Desktop Environments

The desktops Genesi offers, how to install another, and how to switch between them.

Genesi ships with a glass KDE Plasma 6 desktop by default — see The Desktop for the Genesi-specific theming. But KDE is only the default: the installer offers a range of desktops, and you can add more at any time.

Desktops offered at install

Picked in the Calamares installer's desktop step:

KDE Plasma — the default; polished and highly configurable.
Hyprland — Wayland tiling compositor with the Caelestia shell. See Hyprland.
Niri — scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. See Niri.
GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, Budgie, COSMIC, LXDE — see Other desktops.

Installing another desktop after setup

The easiest route is the Package Installer, which has ready-made groups per desktop. Or install with pacman — for example:

# GNOME
sudo pacman -S gnome
# Xfce
sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies

You'll also want a display manager if one isn't already set up (Genesi uses SDDM by default, which can launch any of them).

Switching between installed desktops

Log out, then on the SDDM login screen use the session menu (usually a small menu or gear icon near the username) to pick which desktop to start. Your choice is remembered for next time.

Installing several full desktops pulls in a lot of overlapping packages and can make menus messy. If you're just trying one out, consider a snapshot first so you can cleanly roll back.

Hyprland

Tiling Wayland compositor + Caelestia shell.

Niri

Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor.

Other desktops

GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, Budgie, COSMIC, LXDE.

KDE (default)

The glass KDE Plasma 6 Genesi desktop.