That was easier than I thought it would be. I managed to get it up from a fresh, clean installation with no desktop with the following:
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S --needed xorg lightdm
sudo pacman -S pantheon
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
sudo systemctl enable lightdm
sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager
sudo systemctl reboot
More commands are needed for a fuller Pantheon experience, but this is the basics.
Oh, man. So disappointing. When I first install Pantheon, it loads just fine. For some reason after the first reboot, it stays at a black screen. It only loads the desktop environment the first boot after install only. So disappointed.
I get the nagging feeling that GDM is installed and interfering. I’ve had this happen. Even if I systemctl’d LightDM to activate I’d still get the black screen until I drove a stake thru GDM and removed it and truly switched it out.
file under: 2 cents, hail mary, big maybe
I got so frustrated after several clean installation attempts with the same result and zero info online about that bug, so I just decided to give up. It’s really unfortunate in my eyes that Pantheon only works properly on Elementary and Gnome which is a much crappier and uglier Pantheon in my eyes has widespread support. Some things are backwards and make zero sense. I’m more surprised no one in the Linux world in general has forked or contributed to Pantheon by now to solve this issue. Clearly there’s a demand for it in the Linux community, but no one cares enough… yet.
Oh, well.
I’d say it’s clear that not enough people have a demand for it and that is why it hasn’t been forked and/or supported more.
If visually appealing is what you’re looking for, Cinnamon, Budgie, and even Deepin exist. I don’t actually recommend Deepin though because of where it’s based.
If you are looking for a Pantheon-specific workflow, you could use Cinnamon, as an example, to recreate the look and feel of Pantheon.
I currently use the Xfce panel in my Cinnamon install because I mostly use i3 and my panel in i3 is the Xfce panel. Just for visual consistency whenever I switch to Cinnamon.
Anyway, hope you find a workaround until someone decides to take on the task of maintaining Pantheon on Arch.