen.
Just curious, is this something Microsoft Windows users can actually do? If not, this is something I would “advertise” for Linux.
I have KDE on two of my computers but don’t really understand what you’re talking about. I keep reading though about the awesome paneling KDE has.
Can you explain more what you mean or give a link that explains? Maybe my use case is too basic but I don’t use anything beyond what I ever used in windows and I feel happy. However people talk about this all the time so I really want to learn
A panel is the top, bottom or left or right portion of the screen where you can add widgets. In example widgets to show list of current opened windows or time and date or a tray icon area. When I connected a tv as a secondary screen, it didn’t have any panel. So I created a panel and added only necessary widgets I need on this particular screen. I use my tv sometimes to watch films or documentaries in example, from a different place than my main monitor. These panels are very customizable.
The documentation at https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Panels is a bit basic, but explains what panels are. A KDE developer did a video What’s Your Favorite KDE Panels Layout? talking for 15 minutes about this topic.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your response… It all makes sense now! I understand the excitement about these now
Does that panel only show up when you plug that specific TV in? Or does it come up regardless of the device?
Hm, the panel is only visible on the TV screen anyway. So it does not matter if the TV is plugged in or not, because without TV the panel cannot be seen or interacted with.
OTOH, I’d love an easy setting to show a panel on all screens instead of copy pasting panels or making changes multiple times.
I agree. This was the first thing I was searching for, if there is a toggle to make my main panel available on all screens. Feels like this should have been the default behavior, to show the panel on all screens, unless told otherwise.
