By default, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution sports the GNOME desktop environment, or no GUI at all. If you would like to change things up and install KDE Plasma instead, the GUI can be downloaded and installed directly from Red Hat’s package repositories.
This can be done whether you are switching from GNOME to KDE Plasma, or you currently are running command line interface only and wish to install a graphical desktop environment. KDE Plasma is a great choice that comes with all the tools you will need to administrate your Red Hat 7 system.
In this tutorial, we will go through the step by step instructions to install the KDE Plasma GUI desktop environment on a Red Hat 7 Linux system.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install KDE Plasma Desktop on RHEL 7
- How to enable graphical target in systemd
- How to disable GDM and enable SDDM window manager
- How to load into alternative desktop environment at lock screen
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Red Hat 7 Linux |
| Software | KDE desktop environment |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
How to install KDE on Red Hat 7 step by step instructions
- Installing the KDE desktop environment is rather easy, the first thing we need to do is open a command line terminal and install the KDE group of packages with
yum. Execute the command below if you currently do not have any desktop manager installed on your system.# yum groupinstall 'X Window System' 'KDE'
If you already have GNOME installed and want to install KDE, then you only need to execute this command:
# yum groupinstall 'KDE'
- After the installation is complete, you may need to set your RHEL 7 system to boot into a graphical target by default. This should only be necessary if you previously did not have any GUI installed. Execute the command below:
# systemctl set-default graphical.target
- You can also enable the KDE desktop environment to start up automatically instead of GNOME by executing the following command to edit the
/etc/sysconfig/desktopconfiguration file.# echo DESKTOP=KDE >> /etc/sysconfig/desktop
- Afterwards, you can reboot your system and load into your newly installed KDE Plasma desktop environment.
$ reboot
- That’s all there is to it. Your system should load into the lock screen with KDE Plasma selected as the default desktop environment when it boots back up. Keep in mind you can always load GNOME at the lock screen by clicking on the desktop environment drop down menu next to the password prompt.
Loading into KDE Plasma desktop environment after reboot
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to install the KDE Plasma desktop environment GUI on Red Hat 7 Linux. KDE is a speedy and responsive desktop environment, which comes loaded with a lot of its own applications, such as the Dolphin file manager, to make your system administration that much easier. Red Hat and KDE Plasma is a great combination that you are sure to enjoy – I personally like it a lot better than the default GNOME environment on RHEL.