this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024

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Arch user trying out lightweight desktop environments (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@programming.dev

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28037255

Hey hey people. Relatively new Arch user here, but not new to Linux in general. I've been using Arch with KDE Plasma on this HP laptop from 2013, and I've been enjoying it a lot after spending a long time on Mint/Cinnamon.

But, I've noted that KDE is a bit slow on this machine, and is probably a bit too much. Earlier today, I decided to try out something lighter, and installed LXQt on it as a second DE. The experience was okay, with much improved responsiveness, a nice customizable retro look, and overall simpleness that still did the job mostly. But I also ran into a few issues that probably had to do with having two different DEs on the same machine and user. One thing in particular ended up annoying me so much I went back to KDE: The Discover app would just refuse to play nice with setting a dark theme on the rest of the environment, even when I tried setting it up with qt6ct.

So now I'm considering going to XFCE instead, as I probably should have done from the beginning. I just wish it had Wayland support already (I know it's being worked on). Do you have any suggestions or tips for me in regards to this? I'm sure a lot of people will recommend their favorite tiling WM which I'm not sure I want to get into.

Also, other than that, upon returning to KDE, I found that my Discover would crash when trying to update Flatpaks (the only thing I install through it) and started thinking this experiment somehow broke it.... but it's Flatpak itself that seems to have an issue today. Might have to do with the latest curl update? Dunno if I should make a separate thread for that. https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-discover-broken-with-latest-curl-update/21475

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[–] odium@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Since you don't want a tiling wm, the cosmic desktop just entered alpha and is supposed to be fairly lightweight for a full DE.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/COSMIC

I use arch hyprland, btw.

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

I've been hearing good things about it, makes me wanna try it.

[–] BB_C@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you're not into tiling, install openbox and a panel of your choosing. You will quickly find that you don't need a DE at all.

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

I did like the Openbox part of LXQt. Might re-install that.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 1 points 1 month ago

I don't have an interest in the underlying project, but the default setup for Openbox on Archcraft looks really nice.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hopefully he survives it. I keep my fingers crossed.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He survived KDE and other heavy DEs. A normal Arch users habitat is a plain WM, ideally based on Wayland, so sway/Hyprland/qtile. He will be fine.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You are right, I shouldn't have doubt an Archuser. BTW, I almost use Arch.

[–] zcd@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

Arch adjacent

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

while I'm not sure about the tiling WM front I can help with the KDE optimization on Arch part:

To preface I'm sharing sections of my Bash script that I'm in the process of eventually releasing under AGPL-3.0 which should help explain the editing/verboseness of them.

For base/minimal Arch Linux Packages:

## `btrfs-progs` is dependent/only required if you use BTRFS as your file system.
## `grub` is also dependent if you use GRUB instead of Systemd as your init system.
## intel-ucode replaces amd-ucode (as discerned from your comment on this post) which installs Intel-based microcode for your processor/CPU.
pacstrap -K /mnt intel-ucode base base-devel btrfs-progs efibootmgr grub iptables-nft linux linux-firmware linux-lts man nano networkmanager pipewire pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack pipewire-pulse sudo

For Installing Core Packages

### grub-btrfs is omitted as it is orphaned as of Sept 3, 2024. https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/grub-btrfs/.
pacman -S --needed bash-completion cryptsetup dnsmasq e2fsprogs efibootmgr firewalld man-db networkmanager sddm sddm-kcm

KDE Focused Packages

## Installing plasma Group Packages
## https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/plasma/
pacman -S --needed breeze breeze-gtk discover drkonqi kactivitymanagerd kde-cli-tools kde-gtk-config kdecoration kdeplasma-addons kgamma kglobalacceld kinfocenter kmenuedit kpipewire kscreen kscreenlocker ksystemstats kwallet-pam kwayland kwin kwrited layer-shell-qt libkscreen libksysguard libplasma milou plasma5support plasma-activities plasma-activities-stats plasma-desktop plasma-disks plasma-firewall plasma-integration plasma-nm plasma-systemmonitor plasma-thunderbolt plasma-vault plasma-workspace plasma-workspace-wallpapers polkit-kde-agent powerdevil qqc2-breeze-style systemsettings xdg-desktop-portal-kde

## Installing kde-applications Group Packages
## https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/kde-applications/
pacman -S --needed dolphin kate kmix konsole kwalletmanager

AMD GPU Related Packages

## Installing Video Drivers
## FOSS AMD GPU Drivers
## Please see the table on https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg
pacman -S --needed mesa vulkan-radeon libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau xf86-video-amdgpu

## Enable the multilib repository for 32-bit application support:
sed -i "/\[multilib\]/,/Include/"'s/^#//' /etc/pacman.conf

## To enable 32-bit application support, the multilib repository is enabled by default using the sed command above. This allows the necessary drivers to be installable from the multilib repository.
pacman -S --needed lib32-mesa lib32-libva-mesa-driver lib32-vulkan-radeon lib32-mesa-vdpau
## Owners of older AMD graphics cards (GCN 1&2) may also want to install the ATI driver:
#pacman -S --needed xf86-video-ati

Some packages were omitted from the installation lines above as this was taken from my custom installer for self-hosting services.
I'd recommend checking the links provided above to to figure out what additional packages you want for yourself🤗

If you still have issues with KDE X11/Wayland on Arch or Ubuntu, feel free to DM me and I'll try my best to help👍

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Alright, thanks for that. I'll take a closer look later today when I'm at the PC, but the plan today is to try out different minimal environments to see what I like. And this time I actually remembered to make a Timeshift snapshot ahead of time (my latest one was like a couple of weeks ago)

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

no worries and best of luck!

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wait. Should you really do pacman -Sy for all of those? Won't that cause problems? Shouldn't it just be pacman -S or go -Syu?

[–] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

ah thank you for calling that out👍

pacman -Sy is definitely a mistake and you are correct in that it should be -S <packages> or -Syu

I've edited my previous comment to reflect this thank you!

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I like IceWM pretty well... for a non-tiling WM, that is. 😉

It's very lightweight.

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah I checked it out, it was extremely lightweight, but I didn't really like how it looked. I know it could be customized but if I was going to take that effort I might as well do it on an Openbox setup.

I'm on XFCE now, really enjoying it, as I should have done from the beginning.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just on the KDE front, I'm assuming you've optimised your KDE set up for your PC?

If not, first open your Settings app and in the search box type "Effects" - disable all the fancy desktop effects.

Next, if you're on X11, go into the "Display and Monitor" section and disable compositing (you can also temporairly disable this with Alt+Shift+F12 to see what impact it has). This option is not available in Wayland; but you may be better using X11 if you don't have a dedicated GPU? I'm not sure I'd be messing with Wayland on an old laptop; I've had serious issues on a high end PC - definitely improved with 6.1, but I'm using X11 still.

But KDE 6 isn't as svelt as KDE 5 was, so even optimised it may just not be up to the job.

XFCE is a good shout, and should run nicely on a 2013 laptop.

[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

This laptop does have a dedicated GPU and was quite decent for the time. It was my only gaming machine for quite some years. Now I want to keep it alive with Linux for other general uses or work. Said dedicated GPU has been the source of many issues even when it still was under issues. The setup of Intel i5 with integrated graphics + an AMD Radeon GPU is uh... shaky under most driver circumstances and applications never know which of the two to use (usually defaulting to the wrong one)

I've been running Wayland to "get used to" the newer technology, and I don't think that in itself has much impact on performance... Even if I do turn off the effects on KDE, I still feel like it's doing way way more than I need or want it to do, and it does have a very noticeable impact on the speed things happen. Slightly slower than Cinnamon was, although both are also still way faster than it's last Windows install... lol

Right now the main "problem" I have is that KDE is handling a few things I want it to handle, and that there's a lot of applications I installed alongside it that I'd have to remove to swap fully to another DE. Almost makes me think it'd be easier to do another clean Arch install, but that took me almost a week to fully set up. (as I'd start to find the things that I hadn't yet configured or installed gradually)