How To Install KDE Plasma Desktop on AlmaLinux 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KDE Plasma Desktop on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, KDE is an Open Source Desktop Environment designed to offer safety, privacy, and peace of mind. It provides Linux users on various distributions an alternative graphical interface to customize their desktop environment and applications for everyday use enhancement.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the KDE Plasma Desktop environment on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install KDE Plasma Desktop on AlmaLinux 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf --enablerepo=epel group
sudo dnf --enablerepo=raven-extras install breeze-gtk-common
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

Step 2. Installing KDE Plasma Desktop on AlmaLinux 8.

By default, KDE Plasma is not available on the AlmaLinux base repository. Now run the following command to install KDE Plasma to your AlmaLinux system:

sudo dnf groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces" "base-x"

Next, set the default target system to graphical using the command below:

echo "exec /usr/bin/startkde" >> ~/.xinitrc
sudo systemctl set-default graphical

After that, reboot your system using the following command:

reboot

Step 3. Accessing KDE Plasma on AlmaLinux.

Once successfully installed, now login to your system to your new KDE Plasma desktop environment GUI. In the login screen click the “settings” icon next to the “Sign In” button and choose Plasma.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed KDE. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the KDE Plasma Desktop environment on your AlmaLinux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official KDE website.