I’m using KCalc version 24.05.0 but I suppose it’s similar enough to your version.

I typed in the following in simple mode:

<value> * 10^-8

I even got results with the following:

<value>e-8

With pushing buttons in science mode I managed to replicate what you’ve observed, so I guess it’s indeed a bug? However, typing something like either of the two sequences above would give you the desired result.

As an aside, it seems like typing things directly into the input text box like sin(30) can be done in any mode. I don’t know if it can be generalized though, and I don’t know if all of the buttons in Science and Stat modes have a plaintext equivalent you can just type in.

This might be a stupid question, but I‌ wonder why they (datacenters) can’t recover the water they use especially if it’s in the order of magnitude that it significantly impacts water resources in their area.

I might be missing something big here, but I am imagining water-cooled systems that transfers heat to the water, but the water is otherwise unused. This water might not be able to be fed back (to the water sources in the area) as is, but it can be cleaned up and cooled down, and then be used for other purposes, right?

I actually have some plans (no timeline though, it’s basically just a wishlist item as of now) of making my own NAS, so there’s that opportunity. And of course, yeah, getting an old machine is also an option. Who knows, maybe I’d get my hands on another old laptop that could very well be my way to testing Linux distros.

That sounds amazing, to be honest. One major concern I’ve got is the initial setting up. That same friend of mine (the one who exorcised my system) already has a NixOS system for their NAS, and seeing the config files kinda scared me. However, as far as I’ve understood their explanation, it’s basically a “set-up once and forget about it” affair. It’s still quite a departure from the way I’ve learned to do things though, so it’s still intimidating.

To be honest, maybe I’m just waiting for that friend to be somewhat of an expert in NixOS, so that they can push me into using it, lol!

Initially, I chose Linux for it being gratis, but as I’ve used it more and more, I started to appreciate its freedom. It’s really kinda moot though since I first gotten exposed to Linux because I had to. Our uni adopted Linux (some faculties used Linux Mint, others used Ubuntu) for their school computer laboratories after they couldn’t pay for their Windows licenses. In a way, I indeed got into Linux because it is gratis.

I started daily-driving Linux when my Win7 desktop broke, and had to use an ancient, hand-me-down, laptop. It can barely run Win7, and so I tried installing Ubuntu on it (funny in hindsight though, I should have used a lightweight Linux distro). Then a friend of mine introduced me to Manjaro. It worked well for quite a while, until the HDD finally croaked (it’s had a long life of nearly a decade). I stuck with Manjaro when I got my present desktop, but that same friend of mine who introduced me to Manjaro pushed me to using Arch despite my protests. I would have wanted to switch to Endeavour instead since I was intimidated by pure Arch. But since they offered to do the “installation and set-up process” with me, I relented. (The scare quotes are there because it was not an ordinary installation process: my friend basically exorcised the Manjaro out of my system.)

I have a few distros I would like to try, off the top of my head: EndeavourOS, Fedora Silverblue, and NixOS. However, I don’t think I’m a distro hopper. I would prefer that I stay with a distro unless I get pushed off it for one reason or another. Perhaps, if I’ve got an extra computer to test things out, I might be a bit more adventurous and go distro-hopping using that extra machine.

To date, I’ve only had a bit of experience with Linux Mint and Ubuntu, and a bit more experience with Manjaro and Arch Linux. I don’t think fairly limited experience with those allows me to pick a favorite, but I suppose despite its reputation for being hard to use, I quite like Arch Linux. Its package manager as well its repositories really does it for me. It’s changed the way I think about installing programs, as well as updating them.

Currently, I use Arch and Win10 in a dual-boot system. After I’ve gotten myself an AMD graphics card, I spend my time on my Arch system almost exclusively.

Thanks! I’m glad to have inspired you.

While KDE Plasma offers a whole lot of options for customization, it’s really daunting especially if you’re just new to it. What really helped me is to just go with a little bit of customization and tweaking at a time. As I got more experience, I started to want more and more which lead to a lot more customization and tweaking.

I’m weaning myself away from it. However, it’s still unavoidable in my case because my work uses it. Thus, my work-related appointments and such are on there, which is one of the reasons why I had that widget in the first place (to monitor work-related appointments, deadlines, etc).

I’ve been working on it on and off since I’ve started using this system. It started with just the basics, tweaking the defaults, wanting more, and so on and so forth.

I usually can spend an entire (weekend’s) afternoon just tweaking things, making a change here and then, and observing if I like the changes I’ve made. Rinse and repeat that over a period of several months.

I actually am trying to get it hooked to my google calendar. That widget used to support that feature and have it work. However, recent changes have borked that functionality, and I can’t seem to find another widget that does the same.

Or I can just move away from google calendar.

Details:

The right screen has the following (KDE Plasma) widgets:

• Alpaca Clock and Weather (top-left)
• Event Calendar (bottom-left)
• System monitor sensor widget of various settings (the five widgets on the right side)

Both screens have side panels containing only a icon-only task manager. These side panels are installed on the outer edges of the screens instead of on the bottom as might be customary.

The top panels of both screens act as one whole top panel. However, both of them also have a collection of widgets (Window Buttons, Window Title, and Window AppMenu) that (should) only come into play if a window is maximized on a screen. That’s what is demonstrated in the first screenshot of the OP.

As for the theming, I used WhiteSur-dark as the global theme, with particulars overriden as follows:

• Plasma Style: Monterey-dark
• Colors: MontereyDark
• Colors, accent color: custom (#636363)
• Window Decorations: Prof Dark
• Window Decorations, Window border size: No Side Borders
• Icons: Ultimate-Plata-Suru-Plus…
• Cursors: macOS-Monterey
• Splash Screen: 1604-Arch-Splash

As for the mouse gestures. I’ve got a mouse with additional buttons, so I used one of those extra buttons to indicate that I’m going to do a mouse gesture. Those mouse gestures are taken by KDE Plasma and act like a custom shortcut, which executes an action, which I defined via KDE‌ Plasma.

The gestures are as follows:

Go to the previous Virtual Desktop:                     move right, move up
Go to the next Virtual Desktop:                         move left, move down
Move the active window to the previous screen:          move right (a bit), move left
Move the active window to the next screen:              move left (a bit), move right
Move the active window to the previous Virtual Desktop: move down (a bit), move up
Move the active window to the next Virtual Desktop:     move up (a bit), move down

EDIT: Added theming details