Desktop Environemt

Pick your poison

GNOME

Base GNOME packages for the full GNOME experience. Bundle with other packages to prevent package conflicts providing the same functionality.

TIP: Include any and all packages you want installed in a list to pacman. That way pacman will resolve package dependencies correctly and not install packages that would cause conflicts with other packages later on in the setup; e.g. the gnome group installs pulseaudio, but pulseaudio and pipewire (see below) are conflicting packages, meaning they can't both be installed at the same time prompting you to remove one or the other. Explicitly selected packages take precedence over packages auto-selected via dependencies.

The most basic installation of a GNOME desktop environment is easily done by installing the following package groups:

pacman -S gnome gnome-circle gnome-extra

gnome contians all the packages to run a basic GNOME desktop. gnome-circle contains additional applications from the "GNOME Circle" developer community. gnome-extra contains developer tools for GNOME applications and a few games.

Setting up display manager

Start GDM on boot

Start the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) on boot to be presented with a graphical login screen.

systemctl enable gdm

When using NVIDIA proprietary drivers

For the longest time NVIDIA only supported their EGLStreams interface for Wayland sessions. Despite GNOME having support for both EGLStreams and the more popular GBM interface, the GNOME Display Manager disables the Wayland session via a udev rule, if it detects the proprietary driver is in use, to prevent problems with the login screen not showing.

To force enable GNOME's Wayland session even with the proprietary NVIDIA driver installed, check the following files:

Keep in mind that Wayland depends on Kernel Mode Setting to function properly, so it is necessary to include the appropriate kernel modules in the initramfs and setting the kernel commandline parameter to enable KMS support for the proprietary NVIDIA driver!

See Graphics Cards on how to set up early KMS with the proprietary NVIDIA driver.

Set Keymap for GDM

NOTE: Executing this command while chrooted into an installation will produce an error that the locale could not be found. Set after rebooting the system, press CTRL + ALT + F3 when GDM shows up (or any F-key between 2 and 7) to switch tty, log in via the command line and execute the command as root.

localectl set-x11-keymap de

See instructions at Plymouth page on how to set up Plymouth.

Misc additional packages

Additional packages you might want:

Name Description
gthumb Image viewer with simple editing capabilities
lollypop Music player for GNOME
seahorse Secrets manager (login credentials, SSH keys, GPG keys)
fwupd Firmware update manager; allows UEFI capsule updates in GNOME Software if supported by firmware 
pacman -S gthumb lollypop seahorse fwupd

GNOME Keyring

Gnome Keyring is a useful tool for securely storing and managing passwords, SSH keys, and other sensitive information.

As gnome-keyring is already a member of the gnome package group, it should already be installed.

To manage the contents of gnome-keyring install seahorse:

pacman -S seahorse

SSH Keys

GNOME comes with GNOME Keyring as the component to store passwords and other secrets. It can act as a wrapper around ssh-agent and displays a GUI password entry dialog when you need to unlock an SSH key. This dialog also has a checkbox to remember the password, and will unlock the key automatically when you login to your GNOME session via your regular user password.

To utilize GNOME Keyring for storing SSH passphrases, install the gcr-4 package:

pacman -S gcr-4

Then, enable the gcr-ssh-agent.socket user unit:

systemctl --user enable --now gcr-ssh-agent.socker

This will create a socket file under $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gcr/ssh and set the $SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable, which ssh-agent uses to look for unlocked SSH keys and use them for authentication.

Uniform application styles

Qt applications

To make Qt/KDE applications fit in with the GNOME desktop you can install an Adwaita Qt theme and window decorations:

yay -S adwaita-qt{5,6}-git qadwaitadecorations-qt{5,6}

Then set the following environment variables in ~/.config/evironment.d/qt.conf:

QT_WAYLAND_DECORATION=adwaita
QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=Adwaita-Dark

GTK3 applications

There is an Adwaita theme that brings GTK3 apps in line with the current LibAdwaita theme:

pacman -S adw-gtk-theme

Then open GNOME Tweaks and set the application theme for legacy applications to adw-gtk3 (or explicitly to adw-gtk3-dark if you notice apps that are not dark mode aware).

Flatpak apps

To apply Adwaita themes to Flatpak apps, install the following packages:

flatpak install org.gtk.Gtk3theme.adw-gtk3 org.gtk.Gtk3theme.adw-gtk3-dark

If you set the theme for legacy applications in GNOME Tweaks they will also be applied to Flatpak apps.

Firefox

Screenshot of Firefox GNOME Theme

Firefox can be customized to look like a GNOME native application by applying a GNOME Theme to it.

The simplest way to apply the theme is by installing Add Water, an application that allows you to install/remove the Firefox GNOME theme with a single click. It also allows to customize the GNOME theme with several options. It can auto-detect different versions of Firefox (repo package, Flatpak, Snap) as well as Firefox forks (Floorp, Cachy, LibreWolf).

flatpak install dev.qwery.AddWater

NOTE: When Firefox receives an update the theme can break in some ways. When this happens you can uninstall the theme temporarily or hold off on updating Firefox until an updated version of the theme becomes available.

Steam

Screenshot of Adwaita Steam Theme

There is an Adwaita theme available for Steam to make it fit in with the rest of the GNOME desktop. An app is available that can install and manage the theme for you:

flatpak install io.github.Foldex.AdwSteamGtk

Remove potentially unwanted packages

GNOME Dev Tools

pacman -Rsc gnome-{builder,devel-docs,multi-writer,terminal} accerciser d-spy devhelp glade sysprof

User Software

pacman -Rsc gnome-{notes,recipes,sound-recorder} polari

Games

pacman -Rsc gnome-{2048,chess,games,klotski,mahjongg,mines,nibbles,sudoku,taquin,tetravex} hitori iagno lightsoff quadrapassel tali

Replace repo packages with Flatpaks

If you wish to use the Flatpak versions of packages that the GNOME desktop team maintains themselves, you can uninstall the packages that are available as Flatpak in GNOME Software.

Remove

TIP: Put substrings of package names between curly brackets { } so the shell substitutes the values, e.g. gnome-{calculator,calendar,characters,clocks} is interpreted as if you typed gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-characters gnome-clocks. Nesting also works!

Packages part of the gnome package group:

pacman -Rn gnome-{calculator,calendar,characters,clocks,connections,contacts,font-viewer,logs,maps,music,text-editor,weather} \
  epiphany evince loupe simple-scan snapshot sushi totem decibels

Packages part of the gnome-extra package group:

pacman -Rn chatty d-spy dconf-editor devhelp endeavour file-roller ghex gnome-{boxes,builder,calls,chess,mahjongg,mines,nibbles,robots,sound-recorder,sudoku,tweaks} lightsoff quadrapassel swell-foop sysprof

Reinstall

Install the core GNOME apps as Flatpaks:

NOTE: Some of the repo packages of the gnome-extra group have been discontinued by GNOME. The following Flatpak selections replaces these with actively developed alternatives.

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.{Calculator,Calendar,Calls,Snapshot,Characters,clocks,Connections,Contacts,SimpleScan,Evince,Extensions,font-viewer,Loupe,Decibels,Logs,Maps,Music,NautilusPreviewer,TextEditor,Showtime,Weather,Epiphany}

Selection of Flatpaks previously from the gnome-extra package group:

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.{Evolution,Geary,GHex,Glade,Boxes,seahorse.Application,World.Iotas} ca.desrt.dconf-editor io.github.alainm23.planify page.kramo.Cartridges page.tesk.Refine com.mattjakeman.ExtensionManager io.gitlab.adhami3310.Impression

For a list of additional packages, see GNOME Flatpaks.

KDE Plasma

Base KDE Plasma packages for the full Plasma experience. Bundle with other packages to prevent package conflicts providing the same functionality.

TIP: Include any and all packages you want installed in a list to pacman. That way pacman will resolve package dependencies correctly and not install packages that would cause conflicts with other packages later on in the setup; e.g. the plasma group installs pulseaudio as a dependency of plasma-pa, but pulseaudio and pipewire (see below) are conflicting packages, meaning they can't both be installed at the same time prompting you to remove one or the other. Explicitly selected packages take precedence over packages auto-selected via dependencies.

pacman -S plasma kde-applications

Setting up the display manager

The plasma package group includes the Plasma Login Manager for signing into KDE Plasma.

Enable the display manager to start on boot and present a graphical login interface:

systemctl enable plasmalogin

The default keymap is set to US English. If your keyboard layout differs, change the default keymap with localectl:

NOTE: Executing this command while chrooted into the installation environment will produce an error that the locale could not be found. To set it properly, reboot into the installed system, press CTRL + ALT + F3 when Plasma Login Manager shows up (or any F-key between 2 and 7) to switch to a different console, log in via the command line and execute the command as root.

localectl set-x11-keymap de

KDE Wallet

KDE Wallet is the integrated password manager and secret store of KDE Plasma. It stores passwords to websites, WiFi networks, network shares, SSH keys and more.

Unlock Wallet automatically on login

To automatically unlock your wallet on login, the kwallet-pam package provides the necessary PAM modules (already part of the plasma package group).

There are several caveats to consider:

Automatic unlocking can also be achieved by setting no password. Do keep in mind, however, that this could lead to potentially undesired read/write access to your secrets. Enabling Prompt when an application accesses a wallet under Access Control is highly recommended.

When setting up with SDDM as display manager (default for Plasma) no further PAM configuration is necessary, as the config comes with SDDM.

Storing SSH key passphrases in Wallet

KDE Wallet can be used to store passphrases for SSH keys and have a KDE prompt appear asking for the password.

To also automatically unlock the SSH keys a SSH agent needs to be set up and running.

The openssh package (since version 9.4p1-3) comes with a systemd user unit to start the SSH agent on login regardless of a graphical session running:

NOTE: This needs to be run as the user you set up earlier, without sudo.

systemd enable --user ssh-agent

The user unit creates a Unix socket for other applications to communicate with the agent. For these applications to know this socket, the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable needs to be set. This can be achieved via user-specific systemd environment variables.

On login, systemd parses *.conf files in ~/.config/environment.d/ and sets environment variables from these. Environment variables are set in a KEY=VALUE fashion.

Create a new file ~/.config/environment.d/ssh_agent.conf:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/ssh-agent.socket

Additionally, to have a KDE dialog box appear in case the passphrase is not stored in your Wallet, point the SSH_ASKPASS environment variable to the ksshaskpass application (also included in the plasma package group):

SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/bin/ksshaskpass
SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE=prefer

Chromium-based browsers

To make Chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, etc.) use Wallet as a password store launch it with --password-store=kwallet5 or --password-store=detect.

To make this launch argument persistent, add it to the "flags" file for the Chromium-based browser you want to use:

Browser Path
Chromium ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf
Google Chrome ~/.config/chrome-flags.conf
Google Chrome DEV ~/.config/chrome-dev-flags.conf
Vivaldi ~/.config/vivaldi-stable.conf

See also: Making flags persistent on Arch Wiki

Misc additional packages

Additional packages you might want:

Name Description
freerdp Support for the Remote Desktop Protocol used for remote login to MS Windows machines
kimageformats Support for additional image formats in Dolphin and Gwenview
flatpak Support for installing applications as Flatpak packages from Flathub through Discover
fwupd Firmware update manager; allows UEFI capsule updates in Discover if supported by firmware
packagekit-qt6 Manage Arch packages in Discover