Table of Contents

1. Why I did I write this guide?

2. How will it look like?

3. Installing dependencies

4. Manjaro/Arch

5. Ubuntu/Debain/Pop_OS/Deepin/……

6. Enabling Rounded Corners

7. Running picom on startup automatically:

8. Installing Themes from kde store

9. Installing Konsole Scheme

10. Installing Icons

11. Configuring the panel

12. Wallpaper

13. Final words

(Theme by u/DarkReaper231)

Why I did I write this guide?

Recently u/DarkReaper231 posted a nice monochrome theme on unixporn. His config works in i3-gaps only, so I decided to write a short guide to help port it to KDE plasma.

How will it look like?

Installing dependencies

Manjaro/Arch

    $ sudo pacman -Syu yay # This line is Only for Manjaro users (Arch users know what to do btw :P)
    $ yay -Sy picom-ibhagwan-git

Ubuntu/Debain/Pop_OS/Deepin/……

A guide on how to install picom-ibhagwan is on his repo If you don’t feel like reading there then here is the untested summary of the instructions

    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

    # this is one line lol
    sudo apt install libxext-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-damage0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-render-util0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-present-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libpixman-1-dev libdbus-1-dev libconfig-dev libgl1-mesa-dev  libpcre2-dev  libevdev-dev uthash-dev libev-dev libx11-xcb-dev

    cd /tmp
    git clone https://github.com/ibhagwan/picom.git && cd picom

    git submodule update --init --recursive
    meson --buildtype=release . build
    ninja -C build

    ninja -C build install #if it fails run it with sudo

Enabling Rounded Corners

Picom is the “composite manager” that is going to make windows rounded. It requires a little bit of setup to make it work.

• First we need to disable the current composite manager which came by default with KDE Plasma.

Open your settings > Hardware Section > Display and Login > Compositor >

From there disable Compositor on start up

• Next Logout and log back for the changes to take effect
• Copy and paste the picom config from .config/picom.conf into ~/.config/picom.conf or use this command if you feel too lazy to do things manually

will overwrite your current config

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/westofer/monochrome-theme/master/.config/picom.conf -o ~/.config/picom.conf

• Run picom to test the rounded corners :) You should see something similar to

Note: if you get an error stating “Another Composite Manager is already running”, try running `pkill picom` and repeating the first step ;)

Running picom on startup automatically:

• You probably don’t want to type `picom` on each startup, so instead we are going to create a script that runs on startup. The process is simple and and can be done by running this one liner to do most of the process automatically.

mkdir -p ~/bin/ && echo "picom &" > ~/bin/autostart.sh && chmod +x ~/bin/autostart.sh

Now add this file to autostartup by opening `settings >> Startup and shutdown >> Autostart >> Add Script >> Type “~/bin/autostart.sh”`

Here is a gif for reference:

**Now Login to test it**

Yay! This was the hardest part!

Installing Themes from kde store

From the settings >> Global Themes >> Get New Global themes >> Search for “monochrome” >> install and apply

Installing Konsole Scheme

From the konsole >> settings >> manage profiles >>
New Profile >> Appereance >> Get New >>
Search for "Monochrome" >> Install >> exit >>
Select Monochrome Konsole >>
exit and set the new profile as default.
(restart konsole for changes to take effect)

Demo:

You might also want to change the margin size:

You might also want to hide the menu bar

Another option is to hide the title bar

(remeber that you can drag windows without a title bar while holding ALT)

Installing Icons

This should be easy too

settings >> icons >> add icons >> install icon >> use

you get the idea

Configuring the panel

First we need to set the panel to be flexible.

Then click edit panel

On the right we should have ’more options’ button, click that then center the panel

On the edge of the panel you should be able to resize the panel as in this picture

The whole process looks like this:

press ESC to exit and save

Wallpaper

here is the wallpaper

Final words

Notice that I didn’t include any font configuration, it should be something simple that you can do :). This applies to using css stylesheets for firefox.

For the Dolphin File Manager I used F9 and alt+m to hide the side panel and menu bar respectively. An alternative to dolphin would be nautilus.

The Picture included neofetch, cava and tty-clock (press c to center the clock)

to resize a terminal with nobars >> alt + right click

Hope you enjoy your rice :)