Abstract:

This document serves as a comprehensive guide for Gentoo Linux users to install, configure, and manage the KDE Plasma desktop environment and its associated applications (KDE Gear) and underlying libraries (KDE Frameworks). It details essential prerequisites, including profile selection and necessary system services, and covers installation procedures using Portage, with emphasis on USE flag configurations. The guide also provides instructions for starting Plasma sessions via display managers or manually, addresses KWallet management, non-root user authentication, and the secure execution of GUI applications with root privileges. Furthermore, it outlines how to install and localize KDE applications and describes the process for safely removing KDE components from a Gentoo system.

Summarizing KDE Plasma Installation and Configuration on Gentoo

(Note: As this is a text transcript, timestamps are not applicable.)

• Gentoo Support for KDE: Gentoo provides extensive packaging for KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and Applications, ensuring a wide array of KDE-based software is available.
• Profile Selection (Recommended): Users should select an appropriate profile, such as default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma or desktop/plasma/systemd, using eselect profile set X to streamline installation and ensure compatibility. Hardened profiles can also be combined with Plasma features.
• Essential Services: Key services like D-Bus, PipeWire (for sound, screensharing on Wayland), polkit (for privilege control), and udisks (for storage management) are crucial. Session tracking is handled by elogind (for OpenRC) or systemd, and device management by udev or systemd.
• Display Environment Setup: Users need to set up either an X server or Wayland. Plasma 6 defaults to Wayland, requiring specific VIDEO_CARDS USE flags and kernel Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) support. The kde-plasma/plasma-login-sessions package's USE flags (+wayland or X) control the default session.
• Plasma Installation:
  • The kde-plasma/plasma-meta package pulls in the full Plasma desktop, configurable via numerous USE flags (e.g., browser-integration, display-manager, networkmanager, sddm, X).
  • Alternatively, kde-plasma/plasma-desktop provides a minimal desktop, requiring users to manually install other essential components.
  • Installation is performed using emerge --ask kde-plasma/plasma-meta.
• Starting Plasma Sessions:
  • Display Manager: SDDM (x11-misc/sddm) is the recommended login manager, pulled in by default with plasma-meta.
  • No Display Manager: For X11, add exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11 to ~/.xinitrc. For Wayland, use dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland in a user's ~/.profile.
• KWallet Configuration: Plasma's encrypted password storage, kde-frameworks/kwallet, can be managed with kde-apps/kwalletmanager. Auto-unlocking via kde-plasma/kwallet-pam requires specific PAM configurations and consistent login/KWallet passwords. KWallet can also be disabled.
• Non-Root User Authentication: Polkit (sys-auth/polkit) manages administrative dialogs. By default, only root is an administrator. To allow users in the wheel group, a custom polkit rule file (/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/49-wheel.rules) must be created.
• Running GUI Apps as Root: The kde-plasma/kdesu-gui package provides kdesu for running graphical programs with root privileges on Xorg. This is generally discouraged for security reasons.
• KDE Gear (Applications) Installation:
  • kde-apps/kde-apps-meta installs the full suite of KDE applications.
  • Users can also emerge smaller meta-packages (e.g., kdecore-meta, kdegames-meta) or selectively enable/disable applications via USE flags.
  • Localization is configured per-package in System Settings.
• KDE Frameworks: These foundational libraries are automatically installed as dependencies for Plasma and KDE Gear.
• Removal of KDE Components: To remove Plasma, unmerge kde-plasma/plasma-meta, clean up Portage configuration files, and then run emerge --ask --depclean to remove remaining packages. This should be done carefully as it may remove other non-KDE packages.