Arch Linux: Upgrading to Plasma 5.2

gistfile1.md

KDE Plasma Workspaces 4 to KDE Plasma 5.2 - Arch Linux

This guide was written on January 29, 2014. Things may change in the future!

1. System needs to be up to date:pacman -Syu
   This will pull in a lot of Frameworks5 stuff. Also, some applications like konsole are already ported to Plasma 5.

2. Reboot to make sure you run the latest software.

3. Check if fonts in Konsole are ugly/wrong. If so, (re-)set font in konsole settings.

4. Switch display manager from KDM to SDDM. This is required for Plasma 5.
   pacman -S sddm
systemctl disable kdm
systemctl enable sddm
   If this does not work, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_manager#Loading_the_display_manager
   I had to remove /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service manually
   rm /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service
systemctl disable kdm
systemctl enable sddm

5. Reboot, graphical login should be provided by SDDM now. Ugly looks are ok for now, Plasma 5 has a nice theme for SDDM. Before login in, make sure your session is not "failsave". If SDDM fails to start, try creating a config file manually:
   sddm --example-config > /etc/sddm.conf
   Further problems? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SDDM

6. Remove KDE SC4 and install Plasma 5
   pacman -Rc kdebase-workspace
pacman -S plasma-meta
   Removing kdebase-workspace removed some applications that I use. Re-install them:
   pacman -S yakuake
   KCM for SDDM
   pacman -S sddm-kcm
   Rebooting via GUI will most likely fail at this point, so just use the terminal:
   reboot

7. When logging in after reboot, make sure the session is "Plasma"

8. Re-configure some important things that may or may not have survived the upgrade. I remember:

   • keyboard layout (in system settings)
   • autostart applications (also system settings)
   • taskbar layout (plasmoids in general)
   • time zone (system settings)

9. There are still a lot of qt4/kde4 applications. Get breeze for them: pacman -S breeze-kde4
   Launch qtconfig-qt4 and select "Breeze" as "GUI Style" Remove the icon cache to get breeze icons everywhere:
   rm /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/icon-cache.kcache

10. Choose Breeze as a theme for SDDM in system settings --> Startup and Shutdown

11. You should probably select at least one language in system settings --> regional settings --> Translations. You may also want to change numeric, time and currency formats ("Formats" in the same menu). If you change this, make sure you have a compatible locale enabled. (This somehow was not required in KDE4). Example: If you live in Germany, use KDE in english but with metric units, make sure both de_DE.UTF-8 and en_US.UTF-8 are enabled (not commented) in /etc/locale.gen. Run locale-gen after changing this file.

To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. This work is published from: Germany.

Thx! Very helpful