(Minimal Installation VM) Pantheon Desktop Environment mutter conflict

dtoraelek · 2026-08-01 06:20:29

Hello all,

Really unsure how to format this though I am in dire need of assistance. In an ongoing project to help a family member transition away from MacOS on a fairly lightweight system. With ElementaryOS, Ubuntu and Debian all being too large; I'm left with Arch, Artix (OpenRC), Gentoo (OpenRC) and LFS for known options I can cobble together.

Due to the speed for setup, I decided to build a VM around Archlinux as I have done hundreds of times in the past. Getting the base system has been smooth as a dream as it usually is on Arch and its spinoffs. Because I know the system well, I have went with a fairly basic "traditional" system plan (x11, alsa, NetworkManager, EXT4, GRUB, MBR, single root partition, etc).

Being that I have a terminal based system with nothing graphics-related installed yet, I have potentially ran into a bug (if you can call it that): installing the pantheon group in pacman leads to a dependency conflict between mutter46-46.9-1 and mutter-50.3-1. Mind you I have a basic system installation so far on virtual hardware (Oracle's Virtualbox in this case) and nothing X11 or Wayland related is installed yet.

After some searching on both the Arch forums and Reddit (linked for your own research), I came across a few similar posts but they all were for installations including Budgie, GNOME, or Gnome's Shell being already present on the system. With that bit of information, I reckon those forums weren't helpful to my search for a fix. Being that case, I decided to make a post of my own to see if the issue is packaging related or somehow something I may have missed on the base installation.

Though this information may not be relevant, I am in a chroot at this time using an Artix live ISO (what I had on hand in my downloads folder). Though I haven't tested it yet, The system should be bootable on its own; as all necessary packages are installed and config files modified accordingly. The base system was built with the bootstrap tarball as it's what I'm used to from dailying Gentoo.

As far as my own research goes, I have discovered mutter46-46.9-1 is required by lightdm-pantheon-greeter and wingpanel, while mutter-50.3-1 (what I assume is latest packaged on Arch) is required by the WM gala itself. This being the case, I believe the wingpanel and lightdm-pantheon-greeter need the dependency list to be updated (specifically in regards to the mutter conflict). Being that I am completely new to these forums, I am unsure of who to reach out to for this potential bug. I have no experience in modifying ZST tarballs, otherwise I'd fix the issue myself. That said I'd imagine it's similar to how debian packages .deb files.

If anyone can aid me in getting these packages to play nicely together, it would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

D'Tor Aelek of Romulus

Lone_Wolf · 2026-08-01 11:25:17

Mind you I have a basic system installation so far on virtual hardware (Oracle's Virtualbox in this case) and nothing X11 or Wayland related is installed yet.

There's currently a wingpanel version in staging that depends on mutter50 , no such version for ligthdm-pantheon-greeter though.

archlinux bug report wingpanel now supports mutter47, should no longer require mutter46 .

Your best bet seems to be to build your own versions of wingpanel and lightdm-pantheon-greeter against mutter 50.

Welcome to archlinux forums.

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2026-08-01 11:26:26)

dtoraelek · 2026-08-01 20:46:50

I suppose I'll need to research building arch packages then. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to submit my fixes to the branch maintainer(s), assuming I am successful in my endeavor. Being that case, I will now use this forum to document my changes.

seth · 2026-08-02 06:37:43

https://github.com/elementary/greeter/c … f3e38dcc2c doesn't seem to be in any release.
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra-st … wingpanel/ is in staging over a month now, i might just have been forgotten there…

nb that

installing the pantheon group in pacman leads to

not a

Minimal Installation

https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=li … on-greeter is only relevant if you're using lightdm tbw and pantheon (similar to budgie) is kinda an extreme monkeypatch on the notoriously unstable gnome (which frequently breaks its own extensions w/ major updates)

Arch Linux

#1 2026-08-01 06:20:29

(Minimal Installation VM) Pantheon Desktop Environment mutter conflict

#2 2026-08-01 11:25:17

Re: (Minimal Installation VM) Pantheon Desktop Environment mutter conflict

#3 2026-08-01 20:46:50

Re: (Minimal Installation VM) Pantheon Desktop Environment mutter conflict

#4 2026-08-02 06:37:43

Re: (Minimal Installation VM) Pantheon Desktop Environment mutter conflict

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