Removing Default Plasma Over Niri and Noctalia

July 07, 2026

Problem statement

I am a KDE and plasma enjoyer. It's what I used when I used Kubuntu as my daily driver for a short period of time. It's what is bundled with steamOS. It's what is default on CachyOS.

It gets the job done. Having switched recently to Niri + Noctalia, plasma and KDE applications were just sitting there consuming resources. So I decided to remove them altogether.

Solution

Removing KDE

Since I went with the CachyOS default install of KDE and then installed Niri+Noctalia meta package on top of it, the most cleanest option here would be to do a fresh install, but aint-nobody-got-time-for-that

So off I went ripping everything out.

Warning

  • If you are using this as a guide, run sudo pacman -D --asexplicit sddm first before executing the following command.
sudo pacman -Rns plasma kde-applications

Information ""- R is for remove"

  • n is f o r --n"osave, no "config files will be left around, because in this case we dont nee d it anymore.
  • s is for r "ecursive, "it removes all direct dependencies. Side note=won't r be a better fit ?

Accidental SDDM Removal

In the huge list of dependencies listed, I did not notice SDDM being there, pacman removed SDDM along with plasma and kde-applications.

The next boot landed me in TTY1 with no login manager.

What I should have done is marked sddm as explicitly needed and then removed the rest.

sudo pacman -D --asexplicit sddm

Default SDDM Theme - Sucks

After installing SDDM, the next reboot did give me a login screen but it was so bland. Also, it listed every NixOS build user before getting to my user.

So I had two objectives here:

  1. Find a better SDDM theme
  2. Hide all non interactive users from account selection

Sugar Candy - You Had One Job

Google search suggested sddm-sugar-candy-git as one of the best SDDM themes out there. So I went ahead and installed it.

shelly install sddm-sugar-candy-git

After installing it, created a config override.

sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-custom.conf

Added maximum allowed UIDs to ensure no NixOS users showed up on the login screen and removed non interactive and system users. I dont have any in the last two categories but they are nice defaults to have.

[Theme]
Current=sugar-candy
CursorTheme=capitaine-cursors

[Users]
# Hide non interactive users
HideShells=/usr/bin/nologin,/sbin/nologin,/bin/false

# Hide standard system users
MinimumUid=1000

# Hide NixOS users
MaximumUid=29999

Rebooted system, SDDM now loaded and sugar candy looked clean and everything looked good, UNTIL, I keyed in my password.

Every password character I entered showed what it was in plain text without changing to *. The character I was typing showed as plaintext, but the moment I entered a new character, the older one changed to *. All one has to do is, just stand behind me and they will know what my password is, unless I type super fast.

So I removed sugar-candy, stopped trusting google and went to github to see what other SDDM themes are out there.

shelly remove sddm-sugar-candy-git

Note

  • If I had read the documentation, I would have known that there is a QML setting PasswordEchoOnEdit that disables this.
  • Anyway-I-Started-Blasting

Silent SDDM

Enter Silent SDDM

I installed it using shelly, this time choosing a stable variation than the one that tracks git commits.

shelly install sddm-silent-theme

Edited the override file as the installation steps suggested.

sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-custom.conf

[Theme]
Current=silent

[Users]
# Hide non interactive users
HideShells=/usr/bin/nologin,/sbin/nologin,/bin/false

# Hide standard system users
MinimumUid=1000

# Hide NixOS users
MaximumUid=29999

Silent SDDM is good enough to get the job done and I am happy with it (for now).

Out with SDDM in with greetd (August 3rd update)

Because constantly breaking things is a disease at this point, did a reinstall of CachyOS with Niri and Noctalia defaults and gamescope wouldnt start.

Look like there is a lot of massaging to be done to let SDDM behave with gamescope. This led to greetd looking like a nice alternate so that journey began.

Documenting them here because inevitably am going to reinstall in a few weeks.

First lets install greetr and noctalia-greetr

sudo pacman -S greetd noctalia-greeter

Then lets disable SDDM and the current display manager

sudo systemctl disable sddm
sudo systemctl disable display-manager

Now to edit the config value

sudo micro /etc/greetd/config.toml

[terminal]
# The VT to run the greeter on. Can be "next", "current" or a number
# designating the VT.
vt = current

# The default session, also known as the greeter.
[default_session]
command = "/usr/bin/noctalia-greeter-session"
user = "greeter"

# `agreety` is the bundled agetty/login-lookalike. You can replace `/bin/sh`
# with whatever you want started, such as `sway`.
#command = "agreety --cmd /bin/sh"

# The user to run the command as. The privileges this user must have depends
# on the greeter. A graphical greeter may for example require the user to be
# in the `video` group.
#user = "greeter"

and finally lets enable greetd

sudo systemctl enable greetd

This should enable greetd service when the pc starts next it should execute the command which is noctalia-greeter-session and that should provide an entry point for both niri and gamescope.

Tests look fine for now! :)