History of Desktop configuration
<h2>Hardware</h2>
<ul>
<li>Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with Radeon Graphics</li>
<li>Memory: 27.3 GiB of RAM</li>
<li>Graphics: AMD Radeon Graphics (integrated)</li>
<li>Motherboard: Micro-Star MS-7C95</li>
<li>Storage: 1Tb SSD, 8Tb SATA</li>
</ul>
<h2>Software</h2>
<ul>
<li>Linux: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250502</li>
<li>Kernel: 6.14.4-1-default (64-bit)</li>
<li>KDM Plasma: 6.3.4</li>
<li>KDM Framework: 6.13.0</li>
<li>Qt: 6.9.0</li>
<li>Graphics: X11</li>
</ul>
<h2>Configuration</h2>
<p>One of the ongoing problems I have been having is with the font and icon sizes in some applications. In the good old days one could configure each monitor individually, but the current setup which I think is handled under the X11 driver interface is that while we can select the different screen sizes and move them to match the physical layout, the 'size' function is applied globally. Another little niggle is the way things keep switching around when a monitor becomes unavailable. My long term setup previously was a set of three 27" HD monitors with a fourth slightly smalled HD TV which had it's own DVD player. The monitor still sits here to the right but the 27" monitors have been replaced by a 32" 4K monitor in the middle and a 19" HD monitor to the right. The smaller monitor is useful when debugging web page layouts, but I will add a second 4K monitor when I can afford it (the tax man owes me money from last year!). At that point I will probably retain the 19" one simply because it is useful at times, and mounting it over a second 32" one is no problem for X11.</p>
<p>Currently I have the display global scaling set to 150% and the fonts DPI set to 192 which is a good compromise between the different monitors although some elements can be fun to read. The main problem here is the restricion of some icons to a 16 pixel format. While the lemming solution has been to migrate to .svg font based icons, these have also followed the 'two colour' standard loosing the full colour versions. SVG can support full colour and so I do not see any problem in providing a scalable solution but I've not found an open source solution via that path, so the half way house of using a 32 pixel icon set looks like my best path currently for the bitweaver framework. This does not help with those icons being used in other applications!</p>
<p>So the next step has been to sort out a 'plasma theme' that gives me the best general layout. I have been playing with the dark themes, but I am happier with the light ones so my current subset are based on that. That there are perhaps hundreds of themes on the various download sites does not help when trying to sort out, so I have been keeping closer to the more generally available ones. It would be helpful if there was an information page like suppary of just what has been selected, having to cycle through a dozen settings pages are a pain.</p>
<h2>Support applications</h2>
<p>(as of 12/03/2025)</p>
<ul>
<li>Avidemux - 2.8.1<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/">Avidemux</a> is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.</em></span></li>
<li><a href="https://lsces.uk/wiki/Tools-BeyondCompare">Beyond Compare</a> - 5.0.6<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.scootersoftware.com/">Beyond Compare</a> handles a wide variety of comparison tasks. It has specialized views for different kinds of files and different approaches to reconciling differences.</em></span></li>
<li>calibre - 7.26.0-x86_64<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://calibre-ebook.com/">calibre</a> is a powerful and easy to use e-book manager</em></span></li>
<li><a href="http://Base Development Platform">Eclipse IDE for PHP</a> Developers - 2025-03 (4.35.0)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.eclipse.org/">Eclipse development</a> framework <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/2024-12/r/eclipse-ide-php-developers">tools for PHP</a>, including PHP language support, Git client and editors for JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS and XML.</em></span></li>
<li>Firefox - 136.0 (64-bit)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>Web browser from <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/">Mozilla</a> that works transparently across all devices. Tabs on mobile phone can be followed up on desktop.</em></span></li>
<li><a href="https://medw.uk/wiki/FreeCAD+Crib+Sheet?highlight=FreeCAD">FreeCAD</a> - 1.0.0<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>A multiplatform, customizable and extensible <a href="https://www.freecad.org/">software</a> that allows you to design and modify 3D models with parametric features.</em></span></li>
<li>Gwenview - 24.12.3<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://apps.kde.org/gwenview/">Image management software</a> that is a dafault on the KDE desktop.</em></span></li>
<li>JOSM - 19342<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://josm.openstreetmap.de/">JOSM</a> is an extensible editor for <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreet</a>Map</em></span></li>
<li>KiCAD - 9.0.0<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.kicad.org/">KiCad</a> is a free software suite for electronic design automation. It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware for PCB manufacturing.</em></span></li>
<li>LibreOffice - 25.2.1.2 (X86_64)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.libreoffice.org/">LibreOffice</a> is a private, free and open source office suite – the successor project to OpenOffice.</em></span></li>
<li>MakeMKV - v1.17.9<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.makemkv.com/">MakeMKV</a> is your one-click solution to convert video that you own into free and patents-unencumbered format that can be played everywhere.</em></span></li>
<li>Picard - 2.13.3<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://picard.musicbrainz.org/">Picard</a> is a cross-platform music tagger powered by the <a href="https://musicbrainz.org/">MusicBrainz</a> database</em></span></li>
<li>PDF Arranger - 1.11.1<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger">Small python-gtk application</a>, which helps the user to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface.</em></span></li>
<li>qBittorrent - 5.0.4<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>The <a href="https://www.qbittorrent.org/">qBittorrent project</a> aims to provide an open-source software alternative to µTorrent</em></span></li>
<li>Thunderbird - 128.8.0esr (64-bit)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.thunderbird.net/en-GB/">eMail client</a> that used to be integrated with Netscape browser before that was forked to Firefox</em></span></li>
<li> </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with Radeon Graphics</li>
<li>Memory: 27.3 GiB of RAM</li>
<li>Graphics: AMD Radeon Graphics (integrated)</li>
<li>Motherboard: Micro-Star MS-7C95</li>
<li>Storage: 1Tb SSD, 8Tb SATA</li>
</ul>
<h2>Software</h2>
<ul>
<li>Linux: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250502</li>
<li>Kernel: 6.14.4-1-default (64-bit)</li>
<li>KDM Plasma: 6.3.4</li>
<li>KDM Framework: 6.13.0</li>
<li>Qt: 6.9.0</li>
<li>Graphics: X11</li>
</ul>
<h2>Configuration</h2>
<p>One of the ongoing problems I have been having is with the font and icon sizes in some applications. In the good old days one could configure each monitor individually, but the current setup which I think is handled under the X11 driver interface is that while we can select the different screen sizes and move them to match the physical layout, the 'size' function is applied globally. Another little niggle is the way things keep switching around when a monitor becomes unavailable. My long term setup previously was a set of three 27" HD monitors with a fourth slightly smalled HD TV which had it's own DVD player. The monitor still sits here to the right but the 27" monitors have been replaced by a 32" 4K monitor in the middle and a 19" HD monitor to the right. The smaller monitor is useful when debugging web page layouts, but I will add a second 4K monitor when I can afford it (the tax man owes me money from last year!). At that point I will probably retain the 19" one simply because it is useful at times, and mounting it over a second 32" one is no problem for X11.</p>
<p>Currently I have the display global scaling set to 150% and the fonts DPI set to 192 which is a good compromise between the different monitors although some elements can be fun to read. The main problem here is the restricion of some icons to a 16 pixel format. While the lemming solution has been to migrate to .svg font based icons, these have also followed the 'two colour' standard loosing the full colour versions. SVG can support full colour and so I do not see any problem in providing a scalable solution but I've not found an open source solution via that path, so the half way house of using a 32 pixel icon set looks like my best path currently for the bitweaver framework. This does not help with those icons being used in other applications!</p>
<p>So the next step has been to sort out a 'plasma theme' that gives me the best general layout. I have been playing with the dark themes, but I am happier with the light ones so my current subset are based on that. That there are perhaps hundreds of themes on the various download sites does not help when trying to sort out, so I have been keeping closer to the more generally available ones. It would be helpful if there was an information page like suppary of just what has been selected, having to cycle through a dozen settings pages are a pain.</p>
<h2>Support applications</h2>
<p>(as of 12/03/2025)</p>
<ul>
<li>Avidemux - 2.8.1<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/">Avidemux</a> is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.</em></span></li>
<li><a href="https://lsces.uk/wiki/Tools-BeyondCompare">Beyond Compare</a> - 5.0.6<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.scootersoftware.com/">Beyond Compare</a> handles a wide variety of comparison tasks. It has specialized views for different kinds of files and different approaches to reconciling differences.</em></span></li>
<li>calibre - 7.26.0-x86_64<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://calibre-ebook.com/">calibre</a> is a powerful and easy to use e-book manager</em></span></li>
<li><a href="http://Base Development Platform">Eclipse IDE for PHP</a> Developers - 2025-03 (4.35.0)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.eclipse.org/">Eclipse development</a> framework <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/release/2024-12/r/eclipse-ide-php-developers">tools for PHP</a>, including PHP language support, Git client and editors for JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS and XML.</em></span></li>
<li>Firefox - 136.0 (64-bit)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>Web browser from <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/">Mozilla</a> that works transparently across all devices. Tabs on mobile phone can be followed up on desktop.</em></span></li>
<li><a href="https://medw.uk/wiki/FreeCAD+Crib+Sheet?highlight=FreeCAD">FreeCAD</a> - 1.0.0<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>A multiplatform, customizable and extensible <a href="https://www.freecad.org/">software</a> that allows you to design and modify 3D models with parametric features.</em></span></li>
<li>Gwenview - 24.12.3<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://apps.kde.org/gwenview/">Image management software</a> that is a dafault on the KDE desktop.</em></span></li>
<li>JOSM - 19342<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://josm.openstreetmap.de/">JOSM</a> is an extensible editor for <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreet</a>Map</em></span></li>
<li>KiCAD - 9.0.0<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.kicad.org/">KiCad</a> is a free software suite for electronic design automation. It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware for PCB manufacturing.</em></span></li>
<li>LibreOffice - 25.2.1.2 (X86_64)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.libreoffice.org/">LibreOffice</a> is a private, free and open source office suite – the successor project to OpenOffice.</em></span></li>
<li>MakeMKV - v1.17.9<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.makemkv.com/">MakeMKV</a> is your one-click solution to convert video that you own into free and patents-unencumbered format that can be played everywhere.</em></span></li>
<li>Picard - 2.13.3<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://picard.musicbrainz.org/">Picard</a> is a cross-platform music tagger powered by the <a href="https://musicbrainz.org/">MusicBrainz</a> database</em></span></li>
<li>PDF Arranger - 1.11.1<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger">Small python-gtk application</a>, which helps the user to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface.</em></span></li>
<li>qBittorrent - 5.0.4<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em>The <a href="https://www.qbittorrent.org/">qBittorrent project</a> aims to provide an open-source software alternative to µTorrent</em></span></li>
<li>Thunderbird - 128.8.0esr (64-bit)<br />
<span style="font-size:10px"><em><a href="https://www.thunderbird.net/en-GB/">eMail client</a> that used to be integrated with Netscape browser before that was forked to Firefox</em></span></li>
<li> </li>
</ul>