The default panel is quite bare and does not do an amazing job of exposing the fact
that you can pin apps to it.
This patch addresses both issues by pinning the default filemanager and web browser to
the task manager by default. Other potentials are System Settings and Discover, but I
didn't want to over-clutter this patch.
As a point of comparison, back when Windows still used a non-icons-only task manager, it
shipped with pinned apps like this.
Create and log into a new user account or else move aside
~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and restart Plasma
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+1! I remember seeing this in Plasma 4 times and also always pin those two on my setup.
Windows has browser first, then file manager. I don't really mind either order, though.
I don't really understand why the panel being bare by default is a problem. Isn't it nicer when users don't have to opt out of clutter like this?
I guess it depends on whether you see pinned apps as clutter. Personally, I think these are useful, especially for less experienced users. And we have anecdotal evidence that experienced users (e.g. us) add these to their task managers manually. So I don't think this would harm anyone.
@hein ping. Other folks seem to like this, but I don't want to move ahead without your approval since you're the maintainer. Maybe we can discuss it some more?
Ah sorry, I had a reply typed into the text field but must have botched hitting Submit.
Personally, I'm not a fan - I think there's a bad trend of us overstuffing the default panel now like we're looking out of "what more can we add ..." out of idleness. I predict we'll remove things like this and the Show Desktop applet again, when the next collapsing-under-its-own-weight cycle inevitably hits. To speed that along I'll accept instead of making people cranky. But I do wish we had more discipline to keep things simple for longer!
Well, I don't wanna hasten our demise under the crushing weight of bloat, and I can appreciate your voice of wisdom. :) So I'll hit the pause button and continue the discussion.
Now that I think about it, if I step back and examine my motivations for this, it's that I think we should use an Icons-Only Task Manager by default, and IOTMs make sense to pre-populate with apps (as proposed here), because they're basically app launchers. IOTMs (or at least the local equivalent) are now shipped by default in Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Ubuntu's GNOME flavor, and every mobile OS. The last major OS to ship a Traditional Task Manager was Windows Vista 10 years ago.
People are used to IOTMs at this point, and everyone else switched to them years ago because they're better for the common normal-user use cases of launching apps and switching between a small number of single-window apps than the now-increasingly-less-common use case of switching between a large number of windows many of which belong to the same app. People like us who still have that use case can always switch back to a TTM in three clicks.
If we use an IOTM by default, we can double the panel thickness and put it on the left screen edge, with the positive side effect of being a touch-friendly launcher and app switcher for the convertible use case without needing to change the UI at all. I keep noticing people (you and I included) naturally gravitating to this panel setup, and I think it makes a lot of sense as a better default for 2020.
Maybe it's time to have that conversation instead of pushing half-measures like this patch.
Abandoning in favor of, D27845: Replace Task Manager with Icons-Only-Task Manager in the default panel, and thicken it, after further discussion in T12441.