Manjaro KDE in Arch

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Hi

I really like the KDE desktop environment in Manjaro, however I’m using Arch Linux. I came across this page in your Wiki regarding installing KDE but this doesn’t work, presumably because the system is looking in a different place for the repositories.

(won’t let me post links but this is the URI section)
index.php/Install_Desktop_Environments#KDE_Plasma_5

Is there any way that I can get equivalent packages to those to setup the KDE theme Manjaro uses, but on regular Arch instead?

Would very much appreciate any advice on this. Thank you.

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Welcome to the forum! :wave:

You can find our PKGBUILDs on our GitLab.

The process for installing them on Arch or other derivatives is very similar to installing AUR packages.

For example, with manjaro-kde-settings:

git clone https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/community/kde/manjaro-kde-settings.git
cd manjaro-kde-settings
makepkg -srcif

Note that you will need to do the same with any required dependencies first before building a package they depend on.

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In other words, it’s easier to switch from Arch to Manjaro then it is to be in Arch and and go through a giant headache to get Manjaro’s flavor of KDE up and running.

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Indeed.

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The themes are mostly recolored icons (which can mostly be done with the new accent color thing in KDE) and wallpapers.

The Breath theme itself, is very similar to Breeze.

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Hmm thanks guys.

After looking at this a bit more I do understand what you mean, this does not seem easy. After a search of the repository too, I can see there are a large number of similar files just by searching for ‘kde’ and it is difficult in knowing what is just standard KDE and what is Manjaro specific.

Is there any kind of documented list anywhere of each package I would need from the repo you linked?

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I might be wrong, but I doubt it. I think you’re looking for the plasma package group.

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Complete instructions can be found here:

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Thanks guys - I can install KDE ok, it’s purely the Manjaro dependencies I’m having difficulties with. However what I’m beginning to wonder is whether it literally just is the Breath theme I’m looking for and not much else.

I’ll maybe do a bit more research into this and get back to you all.

So it turns out there’s a really neat little package already made in the AUR of the Manjaro theme, it covers the basics but not quite as dressed up as the actual theme:

packages/breath-theme-git

(won’t let me link but the above is the URI link fraction of the AUR repository)

This has worked for now but as mentioned I’m going to look more into all this as to exact dependencies within Manjaro etc.

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Did you try here:

There’s a choice of download or install on the page

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Thanks - I managed to get it installed.

I would be interested in knowing how to replicate this on XFCE as well actually if that’s ok? I tried downloading the XFCE packages from the repo mentioned in the above guide I linked (after installation) by using git clone however there are a few packages which I can’t find (some of these I also can’t find for the KDE version as well). Specifically:

manjaro-base-skel
illyria-wallpaper
noto-fonts
papirus-maia-icon-theme
qt5ct
xcursor-breeze

In the case of qt5ct for instance, I did manage to find a repo on Github however this didn’t have a package file available so I couldn’t do anything with it. Does anyone know how I may be able to find some of these?

The packages I ran into issues with on KDE were the following:

zsh
manjaro-base-skel
noto-fonts-compat

Very much appreciate your time.

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noto-fonts
and
qt5ct
and
zsh
should be in the Arch repos - or in AUR

for the rest you can just browse one of the Manjaro mirrors and fetch the package directly:

https://repo.manjaro.org/

This here tells you in which repository to look:

https://packages.manjaro.org

you can just extract the archives, look at them and decide whether you want to alter system wide files in /etc
(after you have backed up the original whole /etc, because messing with this … can get messy real quick)
or just appy the configuration to your $HOME directory

I’d not try to actually install any of these - but only extract the content you are interested in and place it where it belongs (and hopefully creates no conflict)

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Available on our GitLab. xcursor-breeze is available in the AUR as well.

Those never made it to GitLab, they’re still on our old Github.

It’s part of the manjaro-wallpapers-18.0 pkgbase.

Those are available in the Arch repos.

EDIT: Added more sources

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Thanks guys.

Ok. So I managed to get all the packages now, and everything is installed except for manjaro-base-skel and illyria-wallpaper. I managed to get both of these via one of the mirrors above however I can’t install them as, as @Yochanan mentioned as there aren’t any PKGBUILD files… So I tried to decompress them and copy the files over to the system in /etc/skel (I could only few a few dot files) but unfortunately, this hasn’t made any difference as the package is still missing. There actually wasn’t any clashes in this folder at all as there were only a few bash config files in there so this fitted in nicely.

Some of the things have installed as I can now see the Manjaro XFCE flavour icons in my manager and can change them for instance, however the general theme is not working.

I have downloaded the wallpapers as well, but a similar thing also happened with that package unfortunately. With the absence of the package files, is there much else that can be done?

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Just edit the PKGBUILDs that require manjaro-base-skel and illyria-wallpaper and remove them from dependencies.

EDIT: Nevermind, see my edited post above.

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You don’t really need manjaro-base-skel
all that is in there is /etc/skel/.Xclients and /etc/skel/.dir_colors

And having these files in /etc/skel only matters when you create a new user

In /etc/skel are actually a lot more files and directories, specific to Manjaro.
… they come from other packages

Do not mix them with what you already have from Arch.
It will be a mess - which you’ll only discover once you create a new user,
because then - and only then - will these files in /etc/skel ever be used.

But it’s your experiment - have fun with it!

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For some reason I’m being told that manjaro-xfce-settings is conflicting with manjaro-xfce-minimal-settings when I’m trying to install manjaro-xfce-settings now.

The package build file has been edited to remove the dependencies, however the minimal settings is not installed anywhere so it’s trying to install during the process of installing manjaro-xfce-settings.

I’ve managed to decompress the .tar.zst of this however I can’t see any conflicts in there (e.g. dependencies that I just removed) other than the fact it is declared as a conflict in the PKGBUILD.

It’s frustrating as I’m so close now, however this is the error it’s giving me:

error: unresolvable package conflicts detected
error: failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)

So I tried to look for a manjaro-xfce-minimal-settings to try and see if I could just download that, and according to the package repository, it’s located within: profiles-and-settings/manjaro-xfce-settings on the Gitlab… and you should install in Manjaro via pamac install manjaro-xfce-minimal-settings

All I can find in the manjaro-xfce-settings Gitlab is a couple of files under a “minimal” folder… so perhaps this is the point now where the differences start to shine through between Arch and Manjaro a bit more clearly…

Thanks for this! I really appreciate the advice. This is definitely a really useful experience (which besides if nothing else I’ve learned a whole new side to everything I wasn’t aware of). For now I’m just messing in a VM so if things DO go too bad it’s not too big of a deal as I’ll just start again, but I’ve taken out these files and am grateful for the tip :slightly_smiling_face:

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I thought you wanted to replicate Manjaro KDE? Or Plasma …

Why would you need manjaro-xfce-minimal-settings or manjaro-xfce-settings anyway? What for?
The difference between the two is that manjaro-xfce-settings contains more configuration files
namely for:
qt5ct and vlc

so: they do overlap, contain largely the same files
thus they conflict with each other
and
you may already have those (the Arch native versions).

Also, these too are all in /etc/skel - only newly created users will even get to see them.

I know what is in there because I looked inside (decompressed them and compared)
As already said, I’d not install these manjaro packages - but just decompress and move files manually.

There are more differences in /etc
I guess at least some of the shell initialisation files are different.

Just compare, to see how things are done in Arch vs. Manjaro.

To achieve the same look and feel as in Manjaro is rather easy - you just need the theme and wallpapers
and not even system wide.
Putting them in your $HOME will work just fine.

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@Chris98 Found all the PKGBUILDs with the help of the mighty @oberon and edited my post above.

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Just a little note in the hope it may be useful, autogit could help you to organize this endeavour in a separate repo. So you don’t have to check every single PKGBUILD if there is an update. Set up once and run it from time to time to check for updates. :wink: