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Is it possible to use LightDM with KDE on Archlinux? Wiki says

Basically there are two ways of starting KDE. Using KDM or xinitrc.

I use also awesome WM and XFCE, so I'd like to use LightDM instead.

enedil
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    They have a LightDM page but it's not very obvious. Take a look at [this page](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LightDM)... –  Feb 17 '14 at 03:02
  • kdm was deprecated years ago, unless they brought it back from the dead. sddm I believe is what was used to replace it, which was in turn fairly buggy and unreliable, but it may be better today. – Lizardx May 20 '18 at 17:32
  • @Lizardx the question is from years ago. Got just digged out. – enedil May 20 '18 at 17:32
  • Yeah, I just noticed that. However it's worth correcting anyway, since kdm doesn't exist anymore. – Lizardx May 20 '18 at 17:34

3 Answers3

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Yeah man! Everything is possible with Archlinux! You can install the entire system anyway you want.

First, if you just installed Archlinux with no display manager or a desktop environment, you have just to install

sudo pacman -S xorg xinit
sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-kde-greeter
sudo pacman -S plasma

after that you have to enable the service that control the lightdm on the boot time

sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service
sudo systemctl start lightdm.service

If you are using a display manager you don't need to worry about the .xinitrc file cause the display manager is accountable for start the desktop environment that you chose.

Second, if you have an Display manager installed, like GDM, SDDM or XDM, you have to stop the service running, for example the GDM service

sudo systemclt disable gdm.service

and select the new display manager to start with the system boot

sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service

The display manager is independent of the desktop environment such as KDE or Gnome, so you can arrange the combination between display manager and desktop environment the way you want.

Emanuel Fontelles
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  • Thanks for the answer, but notice that the question was asked more than 4 years ago :D I switched to more stable environment (nowadays I work, you know?) – enedil May 20 '18 at 17:31
  • And it's a poor answer, since it doesn't actually answer the question, it's just a generic formula for install and enable of a dm, it doesn't actually know or say if that particular dm can run or start KDE itself. – Lizardx May 20 '18 at 17:33
  • Sorry enedil! I don't realized the date of the question, really sorry. – Emanuel Fontelles May 20 '18 at 19:03
  • Lizardx the question is "Is it possible to use LightDM with KDE on Archlinux?" – Emanuel Fontelles May 20 '18 at 19:20
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Yes it is possible, as already stated by the other answer (not sure why all that hate). KDE devs even seem to explicitly care about it from time to time.

Lightdm-kde-greeter has since been purged though, probably since it was still Qt4-based after years of abandonment (as a result of Ubuntu's Mir detour, and KDE efforts moving to SDDM).

I don't really know how the built-in liblightdm-qt5 fares (or the other qt greeters), but funnily enough you can just use lightdm-gtk-greeter to get them working together.

mirh
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  • I can't evaluate this answer as for now, I don't use ArchLinux, I don't use KDE, and the answer probably is not accurate (just because the question is too old). Sorry man – enedil Apr 02 '20 at 23:48
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    Thank you! This was the key for me to use `lightdm-gtk-greeter`. I worked to login to KDE right after install. https://github.com/KDE/lightdm says to use lightdm-kde-greeter, but apt and myself couldnt find it.. it looks like it might be redhat RPM. – alchemy Feb 22 '22 at 22:26
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If possible, use lightdm to start kde and bspwm.

Install the arch with bspwm first, and then kde. Sddm was not enabled.

Jeff Schaller
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Xiuhcóatl Xoxoctic
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