Arch Linux

bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 18

[SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

Today I installed Arch Linux KDE on a PC, with pacstrap ... plasma-meta kde-applications-meta ..., I discovered sddm is installed not anymore as dependency (before yes).
Why not, I never use sddm, only 1 user.
Boot, it lands to CLI, I enter my login name, I can go to GUI entering:

startplasma-wayland

so the title?

Last edited by bivan (2026-03-11 15:02:03)

LuxFerre

Member

Registered: 2010-03-01

Posts: 121

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

If you installed plasma-meta you probably have plasma login manager...

bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

pacman -Q plasma-login-manager

yes, so?

LuxFerre

Member

Registered: 2010-03-01

Posts: 121

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

So why not use it?

5hridhyan

Member

From: Asia

Registered: 2025-12-25

Posts: 525

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

LoL, your best bet is adding exec startplasma-wayland to your ~/.bash_profile

Edit:
~/.xinitrc  with x11, some also use with this...

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-03-11 12:17:19)

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bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plasma … #Autologin
I created /etc/plasmalogin.conf.d/autologin.conf within

[Autologin]
User=a
Session=plasma.desktop

it doesn't work... A bug? Should I report? Post to https://discuss.kde.org/ (2 forums, this & https://bbs.archlinux.org/ , the joy of separate OS & DE...)

Otherwise I added to /etc/bash.bashrc

startplasma-wayland

(no need exec before?), I enter just my login name a, it works, but I still must enter my login name, I don't want, I can with my previous PC who still has sddm, at its installation I checked System Settings, Login Screen, Automatically log in: (Login Screen hided, not in the System Settings menu anymore, so Search login screen, now it's unchecked...), I also checked with the next PC.

Last edited by bivan (2026-03-11 13:00:20)

bivan

Member

Registered: 2026-02-03

Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] KDE without display manager, how to directly boot to GUI?

I finally found, just

systemctl enable plasmalogin

https://github.com/KDE/plasma-login-manager