A minimal KDE Plasma environment may be installed together with the X server and accompanying applications by executing:
pacman -S xorg plasma-desktop sddm konsole dolphin packagekit-qt5 --needed
plasma-desktop: supplies the shell, window manager, and fundamental Plasma libraries
sddm is the preferred display manager for Plasma sessions.
konsole and dolphin furnish a terminal emulator and file manager, providing a usable baseline without the entire KDE Applications suite.
packagekit-qt5 enables Plasma Discover for optional graphical package management.
When a lightweight tiling workflow is preferred, BSPWM together with its supporting utilities can be installed:
pacman -S xorg picom rofi kitty arandr bspwm sxhkd
bspwm: a tiling window manager that represents windows as the leaves of a full binary tree.
sxhkd: is an X daemon that reacts to input events by executing commands.
picom: is a compositor for X.
rofi: a window switcher, Application launcher and dmenu replacement.
kitty: the fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal emulator.
arandr: provide a simple visual front end for XRandR. Relative monitor positions are shown graphically and can be changed in a drag-and-drop way.
mkdir -p ~/.config/{bspwm,sxhkd}
cp /usr/share/doc/bspwm/examples/bspwmrc ~/.config/bspwm/
cp /usr/share/doc/bspwm/examples/sxhkdrc ~/.config/sxhkd/
The sample bspwmrc and sxhkdrc distributed with the package are copied and may serve as an initial template.
sxhkdrc is edited to tailor frequently used shortcuts. For example, the terminal and application-launcher bindings can be defined as:
# Open Terminal
super + Return
kitty
# Aplication launcher
super + @space
rofi -modi drun -show drun
The hot-key daemon parses the file on the fly, so changes take effect after reloading the configuration (e.g. by sending pkill -USR1 -x sxhkd).
Appending the following lines at the end of ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc ensures that compositor, cursor, and other helpers start with the window manager:
picom -f &
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr
reboot now
After reboot, the selected display manager should present a session entry labelled BSPWM, as .desktop files for installed window managers are placed automatically in /usr/share/xsessions/.
arandr is launched from the terminal or launcher.
Appropriate resolutions and display layouts are selected under “Outputs”.
The configuration is saved, e.g. as display.sh, in ~/.screenlayout/.
Source the script near the top of ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc (before compositor or panel calls) to ensure the X-randr commands run as soon as the session starts.
~/.screenlayout/display.sh &
...
ARandR emits a plain xrandr script; marking it executable and invoking it early guarantees that subsequent helpers (e.g., compositors) receive correct geometry information.
Install the helper: sudo pacman -S numlockx.
Append the command to bspwmrc, directly after the display script so it inherits the same X session.
numlockx on
allows you to start X with NumLock turned on.
sudo pacman -S thunar gvfs gvfs-mtp tumbler thunar-volman
Thunar is a modern file manager for the Xfce Desktop Environment.
sudo pacman -S p7zip unrar-free zip unzip xarchiver
Xarchiver is the ultimate solution for handling archives on Linux and FreeBSD. It is a Desktop Environment independent archiver front end.
sudo pacman -S mousepad
Mousepad aims to be an easy-to-use and fast editor. Our target is an editor for quickly editing text files, not a development environment or an editor with a huge bunch of plugins.
sudo pacman -S nsxiv
nsxiv is a fork of the now-unmaintained sxiv with the purpose of being a (mostly) drop-in replacement for sxiv, maintaining its interface and adding simple, sensible features.
sudo pacman -S mpv
mpv is a free (as in freedom) media player for the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types.
sudo pacman -S pavucontrol
A simple GTK based volume control tool (“mixer”) for the PulseAudio sound server.
sudo pacman -S zathura
zathura is a highly customizable and functional document viewer. It provides a minimalistic and space saving interface as well as an easy usage that mainly focuses on keyboard interaction.
sudo pacman -S xfce4-screenshooter
xfce4-screenshooter is an application that can be used to take snapshots of your desktop screen.
sudo pacman -S dunst
dunst is a lightweight replacement for the notification daemons provided by most desktop environments.
Download the preferred Nerd Font release (e.g., CascadiaCode).
Extract the files to ~/.local/share/fonts/.
Refresh the cache: fc-cache.
The procedures above install BSPWM and its auxiliaries on a minimal Arch Linux base, create the requisite configuration hierarchy, seed default scripts, and automate common helpers. Upon completion, a functional tiling environment is provided, ready for further personalization through additional rules, theming, and status-bar integration.