Hello *,
fresh KDE install here and I think I need to “move on”… I have been using KDE 20+ years ago & XFCE4 ever since. I thought I give KDE another try, but I find the performance quite disappointing & the general handling is not for me. I would like to try budgie for a while and then, maybe, go back to XFCE4.
Now, I would like to do this in my regular working environment and not on in a VM or on a burner laptop. This post Anyone using multiple desktop environment in one user? - #16 by zoli62 states clearly, that using 2 DE in parallel is bad (which I can confirm, again, from 20+ years old experience…).
So: I would like to do something like this:
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Install budgie
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remove KDE
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reboot into budgie
(maybe later do it again with 3-8 other DEs)
Questions:
a) What would be the best way to do this? (not just the install-commands, but possibly also which files to delete, etc.)
b) What could possibly go wrong?
I would very much like to avoid a new install as I just spend hours of installing & configuring all the stuff I need and migrating my data, so any recommendations to avoid this are highly welcome!
Cheers, Ricky
Have you already tried to move the slider on the first page of system settings of KDE to the right to speedup things ?
First thing. I am talking about performance, not animation speed. Like opening & closing windows, occasional freezes, etc. Still, even without that, I cannot warm up to the concepts and want to move on.
It’s my personal choice to avoid having multiple DEs installed. Many DEs use files inside ~/.config/ or ~/.local/share/ for storing configurations and, at least for Plasma and GNOME, these configuration files go against each other, often resulting in weird behavior and mismatch theming.
If you want to try multiple DEs and your system uses Btrfs as its file system, try setting up snapshot support and create a restore point before you go ahead and nuke DEs out to your heart’s content. If you don’t like the DE, you go back to that original restore point and you try again with another one.
I believe $ yay/paru -S snapper-support btrfs-assistant will install the required bits for Grub snapshot booting, automatic pacman integration with Snapper, so restore points are created before and after a package transaction is performed and btrfs-assistant is a GUI app to help with maintaining these file system snapshots.
As stated in my initial post, I do not want to run multiple DEs. I want to delete KDE as completely as possible, than install a new DE and only use that.
Your proposal would, of course, work, but I would only be able to go back to KDE - which I definitely do not want to.
$ eos-packagelist Plasma-Desktop is the command that gives you the packages EOS’ installer installs for the Plasma desktop… I think. I don’t remember the package name exactly, but something like that. Save them in a file and run $ sudo pacman -Rscn - < file to remove all packages.
I personally just save what I need from ~/.config/ folder, delete it and let my system recreate it on reboot. This should delete Plasma pretty much.
As for installing Budgie, consult the wiki. I don’t know the full procedure for installing it, but the Arch Wiki should have everything you need. Link to the Arch Wiki.
ok, thank you, “Plasma-Desktop” seems to be “KDE-Desktop” (at least on my system. The only KDE-related files are in .config? That sounds easy enough, because I can delete that without any harm, as I have a pretty fresh install anyway. Would there be any other relevant files, like in .local/share? What about stuff in any root-folders? Any demons that need extra killing?
There might be some utilities that might be stuck around. You can easily remove them one by one once you see them in your Budgie desktop. No daemons that I saw around being left behind.
I haven’t gone inside ~/.local/share or any root folder for more things to delete. The pacman command should delete just about everything that’s going to take a lot of space.
If I remove all the KDE-packages will I still be able to use KDE for the budgie-install?
In which case: Might it be better to install budgie first, boot in budgie (if possible) and then remove KDE?
If you don’t reboot, well… kind of. Konsole, if you use that terminal emulator for your terminal needs, will be limited in functionality, but sending commands and whatnot will work no issues. The thing is that if you don’t have a desktop, it’s not the end of the world. You will boot into a tty, which is basically just the terminal.
Thx again, “space” as in disk space isn’t my concern and I could even live with some ghost-demons claiming CPU. I just don’t want any “side-effects”, like KDE-ghost-jobs preventing the budgie screensaver or the like.
I do not feel uncomfortable about tty only, but it would limit my access to this forum, for example ;o) So, how about budgie first, reboot in budgie, then remove KDE?
How do I “force” endeavor to reboot in budgie?
Since you have KDE and its display manager installed, after you install Budgie, log out of your session and log around the corners. You should see a button that will allow you to change the desktop you log into.
So, here is my preliminary plan:
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delete contents of .config, except for the “good stuff” (backup the whole thing first, of course)
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Install Budgie following https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Budgie
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log out KDE, log into budgie
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remove all packages that “$ eos-packagelist KDE-Desktop” gives
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reboot & hope for the best…
If everything works: See you on the other side…
The plan sounds good to me. Good luck.
So, here is my protocol:
1a. backup .config => >check<
1b. delete anything that looks KDE-related: Doesn’t work, as most of the stuff is in use 
=> will move that part to 4
2a. Install Budgie: budgie-desktop, budgie-desktop-services, budgie-control-center
2b. Install optional packages: budgie-desktop-view, network-manager-applet, blueman
2c. Installed gnome via “$ sudo pacman -S gnome” as recommended in some post
3a. log out KDE / log in budgie => >check<
(3b. First impression: Oh well, this needs some getting used to…)
4a. $ eos-packagelist KDE-Desktop > KDE-packages
4b. $ sudo pacman -Rscn - < KDE-packages
4c. Start Thunar (had this already installed under KDE) => settings seem to be gone, although I didn’t delete those (see 1b) 
=> Thunar doesn’t seem to “get” the dark theme of the system settings
4d. .config => already quite some KDE-files & -folders seem to be gone => delete the rest
5 reboot…
6 ok, now I am on tty as budgie apparently wasn’t started & KDE is no more (am writing this on auxiliary-laptop)
=> What now? PLEASE HELP!