Microsoft continues to copy the best features from one of the leading Linux desktop environments (DE), with Windows 12 poised to rip off KDE Plasma.

KDE Plasma is one of the most popular — and certainly the most powerful — Linux DEs. The DE is known for being visually appealing out of the box while offering the most advanced customization options of any DE on any OS. Over the past few years, Microsoft has taken a number of visual cues from KDE Plasma, resulting in the KDE team deciding to make floating panels the default in Plasma 6 specifically to differentiate it from Windows.

KDE developer Nate Graham explained the decision:

This feature has been optional since its introduction a year ago. In that time it’s become quite popular, but its visual fanciness alone wasn’t enough to tip this proposal over the finish line. Rather, it’s the fact that Microsoft has blatantly copied us in Windows 11, and as a result, people are starting to see Plasma as a cheap clone of Windows again. We see this all the time in the VDG room when some rando comes by and starts telling us why our design isn’t as good as what Windows 11 has; they’ve implicitly made the comparison and found us wanting. It’s the wrong mindset!

Making the panel float by default provides an immediate visual differentiation from Windows 11 and we hope this will help jolt users’ brains out of “ew, it’s slightly different from Windows 11” mode and into “wow, this is new and cool and I wonder what’s in it” mode. There’s probably more that needs to be done for that, but I think this is a good start.

Windows Latest has screenshots of Windows 12 sporting a floating taskbar, set a few pixels off of the bottom and edges of the screen. The only issue, however, is that the floating Windows 12 taskbar being tested internally looks EXACTLY like a floating KDE Plasma panel.

Nick, at the Linux Experiment, called this one back in March, saying it was only a matter of time before Microsoft’s designers blatantly copied KDE again since they clearly have no original ideas left.