14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE community showcased today on their social media channels a new, alternative application launcher for KDE Plasma 5 desktop environments, Simple Menu.
Simple Menu hit the KDE Store recently, and it would appear to be an intuitive and minimal application launcher widget that can easily replace the default one of your KDE Plasma 5 desktops. It's interface resemblance the look and feel of the fullscreen Application Dashboard, giving users easier access to their favorite apps.
"Simple Menu is an intentionally minimal launcher widget for Plasma 5," said the devs in the program's description on the KDE Store. "Powered by the same powerful backend as Plasma 5's bundled launchers, its UI is similar to the fullscreen Application Dashboard, just in a small, floating window."
Simple Menu requires KDE Plasma 5.9 or higher
Apart from its application grid and filtering capabilities, Simple Menu lets users search installed apps, provides support for favorite apps, as well as basic system actions like log out, restart, or shutdown. However, it only works on KDE Plasma 5.9 or higher versions of the popular desktop environment.
It also seems to require KDE Frameworks 5.34 or higher since version 1.0.2, the latest release of the widget, which you can find right now on the KDE Store and install on your GNU/Linux distribution. As expected, users can install Simple Menu directly from the Plasma Discover graphical package manager.
Again, please note that if you're running the long-term supported KDE Plasma 5.8 desktop environment, you won't be able to install Simple Menu, so this might be a bummer for many GNU/Linux users who use rock-solid distributions like OpenSuSE Leap. But we bet that there are other application launchers out there for them, including the default one of KDE Plasma 5.
Another application launcher for #Plasma found its way to our Store. Presenting: Simple Menu! 🙂https://t.co/3iSBKyps1O pic.twitter.com/bcHF9dsNiI — KDE Community (@kdecommunity) June 15, 2017