how to properly install KDE after starting with XFCE

[Hyksos]

bough a new laptop, it had windows 11 on it and made my skin crawl, so I went to my fav linux and discovered that KDE would not even let me start istallattion.

dig-dig-dig, I found out the issue was with my hw being excessively new and not widely supported, so I had to use he AHS version which comes with XFCE.

thing is, I really love the Plasma environment and ecosystem. so I installed KDE on top, but doesn't seam to be working seamlessly.

starting from the plymouth which collapsed, and little things here and there, the laptop works, but you can tell some things are wrong.

so, how should I install full KDE properly as I would get it in a brand new KDE release and how should I remove all XFCE that I don't use?

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.18.0-4mx-amd64 [5.18.16-1~mx21+1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.18.0-4mx-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           init=/lib/systemd/systemd 
           Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.5 tk: Qt 5.15.2 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 7 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-21.2.1_ahs_x64 Wildflower September 18  2022 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LG product: 16Z90Q-G.AD75F v: 0.1 serial: <filter> Chassis: 
           type: 10 v: 0.1 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: LG model: 16Z90Q v: FAB1 serial: <filter> UEFI: Phoenix v: A1ZG0380 X64 
           date: 07/06/2022 
Battery:   ID-1: CMB0 charge: 78.5 Wh (98.1%) condition: 80.0/80.0 Wh (100.0%) volts: 8.7 min: 7.7 
           model: LG LGES-LG type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Unknown cycles: 1 
           Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech K520 serial: <filter> 
           charge: 70% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
           Device-2: hidpp_battery_1 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse serial: <filter> 
           charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging 
CPU:       Info: 8-Core model: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Alder Lake 
           family: 6 model-id: 9A (154) stepping: 3 microcode: 41E cache: L2: 18 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 79872 
           Speed: 2487 MHz max: 4700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2487 2: 1560 3: 2428 4: 2833 
           5: 2419 6: 2201 7: 1791 8: 2380 9: 2753 10: 1261 11: 3575 12: 1261 13: 3246 14: 1156 
           15: 2456 16: 2908 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected 
           Type: retbleed status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Enhanced IBRS, IBPB: conditional, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: SW sequence 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P Integrated Graphics vendor: LG driver: i915 v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:46a6 class-ID: 0300 
           Device-2: Luxvisions Innotech Limited LGE Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
           bus-ID: 1-2:2 chip-ID: 30c9:0084 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.14 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: modesetting 
           unloaded: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 2560x1600 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 677x423mm (26.7x16.7") 
           s-diag: 798mm (31.4") 
           Monitor-1: eDP-1 res: 2560x1600 hz: 60 dpi: 189 size: 344x215mm (13.5x8.5") 
           diag: 406mm (16") 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Alder Lake PCH-P High Definition Audio vendor: LG 
           driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl alternate: snd_hda_intel,snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl 
           bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:51c8 class-ID: 0401 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.18.0-4mx-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel modules: wl 
           port: 2000 bus-ID: 00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:51f0 class-ID: 0280 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: ASIX AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet type: USB driver: ax88179_178a bus-ID: 4-4.1:13 
           chip-ID: 0b95:1790 class-ID: ff00 serial: <filter> 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-10:4 chip-ID: 8087:0033 
           class-ID: e001 
           Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: up address: <filter> 
           Info: acl-mtu: 1021:4 sco-mtu: 96:6 link-policy: rswitch sniff link-mode: slave accept 
           service-classes: rendering, capturing, object transfer, audio 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 1.38 TiB used: 261.82 GiB (18.6%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung model: MZVL2512HCJQ-00B00 
           size: 476.94 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 
           type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: GXA7601Q temp: 42.9 C scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Extreme 55AE 
           size: 931.48 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B type: N/A serial: <filter> 
           rev: 3000 scheme: GPT 
           SMART Message: Unknown USB bridge. Flash drive/Unsupported enclosure? 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 429.81 GiB size: 422 GiB (98.18%) used: 261.82 GiB (62.0%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2 
           ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 256 MiB size: 252 MiB (98.46%) used: 274 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat 
           dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 maj-min: 259:1 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 46.87 GiB used: 2 MiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 maj-min: 259:3 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 32.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: 2422 note: see --pkg apt: 2416 lib: 1316 flatpak: 6 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           2: deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bullseye ahs
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:      Processes: 329 Uptime: 9h 46m wakeups: 17574 Memory: 31.08 GiB used: 4.59 GiB (14.8%) 
           Init: systemd v: 247 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: N/A alt: 10 
           Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: UEFI

[Huckleberry Finn]

... and how should I remove all XFCE that I don't use?

https://mxlinux.org/wiki/xfce/how-to-co ... move-xfce/

In the meantime: MX KDE release is also AHS , just with the default kernel 5.10. You could install that, then just install the most recent kernel (5.19 till 6.0 gets there) from MX Package Installer - Popular Apps tab.

[korilius]

I did this very thing using the ahs release. I'll come back and post all the commands (not many) I used when I get home.

edit: didn't see Huck's post. Great place to start!

[korilius]

@Hyksos

I didn't need to do too much to get KDE installed. I did:

Code: Select all

    apt-get remove *xfce*
    apt-get install --yes kde-full kwin-x11 kde-config-screenlocker kscreen systemsettings partitionmanager flameshot plasma-nm ksysguard

- You don't need partitionmanager because gparted is already installed
- kwin-x11 to get title bars
- kde-config-screenlocker to configure screen timeout
- kscreen for display settings
- systemsettings for kde, weird it wasn't in kde-full or I'm crazy (or both)
- flameshot because it's a great snipping tool everyone needs to know about. :-)
- ksysguard for "task manager"
- plasma-nm the network manager

I suggest for the removal part, doing what Huck Finn linked to;

Code: Select all

dpkg -l | grep .xfce. | awk '{print $2}' | xargs sudo apt-get purge -V --auto-remove -yy 
apt install desktop-defaults-mx-common

Finally, it's probably not a problem, but you might want to install kde first, log out, then choose kde, log in, and THEN remove xfce. Again, probably be ok either way, but I have a little paranoia so that's the way I did it.

[Hyksos]

so, if I were smart, I would have done as Huckleberry Finn said (take the kde ahs and then upgrade kernel), but there's a reason why I'm not in engineering...
so, I have tried what korilius said and went decently well! however I'm left with an ungainly login screen and no plymouth screen at all.
Any idea qhat might have gone wrong?

for the rest seems to be working quite okay (I have some issues with vivaldi tabs showing quite scrambled names and cpu consuming too much in idle but I think those are worth new posts).

[korilius]

@Hyksos Would you take a picture of what a plymouth screen is supposed to look like and what this 'ungainly screen' looks like? :-) Maybe I can help. You should also specify how much is 'too much' regarding idle cpu consumption. I have a lot of Dolphin windows open so I'm consuming a lot. What does kysguard say is using up your cpu? I don't know what vivaldi is.

edit: I updated the package list. I keep finding stuff kde-full doesn't have..