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Arch user trying out lightweight desktop environments (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@programming.dev

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28037255

Hey hey people. Relatively new Arch user here, but not new to Linux in general. I've been using Arch with KDE Plasma on this HP laptop from 2013, and I've been enjoying it a lot after spending a long time on Mint/Cinnamon.

But, I've noted that KDE is a bit slow on this machine, and is probably a bit too much. Earlier today, I decided to try out something lighter, and installed LXQt on it as a second DE. The experience was okay, with much improved responsiveness, a nice customizable retro look, and overall simpleness that still did the job mostly. But I also ran into a few issues that probably had to do with having two different DEs on the same machine and user. One thing in particular ended up annoying me so much I went back to KDE: The Discover app would just refuse to play nice with setting a dark theme on the rest of the environment, even when I tried setting it up with qt6ct.

So now I'm considering going to XFCE instead, as I probably should have done from the beginning. I just wish it had Wayland support already (I know it's being worked on). Do you have any suggestions or tips for me in regards to this? I'm sure a lot of people will recommend their favorite tiling WM which I'm not sure I want to get into.

Also, other than that, upon returning to KDE, I found that my Discover would crash when trying to update Flatpaks (the only thing I install through it) and started thinking this experiment somehow broke it.... but it's Flatpak itself that seems to have an issue today. Might have to do with the latest curl update? Dunno if I should make a separate thread for that. https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-discover-broken-with-latest-curl-update/21475

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[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

while I'm not sure about the tiling WM front I can help with the KDE optimization on Arch part:

To preface I'm sharing sections of my Bash script that I'm in the process of eventually releasing under AGPL-3.0 which should help explain the editing/verboseness of them.

For base/minimal Arch Linux Packages:

## `btrfs-progs` is dependent/only required if you use BTRFS as your file system.
## `grub` is also dependent if you use GRUB instead of Systemd as your init system.
## intel-ucode replaces amd-ucode (as discerned from your comment on this post) which installs Intel-based microcode for your processor/CPU.
pacstrap -K /mnt intel-ucode base base-devel btrfs-progs efibootmgr grub iptables-nft linux linux-firmware linux-lts man nano networkmanager pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack pipewire-pulse sudo

For Installing Core Packages

### grub-btrfs is omitted as it is orphaned as of Sept 3, 2024. https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/grub-btrfs/.
pacman -S --needed bash-completion cryptsetup dnsmasq e2fsprogs efibootmgr firewalld man-db networkmanager sddm sddm-kcm

KDE Focused Packages

## Installing plasma Group Packages
## https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/plasma/
pacman -S --needed breeze breeze-gtk discover drkonqi kactivitymanagerd kde-cli-tools kde-gtk-config kdecoration kdeplasma-addons kgamma kglobalacceld kinfocenter kmenuedit kpipewire kscreen kscreenlocker ksystemstats kwallet-pam kwayland kwin kwrited layer-shell-qt libkscreen libksysguard libplasma milou plasma5support plasma-activities plasma-activities-stats plasma-desktop plasma-disks plasma-firewall plasma-integration plasma-nm plasma-systemmonitor plasma-thunderbolt plasma-vault plasma-workspace plasma-workspace-wallpapers polkit-kde-agent powerdevil qqc2-breeze-style systemsettings xdg-desktop-portal-kde

## Installing kde-applications Group Packages
## https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/kde-applications/
pacman -S --needed dolphin kate kmix konsole kwalletmanager

AMD GPU Related Packages

## Installing Video Drivers
## FOSS AMD GPU Drivers
## Please see the table on https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg
pacman -S --needed mesa vulkan-radeon libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau xf86-video-amdgpu

## Enable the multilib repository for 32-bit application support:
sed -i "/\[multilib\]/,/Include/"'s/^#//' /etc/pacman.conf

## To enable 32-bit application support, the multilib repository is enabled by default using the sed command above. This allows the necessary drivers to be installable from the multilib repository.
pacman -S --needed lib32-mesa lib32-libva-mesa-driver lib32-vulkan-radeon lib32-mesa-vdpau
## Owners of older AMD graphics cards (GCN 1&2) may also want to install the ATI driver:
#pacman -S --needed xf86-video-ati

Some packages were omitted from the installation lines above as this was taken from my custom installer for self-hosting services.
I'd recommend checking the links provided above to to figure out what additional packages you want for yourself🤗

If you still have issues with KDE X11/Wayland on Arch or Ubuntu, feel free to DM me and I'll try my best to help👍

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Alright, thanks for that. I'll take a closer look later today when I'm at the PC, but the plan today is to try out different minimal environments to see what I like. And this time I actually remembered to make a Timeshift snapshot ahead of time (my latest one was like a couple of weeks ago)

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

no worries and best of luck!

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wait. Should you really do pacman -Sy for all of those? Won't that cause problems? Shouldn't it just be pacman -S or go -Syu?

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

ah thank you for calling that out👍

pacman -Sy is definitely a mistake and you are correct in that it should be -S <packages> or -Syu

I've edited my previous comment to reflect this thank you!