Minimal KDE Installation Guide for Arch Linux

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This article aims to provide a minimal, convenient, and usable KDE desktop environment For more detailed information, see ArchWiki KDE

Install Xorg

Before installing Plasma (KDE5), ensure Xorg is installed and functioning properly on your system.

Generally, you only need the xorg-server package.

Additionally, the xorg-apps group provides some programs for specific configuration tasks.

The xorg group includes the Xorg server, packages from xorg-apps, and fonts.

Install Display Manager

The simplest method is to use a display manager, eliminating the need for additional installation and configuration.

For KDE environments, SDDM is recommended.

Reason: KDE5 provides official theme support for SDDM and offers an out-of-the-box experience with password authentication (kwallet).

Install KDE Desktop

Arch Linux provides the plasma group (recommended), the plasma-meta meta-package, and the plasma-desktop package (minimal Plasma installation, not recommended due to missing essential software).

To ensure both convenience and minimal installation (manually selecting non-essential software), we choose the plasma group.

Install all packages in the plasma group, then remove plasma-sdk (developer tools) and KDE’s built-in games with sudo pacman -Rscn $(pacman -Qqs kde games).

KDE Network Management

NetworkManager is KDE’s default network management tool. Run sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager to enable it at boot.

See: KDE Recommended Plugins List

Reboot