K * Digest!: Installing The Versatile And Attractive Daisy Launcher In Kubuntu

Over on our Google Plus Community I was asked a few times about an application launcher that I'm rather fond of. As a result, it tends to get featured often in various screen shots that I post for #showyourlinuxdesktopfriday as well as various other miscellaneous screen shots. The plasmoid launcher is called Daisy, it it's pretty cool at what it does. From the author's website:

"Daisy is a free open-source widget for Plasma/KDE released under the GNU General Public License version 3.

Main features:

Three types of roles: circular dock, media controller and linear dock;

Can dock in any screen position and be used in Horizontal or Vertical mode (linear dock role);

Configuration tools to access all configurable options;

Launchers can be edited with a simple right-click;

Hybrid launchers to launch applications and control running tasks;

Plugins to provide information and execute several tasks;

Various backgrounds available."

Since you asked, here is an easy way to install and use Daisy from your user account. If you would like to install Daisy system-wide, please refer to this guide for the few changes you would need to make to the process outlined below.

Download the source code archive
Make sure the packages kdelibs5-dev and kdebase-workspace-dev are installed on your system. Also install the packages build-essential, checkinstall, and cmake, if they are not already installed. These are necessary in order to compile Daisy
Browse to where you downloaded Daisy using the Dolphin file manager (~/Downloads by default)
Right click on the downloaded Daisy zipped archive and select 'Extract', then select 'Extract Here, Autodetect Sub Folder'.
Enter the newly extracted folder
Press <shift>+<F4> to open a terminal in your current directory
Enter each of the following commands, one at a time in the terminal:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make
sudo make install
kbuildsycoca4

If all goes accordingly, you will now be able to use the pretty cool and versatile Daisy on your system by simply adding the Daisy plasmoid to your desktop. If you enjoy Daisy, consider making a small donation to the author.