How to "KDE and GNOME"?

I look for a tutorial:
one user uses GNOME – second user uses KDE.
System NOW is: Gnome only…

I can’t see much of a problem to use several desktop environments side by side. What should be the issue with this? I would only switch from GDM to SDDM, since my guess is somehow GDM might be to Gnome specific - while SDDM seems to be more desktop agnostic.

Config files might not like each other, or something like it I think.

But, it’s not recommended!

For what?
How to install Plasma on a system where it has not yet been?
Why don’t you just try?

Both Plasma and Gnome provides a keyring - conflict

Both Plasma and Gnome applies system wide settings and one user may, by accident, wreck the other user’s experience.

Unless you deploy a dual-boot setup using two separate disks one user may be causing annoyance for the other.

One scenario where it may work if is none of the users have supervisor rights - keep a separate system admin account for system maintenance.

Look into the /etc/xdg/autostart - it maybe possible to move the desktop specific services to the local user in ~/.config/autostart.

Plasma is much more systemd centric than Gnome - at least as I recall it - thus there may be dbus activation of Plasma specifics on a Gnome desktop and vice versa.

In my opinion Gnome and Plasma is like oil and water - they never mix well.

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Actually, what you’re proposing is that they will not be installed ‘side by side’.

  • If they will be installed on the same /root filesystem.

  • Side by side would imply you have two installations and choose to boot one or the other…

Side by side is what I’d call a perfect solution for two users, each with a separate 250GiB installation partition and perhaps some shared storage besides to handle backups.

Side by side there are likely going to be System level issues… though less severe and probably more manageable than a single user using both desktops using the same /home.

Potential for multiple conflicting background services booting up, for example - bluetooth managers… also there will be package bloat - two sets of default applications (two file managers, multiple text editors, terminal emulators etc).

Then redundant background services will likely run for both environments - KWallet and Keyring, power management… and I’m not so sure about Audio, as we’ve moved on to Pipewire since I messed up my Cinnamon setup with KDE.

Obviously then SDDM vs GDM is already answered, SDDM would be my guess.

So check on default applications, xdg-mime, background services.

Obviously, a robust backup strategy for both desktops, and snapshots for the system would be a good starting point.

From personal experience I wouldn’t want to bother experimenting with two desktops again… but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try (after sorting snapshots and backups).

Give it at least a few days before trumpeting your success :rofl:

I think I would prefer to add a GNOME install (omitting GDM) rather than installing KDE Plasma after Gnome.

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To be frank, separate users with separate /home folders would cure most of the issues we remember from trying this ourselves in the past…

It’s the system that’s gonna be the problem; and possibly not as bad as we’re projecting. I never actually tried this with separate /home folders myself… maybe I should.

Thank You!
So one root and two users – one user using GNOME one user using KDE – not a good idea.
Some years ago I tried this – using Mageia; didn’t work really well :grin:

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