KDE

From Alpine Linux

KDE is a software project comprising a desktop environment known as Plasma, a collection of libraries and frameworks known as KDE Frameworks, and several applications known as KDE Applications. Their UserBase wiki has detailed information about most KDE Applications.

Note that the plasma package isn't available for the ppc64le and s390x architectures due to the kdeplasma-addons dependency not being available there. The rest of Plasma can however be installed separately to get a functional desktop.

Installation

Plasma

Before installation, make sure your graphical environment is setup. Don't be fooled by the name of the command, this is also required for Wayland sessions.

setup-xorg-base

Install the plasma meta-package. This will install the required Plasma packages and sddm and pre-configure it to use the Breeze theme. Alternatively a more minimal installation can be done by installing plasma-desktop.

KDE Applications

To install the full set of KDE Applications, install kde-applications. You can also choose to install a more limited set of applications by installing any of the subpackages:

Starting Plasma

Plasma can be started using a display manager or from the console.

Using a display manager

When Plasma is installed via the plasma meta-package, this has already been setup using sddm.

  • Select Plasma to launch a new session in Xorg
  • Select Plasma (Wayland) to launch a new session in Wayland

From the console

The Xorg session can be launched by installing xinit and appending exec startkde to your .xinitrc file. Then just start X.

xinit

For the Wayland session run

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasmacompositor