How To Speed Up Your KDE Plasma 5 Desktop

So far, KDE Plasma is one the most mature desktops in Linux. It is simple, good loking, and has a lot of features. Even Windows 11 now looks very similar to KDE Plasma --make us wonder, has Linux desktop finally inspired Windows?

However, some users might feel that KDE's default configuration is not fast enough. For those who want a responsive, blazing fast KDE desktop, here are some easy tweak to speed up your KDE Plasma 5 Desktop.

1. Disable Desktop Effect

Go to Desktop Effect setting, and disable (uncheck) all effects.

2. Increase Animation Speed

Go to General Behavior setting, and set the Animation speed to instant. 

3. Disable Plasma Search

KDE Plasma comes with a feature called Plasma Search. This feature offers us a complete set of desktop search, from applications shortcut to internet bookmarks. By default, all options are enabled and might slow down your KDE desktop.

If you don't want to search your internet history on your desktop, and other unnecessary searches, you can disable most of Plasma Search options.

Go to Plasma Search setting, and disable all the options, except Applications and System Settings. We still need those two options to search our installed apps shortcuts and system settings shortcuts. 

4. Disable Compositor (Optional)

You could optionally disable desktop compositor and it will increase your KDE desktop speed significantly. But you might break some applications behavior, because some modern Linux apps now use compositor to render their UI.

If you don't really need compositor, you could easily disable it. Go to Compositor setting, and uncheck the Enable on startup option. If you want to re-enable the compositor, you can simply check Enable on startup option.