Arch Linux

CuriousRon

Member

Registered: 2024-07-07

Posts: 4

Installing KDE alongside or instead of GNOME

How do I install the entire KDE environment with applications (and add-ons)?

Sorry this is a rather basic question and I tried to find information in Arch Wiki. However, the last time I tried to install an add-on environment my whole system broke down, that is, the two desktop environments seemed to overlap and intermingle at the same time. I had in the gnome session the windows look from KDE and some elements.

Also wanting to show that I'm not lazy and was looking for answers below my steps I would follow:

1. sudo pacman -S plasma
2. sudo pacman -S kde-applications

What I don't know, however, is how about the SDDM issue, which was raised in the Arch Wiki. Do I need to install it?

Currently I am using the following display manager:

systemctl status display-manager
gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager

Funny0facer

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2022-12-03

Posts: 159

Re: Installing KDE alongside or instead of GNOME

To get the "full package", there are https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/an … ions-meta/ and https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/plasma-meta/ as meta packages. You can either install them or check what packages they contain.

What issue are you reffering?
GDM and Plasma should be compatible as far as I am aware

---

BBCode

CuriousRon

Member

Registered: 2024-07-07

Posts: 4

Re: Installing KDE alongside or instead of GNOME

The problem was that when I previously installed KDE, when I switched from a kde session to gnome I suddenly couldn't use the terminal - because it looked like it had been pulled out of a kde session, on top of that it sort of blinked and blurred. In the gnome session, there were minimize, maximize and close window buttons from KDE. On top of that, I was getting messages from KDE applications while logged into a gnome session. Many other minor glitches were along the way. It looked as if - to put it metaphorically - you took kde and gnome, put a bledner in it, turned it on, and the result was a strange blend of the graphical inteferface I had come to work on.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,898

Re: Installing KDE alongside or instead of GNOME

The easiest way to avoid this would be to create two distinct users and switch which desktop env you're using together with said user. Both of these are rather complete DE's and both want to enforce their general Look and Feel on all applications. You might be able to avoid this to some degree on the KDE side by not installing

kde-gtk-config

.

Technically autostarts - used to be - avoidable via different XDG_DESKTOP_SESSION environments, but afaics this somewhat fell by the wayside for either of them when they started integrating with systemd --user sessions for session startup. You might be able to create differing user targets that you can then launch into, but that's all a bit involved.