Arch, Plasma desktop and wayland

[peperjohnny]

Hey pals,
I somehow got plasma-desktop on wayland with arch running and some people asked for a write-up so here we go. Please consider that this is all work in progress and that performance might not be best, especially if you run from sd card. Also you should not mindlessly copy paste commands from the internet, but you know that, don't you?
With that said, let's rock on.

First of all get an image for arch https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pi...h/releases
Get the barebone-image with your favourite tool on a SD card and put it in your tab.
You'll be greeted by a screen that is rotated by 90° because that's the default orientation for the panel as I heard. Login with the provided creds. You can connect to a  WLAN with the tool nmtui. After that I recommend turning on ssh and doing most of it over ssh as that simplifies quite a lot with copy pasting and so on.
The command is 

Code:

sudo systemctl enable sshd
sudo systemctl start sshd

If you want to turn off ssh at some point or after you're done with the config

Code:

sudo systemctl disable sshd
sudo systemctl stop sshd

Depending on how old the image is, you should upgrade first

Code:

sudo pacman -Syu

Let's get the groundwork for plasma done. This may take some time, because a lot of packages are installed. I did not test a minimal build yet.

Code:

sudo pacman -S fakeroot git make gcc go binutils qt5-svg knotifications kdbusaddons kservice kcmutils purpose cmake breeze breeze-icons plasma-framework sddm qt5-wayland plasma-wayland-session plasma-meta qt5-virtualkeyboard iio-sensor-proxy sddm-kcm

After everything is installed there's some work to be done, for plasma to automagically start.

Code:

sudo systemctl enable sddm

Because sddms wayland support is experimental and it won't show you anything beside the cursor, I went the way of autologin. First you create the folder for the sddm config and then you create the file for the login itself.

Code:

sudo mkdir /etc/sddm.conf.d/
sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf

Put the following into the file

Code:

[Autologin]
User=alarm
Session=plasmawayland.desktop

If I haven't forget something you can reboot now and should be greeted with a gui for the first time.

Plasma does have some issues still. Your display is still rotated and it doesn't rotate automatically like you want to. Go to systemsettings -> Display and Monitor -> Display Configuration and unmark the "Only when in table mode." after an apply you're able to rotate the table as you like.
Something that helped me too was to activate tap-to click under input devices-> touchpad.

If you're familiar with arch you may have noticed that you installed stuff for compilation too. That is because I wanted to use the plasma mobile apps and some of them are on AUR and can therefore be compiled.
As an example the plasma browser angelfish

Code:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/plasma-angelfish.git
cd plasma-angelfish/
nano PKGBUILD

change the x86_64 to aarch64

Code:

makepkg -si

Obviously this takes some time but afterwards the package is installed.

[mindwave]

now you dnot mention it, so Im thinking that you did NOT expeience the BLACK screen when booting with an SD card in the drive?

Kind of a bummer for 2 reasons: 1) makes changing the OS tough 2) On many of my devices I have a data card in the slot 24/7/365 with books/music/etc, looks like it may not be possible?

Anyone know what the resolution is?\\Im going to work through your steps later this eve hope they work

Thanks

j

[peperjohnny]

now you dnot mention it, so Im thinking that you did NOT expeience the BLACK screen when booting with an SD card in the drive?

Kind of a bummer for 2 reasons:  1) makes changing the OS tough  2) On many of my devices I have a data card in the slot 24/7/365 with books/music/etc, looks like it may not be possible?

Anyone know what the resolution is?\\Im going to work through your steps later this eve hope they work

Thanks

j

You're right I didn't mention it because it's fixed in the latest arch build.
Have fun!

[pjsf]

I had to do sudo systemctl disable phosh as well.
Also had to manually rotate screen first before switching to automatic.
Oddly sound works in arch plasma while it didn't in arch phosh.

[peperjohnny]

I had to do sudo systemctl disable phosh as well.
Also had to manually rotate screen first before  switching to automatic.
Oddly sound works in arch plasma while it didn't in arch phosh.

Probably some configuration made by phosh. Didn't happen to me on the barebone image.

[wd5gnr]

Thanks for this. Worked great and so much better than phosh. Windows show up where you expect, everything seems to work well. As you said, the ZRAM configuration probably helps, too.

Great stuff!Thanks for this. Worked great and so much better than phosh. Windows show up where you expect, everything seems to work well. As you said, the ZRAM configuration probably helps, too.

Great stuff!

---

A few notes: If you want dicover to work, install packagekit-qt5 using pacman. You might also consider installing konsole since the configuration "knows" about it and maybe dolphin, although that gets you baloo, which you might want to disable to be kind to battery.

If anyone is thinking of trying this: pretty much everything works. The lock screen orients correctly. The function keys work. The meta key works. Sound works. BT works. This is what should have shipped to start with.

[aqtrans]

Nice! Not sure why, but I was scared of starting with the barebones image. This is the way to go if you know you're way around!
For what it's worth, installing the 'base-devel' meta package should get you everything needed to build packages.

I got Gnome Shell up and running last night using pretty much this same method: Install 'gnome-shell', and substitute 'gnome.desktop' for 'plasmawayland.desktop' in autologin.conf.
IMHO it seems to be the most tablet friendly out of the box, and performs fairly well!

I've compiled packages giving me a 'working' copy of Plasma Mobile as well, but it's not too functional...fun to see though!

Loving this full Arch experience on a tablet.

[SpoofyKid]

Hey pals,
...

Thank you! Your instructions worked perfectly. It's a bit slower than I would have hoped, but it's just what I wanted!

[firefox-58]

Hey pals,
...

Thank you! Your instructions worked perfectly. It's a bit slower than I would have hoped, but it's just what I wanted!

Yeah, it is like a shock using Arch/Plasma instead of phosh or UB-Touch.

The speed issues are also an effect of testing the installation from an SD card. The EMMC inside will be faster when installed with Arch/KDE.

I wonder how will Librem in any time deliver mobile phones with Phosh ???? IMO phosh needs minimum one year, maybe two for a solid and usable shell for us.

It is a heart-warming experience to use plasma on the tablet. It works flawlessly, touch works, programs are running fine, windows act as expected..... and the energy consumption is absolutely OK.

Hopefully Manjaro and/or others will give us a build with Plasma or XFCE for the pine tablet ??

[peperjohnny]

Hopefully Manjaro and/or others will give us a build with Plasma or XFCE for the pine tablet ??

They may come around on the decision, but currently they don't want to and honestly I can understand why.
While it's really cool to have plasma running on the tab, most people would probably use it from a SD card and that is not a good representation of what plasma can be imho.
There are some fixes and improvements in the pipeline with 5.20 though, so maybe it'll be better then.