KDE Plasma
KDE Plasma is a modern, highly customizable desktop environment that strikes a rare balance in the Linux ecosystem: it delivers a gorgeous, feature-rich visual experience without hogging your system resources. While it looks premium out of the box, its true power lies in its absolute modularity, allowing you to tweak everything from window rules to panel layouts.
The base KDE Plasma desktop can be installed by either the plasma group or the plasma-meta meta package. The group installs all packages in it once, while the meta package pulls in the packages via dependencies and installs new packages when the meta package gets updated to include new packages as dependencies. Which one you choose is personal preference how you'd like to manage your installation.
Install either plasma or plasma-meta:
# Plasma group
pacman -S plasma
# Plasma meta package
pacman -S plasma-meta
This will install only the desktop without barely any applications. Instead of installing the massive kde-applications bundle (which includes over 190 packages, many of which you may never use), Arch Linux splits the ecosystem further into modular, category-specific groups and meta-packages.
Use the table below to selectively install only the categories that you need:
NOTE: The same rules as for the base plasma group/meta package apply.
| Group Name | Meta-Package Name | Category Focus | Key Included Applications |
|---|---|---|---|
kde-accessibility |
kde-accessibility-meta |
Accessibility | kmouth (speech synthesizer), kmousetool |
kde-education |
kde-education-meta |
Education & Science | marble (virtual globe), kalzium (periodic table), cantor |
kde-games |
kde-games-meta |
Gaming & Entertainment | kpat (solitaire), kshisen, granatier (bomberman clone) |
kde-graphics |
kde-graphics-meta |
Graphics & Creativity | gwenview (image viewer), okular (document viewer), kolourpaint |
kde-multimedia |
kde-multimedia-meta |
Audio & Video | kdenlive (video editor), dragon (media player), juk (music player) |
kde-network |
kde-network-meta |
Networking & Remote | kdeconnect (phone sync), kget (download manager), krdc (remote desktop) |
kde-office |
kde-office-meta |
Productivity | calligra (office suite), krosspython |
kde-pim |
kde-pim-meta |
Personal Information Management | kmail (email), korganizer (calendar), kaddressbook |
kde-sdk |
kde-sdk-meta |
Software Development | katedevel, cervisia, kompare (diff tool) |
kde-system |
kde-system-meta |
System Administration | ksystemlog (log viewer), kdiskfree (storage space manager) |
kde-utilities |
kde-utilities-meta |
Desktop Utilities | kate (advanced text editor), kcalc (calculator), filelight (disk analyzer) |
If you want the complete suite of KDE applications (over 190 packages), install kde-applications (group) or kde-applications-meta (meta package).
Setting up the display manager
By default, both the group and meta package install both SDDM and the new Plasma Login Manager. The default since KDE Plasma 6.6 is Plasma Login Manager, as it's specifically designed to better integrate with 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, finish the installation, 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:
- Only
blowfishencryption is supported - Wallet can only be unlocked if the autologin method saves the password, e.g. when using
pam_autologin - Wallet cannot be unlocked when logging in with a fingerprint
- Wallet must be named
kdewallet(default name) - Disabling automatic closing of Wallet may be desired to keep it from asking for the password after every use
- When choosing to secure Wallet with a password it must match the user account password
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.
Using Plasma Login Manager (or SDDM) requires no further configuration steps.
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 --user enable 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 (part of 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=kwallet6 or --password-store=detect (preferred).
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.