.github/workflows | ||
examples | ||
lib | ||
modules | ||
script | ||
test | ||
.envrc | ||
.gitignore | ||
flake.lock | ||
flake.nix | ||
LICENSE | ||
README.md |
Manage KDE Plasma with Home Manager
This project aims to provide Home Manager modules which allow you to configure KDE Plasma using Nix.
Table of contents
- What's supported
- What's not supported
- What will not be supported
- Getting started
- Enabling declarative configuration
- Capturing existing configuration
- Contributions and maintenance
- Special thanks
Supported versions
plasma-manager
supports both plasma 5 and plasma 6. The trunk
branch is the
most up-to-date branch and is mainly focused on plasma 6, but may still work on
plasma 5. If you are running plasma 5, it's recommended to use the plasma-5
branch, which is designed to have better compatibility with plasma 5. To do this
with flakes you can use "github:pjones/plasma-manager/plasma-5" as you flake
url, or if you are using nix-channels you can set the channel url to
"https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager/archive/plasma-5.tar.gz".
What's supported
At the moment plasma-manager
supports configuring the following:
- KDE configuration files (via the
files
module) - Global themes, colorschemes, icons, cursortheme, wallpaper (via the
workspace
module) - Configuration of spectacle shortcuts (via the
spectacle
module) - Shortcuts (via the
shortcuts
module) - Hotkeys (via the
hotkeys
module) - Panels (via the
panels
module) - Screen locker (via the
kscreenlocker
module) - Fonts (via the
fonts
module) - KDE apps (via the
apps
module). In particular the following kde apps have modules inplasma-manager
:- kate
- konsole
Additionally there are more functionality than just listed above, and more functionality to come in the future!
What's not well supported (at the moment)
There also are some things which at the moment isn't very well supported, in particular:
- Real-time updates of configuration without having to log out and back in
- Configuration of LibInput devices (see https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager/issues/47 and https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager/pull/123)
- Usage of high-level modules in the configuration generated by
rc2nix
- Configuration of kwin window rules
- Keybindings to some key combinations (
Ctrl+Alt+T
andPrint
for example, see https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager/issues/109 and https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager/issues/136)
There may also be more things we aren't aware of. If you find some other limitations don't hesitate to open an issue or submit a pr.
What will not be supported
There are some things which are out of bounds for this project due to technical reasons. For example
- SDDM configuration (requires root-privileges and thus not suited for a
home-manager
module)
Getting started
We provide some examples to help you get started. These are located in the examples directory. Here you in particular can find:
- An example home-manager configuration with instructions
- An example flake.nix for usage with home-manager only
- An example flake.nix for usage with the system configuration
- An example home.nix showing some of the capabilities of plasma-manager
With more to come! These should give you some idea how to get started with
plasma-manager
.
Make your configuration more declarative with overrideConfig
By default plasma-manager
will simply write the specified configurations to
various config-files and leave all other options alone. This way settings not
specified in plasma-manager
will be left alone, meaning that configurations
made outside plasma-manager
will still be set. This can lead to different
settings on different machines even with the same plasma-manager
configuration. If you like a declarative approach better consider enabling
overrideConfig
. This makes it so all options not set by plasma-manager
will
be set to the default on login. In practice this then becomes a declarative
setup, much like what you would expect from most home-manager
options/modules.
One thing to keep in mind is that enabling this option will delete all the KDE
config-files on home-manager
activation, and replace them with config-files
generated by plasma-manager
. Therefore make sure you backup your KDE
config-files before enabling this option if you don't want to lose them.
Capturing Your Current Configuration with rc2nix
To make it easier to migrate to plasma-manager
, and to help maintain your Nix
configuration when not using overrideConfig
, this project includes a tool
called rc2nix
.
This tool will read KDE configuration files and translate them to Nix. The translated configuration is written to standard output. This makes it easy to:
- Generate an initial Plasma Manager configuration file.
- See what settings are changed by a GUI tool by capturing a file
before and after using the tool and then using
diff
.
Keep in mind that the rc2nix
module isn't perfect and often will give somewhat
suboptimal configurations (it will in some cases prefer using the files
module
when better configurations can be achieved using higher-level modules). However,
it is still a useful tool to quickly get your configuration up and running or
converting config-files generated by the gui settings app to nix expressions.
To run the rc2nix
tool without having to clone this repository run
the following shell command:
nix run github:pjones/plasma-manager
Contributions and Maintenance
This is a community project and we welcome all contributions. If there's enough interest we would love to move this into nix-community once it has matured.
Special Thanks
This work was inspired by the suggestions on Home Manager Issue #607 by people such as bew and kurnevsky. Thank you.