Arch Linux

Flapper

Member

Registered: 2019-02-10

Posts: 41

[SOLVED] rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal

There seems to be an awful lot of bloatware added to Arch recently.
It was bubblewrap the other week, now its rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

rtkit etc are causing a lot of spam in the journal:

rtkit-daemon[476597]: Supervising 10 threads of 6 processes of 1 users.

(repeated)

systemd[477262]: Failed to start Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation).
systemd[477262]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[477262]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk[490278]: cannot open display:
systemd[477262]: Starting Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation)...

(repeated)

I'm using river (Wayland compositor), so no gnome, no DE, but gtk4 has brought in these new dependencies.

Is there any way to tame these uninvited packages?
(I've downgraded gtk4 for now)

Last edited by Flapper (2025-10-04 19:06:34)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,280

Re: [SOLVED] rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal

bubblewrap was added because glycin requires it and glycin is needed for gdk-pixbuf2 which is used by lots of programs to load/display images.
Both glycin and gdk-pixbuf2 are gnome components, complain to them.

If you don't want glycin/gdk-pixbuf2 you'll probably have to remove everything from gnome and gtk .

rtkit is archlinux specific and has been a hard dependency for pulseaudio for many years .
It was added as a dep for xdg-desktop-portal in 2022 in this commit .

as for taming rtkit :
/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.RealtimeKit1.service is what applications use to start it on demand.

Neither systemd nor dbus have a method to block that, but pacman.conf NoExtract option can prevent that file from being on your sytem.
Check man pacman for details .

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2025-10-04 09:31:08)

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

tekstryder

Member

Registered: 2013-02-14

Posts: 444

Re: [SOLVED] rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal

There seems to be an awful lot of bloatware added to Arch recently.
It was bubblewrap the other week, now its rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.

systemd[477262]: Failed to start Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation).
systemd[477262]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[477262]: xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk[490278]: cannot open display:
systemd[477262]: Starting Portal service (GTK/GNOME implementation)...

See:

• https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … /issues/14

tekstryder

Member

Registered: 2013-02-14

Posts: 444

Re: [SOLVED] rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal

As I (and others) requested, xdg-desktop-portal has now been moved to an optional dependency.

Flapper

Member

Registered: 2019-02-10

Posts: 41

Re: [SOLVED] rtkit and xdg-desktop-portal

Thank you both, system updated and Yay! no rtkit!

marking as solved