Lumina

This material is work-in-progress ... Do not follow instructions here until this notice is removed. (Last edited by D1nuc0m on 6 Jan 2026.)

Lumina is a lightweight desktop environment. Mainly used on *BSD systems, does not rely on Linux desktop frameworks/tools such as systemd.

Prerequisites

Without D-Bus

• Consider if upgrade to Edge, as Lumina requires testing repository, unsupported on main/stable branches.
• Enable community and testing repositories
• Install Xorg

With D-Bus

• Consider if upgrade to Edge, as Lumina requires testing repository, unsupported on main/stable branches.
• Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
• Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers, errors are likely to occur when starting your desktop.
• A non-root user account with appropriate groups for desktop usage.
• The community repository must be enabled.
• Set up eudev.
• Install and enable D-Bus. Without D-Bus, icons and keyboard shortcuts may be missing.
• Enable testing repository
• Install Xorg

Installation

Install the Lumina desktop environment packages

# apk add lumina-desktop

Install a terminal emulator with fonts to access the terminal from inside the desktop session, for example xterm

# apk add xterm font-terminus

Fixes

At the moment of writing, there are missing dependencies related to icons in the packages

# apk add qt5-qtsvg

Starting Lumina

With a display manager

ToDo

Manually

$ start-lumina-desktop

Setting Lumina as the default Desktop Environment

Without D-Bus

$ echo 'exec start-lumina-desktop' >> ~/.xinitrc

With D-Bus

$ echo 'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session start-lumina-desktop' >> ~/.xinitrc

See also

• Desktop environments and Window managers
• Post Install