Install KDE Plasma Desktop on Fedora 45 / 44

Fedora’s KDE groups install Plasma Login Manager, not SDDM. It is KDE’s own greeter, and switching to it on a machine that already has a user drops you into a first-run wizard that wants to create a second account. That is the one real trap in adding KDE Plasma to Fedora. The rest is a large but uneventful dnf transaction and a desktop that works on the first login.

Original content from computingforgeeks.com - post 4608

This guide installs KDE Plasma on Fedora Workstation next to GNOME and logs in through GDM. It then walks through the Welcome Center, Kickoff, System Settings, global themes and KWin tiling. It also covers the optional X11 session, how to switch to Plasma Login Manager without triggering Plasma Setup, and how much memory Plasma uses compared with GNOME on the same machine. For a fresh machine, the Fedora 45 install guide and the post-install checklist come first. Everything below was run on a Fedora 45 Workstation with Plasma 6.7.5, KDE Gear 26.08 and Qt 6.11. Fedora 44 carries the same Plasma release, checked against its repositories.

Choose the KDE group to install

Two groups matter. The sizes are from --assumeno dry runs on an up-to-date Fedora 45 Workstation (updates-testing enabled), so expect the counts to drift a little as updates land:

Group	What it adds	Packages (installed size)
@kde-desktop	Plasma, KWin, Dolphin, Konsole, Discover, Plasma Login Manager, Plasma Setup	464 (2 GiB)
@kde-desktop-environment	The above plus the KDE apps, PIM (Kontact), multimedia and Fedora’s base desktop groups	676 (3 GiB)

This guide uses the full environment. For a dedicated KDE machine, the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop edition installs Plasma from its own ISO instead. Pick @kde-desktop if you only want the desktop and the core apps.

Install KDE Plasma on Fedora Workstation

One command, about 2 GiB of downloads:

sudo dnf5 install -y @kde-desktop-environment

Check what landed:

rpm -q plasma-workspace plasma-desktop kwin plasma-login-manager plasma-lookandfeel-fedora dolphin konsole qt6-qtbase kf6-kcoreaddons sddm plasma-workspace-x11

Plasma 6.7.5 on Qt 6.11 and Frameworks 6.30, with no SDDM and no X11 session:

plasma-workspace-6.7.5-2.fc45.x86_64
plasma-desktop-6.7.5-1.fc45.x86_64
kwin-6.7.5-1.fc45.x86_64
plasma-login-manager-6.7.5-1.fc45.x86_64
plasma-lookandfeel-fedora-6.7.5-2.fc45.noarch
dolphin-26.08.1-1.fc45.x86_64
konsole-26.08.1-1.fc45.x86_64
qt6-qtbase-6.11.2-2.fc45.x86_64
kf6-kcoreaddons-6.30.0-1.fc45.x86_64
package sddm is not installed
package plasma-workspace-x11 is not installed

Plasma Login Manager is installed but disabled, so GDM keeps the login screen:

systemctl is-enabled gdm plasmalogin

GDM stays in charge until you change it:

enabled
disabled

Log in to Plasma from GDM

Reboot, click your user, and open the gear icon before typing the password. The install adds a single Plasma entry, which is the Wayland session:

The first login opens the Welcome Center, six short pages on Plasma basics, over Fedora’s own wallpaper. Discover also pops a “Security updates available” notice within a few seconds, because it checks the same repositories dnf uses:

The default look is Fedora’s own global theme, org.fedoraproject.fedora.desktop from plasma-lookandfeel-fedora. It gives light Breeze windows with a dark floating panel. Kickoff opens from the Fedora logo in the panel or the Super key, with favourites, app categories, and power and session actions along the bottom:

In Konsole, fastfetch (sudo dnf5 install -y fastfetch, it is not preinstalled) confirms the session. The theme line here is from after the switch to Breeze Dark further down:

fastfetch --logo none -s OS:Kernel:DE:WM:Theme:Memory

KWin runs as a Wayland compositor (the memory line was taken with Konsole, Dolphin and System Settings open):

OS: Fedora Linux 45 (Workstation Edition Prerelease) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 7.2.7-300.fc45.x86_64
Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma 6.7.5
Window Manager: KWin (Wayland)
Theme: Breeze (Dark) [Qt], Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3]
Memory: 2.70 GiB / 7.72 GiB (35%)

System Settings and global themes

System Settings opens on Quick Settings, which puts the theme, wallpaper, animation speed and single-click behaviour on one page. Every other page is reachable from the searchable sidebar:

Clicking Breeze Dark only stages the change. The page title gains an asterisk and nothing happens until you press Apply. After Apply, the windows, panel and Qt apps switch, and Fedora’s wallpaper stays where it is:

The same switch works from a terminal, which is handy in a setup script. List the global themes Fedora ships:

plasma-apply-lookandfeel -l

Three are Fedora’s and three are upstream Breeze:

org.fedoraproject.fedora.desktop
org.fedoraproject.fedoradark.desktop
org.fedoraproject.fedoralight.desktop
org.kde.breeze.desktop
org.kde.breezedark.desktop
org.kde.breezetwilight.desktop

Apply one by name with plasma-apply-lookandfeel -a org.fedoraproject.fedoradark.desktop. To check which one is active, read kdeglobals:

kreadconfig6 --file kdeglobals --group KDE --key LookAndFeelPackage

After the Quick Settings change it reads Breeze Dark, and on a fresh account it reads Fedora’s theme:

org.kde.breezedark.desktop

Tile windows with KWin

KWin has two tiling layers. Quick tiling is always on: Meta+Left and Meta+Right snap the focused window to half the screen. That is how Konsole and Dolphin ended up side by side here:

Custom tiling lives behind Meta+T, which opens the tiling editor over the desktop. The default layout is three columns with 4 pixels of padding. Each tile can be split left/right or top/bottom or deleted, an Add Floating Tile button adds a free-floating tile, and a Load Layout button sits in the top right corner:

Press Escape to close the editor and return to the desktop.

Add the Plasma X11 session

Fedora’s KDE groups install Wayland only. For an app or remote-desktop tool that still needs X11, the X11 session is a separate package:

sudo dnf5 install -y plasma-workspace-x11

It brings in kwin-x11 and the Xorg server (8 packages in total) and adds /usr/share/xsessions/plasmax11.desktop. GDM then offers Plasma (X11) next to Plasma. On that session, fastfetch reports Window Manager: KWin (X11) and kwin_x11 --replace runs on Xorg.

Switch to Plasma Login Manager without triggering Plasma Setup

Plasma Login Manager is KDE’s QML-based display manager, developed under the Plasma project, with its own System Settings module. Switching to it looks like a two-line job: disable gdm, enable plasmalogin. Do only that on an existing Workstation and the next boot shows this instead of a login prompt:

That is Plasma Setup, KDE’s out-of-box wizard, which the group installs with the login manager. Its unit, plasma-setup.service, runs before the display manager whenever /etc/plasma-setup-done does not exist. Plasma Login Manager then logs in a plasma-setup system user (uid 961 on our machine) to run the wizard, which creates a new admin account. GNOME Initial Setup already did that job on a Workstation, so mark it done before switching:

sudo touch /etc/plasma-setup-done
sudo systemctl disable gdm
sudo systemctl enable plasmalogin
sudo reboot

systemctl enable plasmalogin replaces the display-manager.service link, pointing it at /usr/lib/systemd/system/plasmalogin.service. After the reboot, the greeter shows your existing user, and the Desktop Session selector at the bottom left lists every installed session, GNOME included:

If you already hit the wizard, the same touch and a reboot get you to the normal greeter. Switching back to GDM is the reverse pair, sudo systemctl disable plasmalogin and sudo systemctl enable gdm, which restores the gdm.service link. We ran the display manager switch in both directions. On our machine the flag file went in after the wizard had already appeared, and the reboot after it landed on the normal greeter; the ConditionPathExists=!/etc/plasma-setup-done line in the unit is what makes creating it first skip the wizard entirely.

Plasma memory use next to GNOME

Same VM (4 vCPUs, 8 GiB RAM) with both desktops installed, a fresh login into each through GDM, about 30 seconds of idle time, page cache dropped, then the “used” figure from free -m:

Session	Used memory after login
KDE Plasma 6.7 (Wayland)	1,941 MiB
GNOME 51 (Wayland)	2,615 MiB

These are single readings, so take them as a direction rather than a benchmark. Plasma came in about 670 MiB lighter than GNOME here. If memory is the main reason you are looking beyond GNOME, LXQt on Fedora is lighter still, and GNOME Tweaks and extensions covers tuning GNOME instead.

Fedora 45 vs Fedora 44 for Plasma

Both releases carry the same Plasma, Frameworks and Gear versions, and Plasma Login Manager and Plasma Setup exist on both. The Fedora 44 column is from its repositories, not a test install:

Package	Fedora 45	Fedora 44
plasma-workspace	6.7.5-2	6.7.5-1
kwin	6.7.5-1	6.7.5-1
plasma-login-manager	6.7.5-1	6.7.5-1
plasma-setup	6.7.5-1	6.7.5-1
dolphin (KDE Gear)	26.08.1	26.08.1
qt6-qtbase	6.11.2	6.11.2
kf6-kcoreaddons (Frameworks)	6.30.0	6.30.0

Plasma is a non-event in the Fedora 44 to 45 jump. The upgrade guide covers the system side.

Remove Plasma and go back to GNOME

Log out and pick GNOME at the GDM prompt to stop using Plasma. If you switched display managers, put GDM back first as shown above. To remove the packages, preview the transaction before committing:

sudo dnf5 environment remove --assumeno kde-desktop-environment

On our machine the preview listed 251 packages to remove and 2 GiB to free, far fewer than the 676 the install brought in:

 Removing:         251 packages
After this operation, 2 GiB will be freed (install 0 B, remove 2 GiB).

Drop --assumeno to carry out the removal. Plasma’s per-user settings stay in ~/.config (kdeglobals, kwinrc, plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and friends) and are harmless under GNOME. Delete them only if you want the next Plasma login to start from Fedora’s defaults.