I’ve tried Niri desktop in KaOS, and I’ve liked it.
Can I install Niri desktop alongside Plasma within CachyOS?
Or will I have problems?
Google Gemini tells me that there aren’t any problems, but I prefer to ask before.
A compositor/window manager like Niri along with a full desktop environment like Plasma is generally considered to be safe.
Where you’d need to take a little more care is if you’re installing two or more desktop environments together.
I confirm that Niri + Noctalia works well alongside Plasma.
Very big thanks.
Next installation, I’ll use only Niri, it’s fantastic.
I’m interested to try this. How did you do?
If you’re using Plasma at the moment, all you you need to do is install cachyos-niri-noctalia
sudo pacman -Syu cachyos-niri-noctalia
and then it should show up as an option in your display manager when you log in, which would either be sddm or plasma-login-manager.
If you like it, I’d then also look into Noctalia’s optional dependencies for extending its functions:
I got this when doing that
looking for conflicting packages…
:: cachyos-niri-noctalia-1.1.1-1 and cachyos-kde-settings-4.9-8 are in conflict (cachyos-desktop-settings). Remove cachyos-kde-settings? [y/N]
should I remove the cachyos-kde-settings ?
Yes, that’s fine. But, first you should run this:
sudo pacman -S --asexplicit ttf-fantasque-nerd ttf-fira-sans
I don’t know how much you actually need these fonts, but these two are what you would lose by uninstalling cachyos-kde-settings. Every other package it provides is also inside cachyos-niri-noctalia.
You can verify this by taking a look at both meta packages’ dependencies:
❯ pacman -Si cachyos-kde-settings
Repository : cachyos
Name : cachyos-kde-settings
Version : 4.9-8
Description : CachyOS KDE settings
Architecture : any
URL : https://github.com/cachyos/cachyos-kde-settings
Licenses : GPL-1.0-only
Groups : None
Provides : cachyos-desktop-settings
Depends On : ttf-fantasque-nerd noto-fonts ttf-fira-sans capitaine-cursors cachyos-alacritty-config
❯ pacman -Si cachyos-niri-noctalia
Repository : cachyos
Name : cachyos-niri-noctalia
Version : 1.1.1-1
Description : CachyOS Niri (+Noctalia) settings
Architecture : any
URL : https://github.com/cachyos/cachyos-niri-noctalia
Licenses : GPL-3.0-only
Groups : None
Provides : cachyos-desktop-settings
Depends On : adw-gtk-theme cachyos-alacritty-config capitaine-cursors gnome-keyring niri noctalia-shell noto-fonts noto-fonts-emoji wl-clipboard xdg-desktop-portal-gnome xdg-desktop-portal-gtk xwayland-satellite
So cachyos-alacritty-config, capitaine-cursors, and noto-fonts will be reinstalled immediately as they are shared between the two.
Thats not actually fully true.
It also provides files;
$ pacman -Fl cachyos-kde-settings
cachyos-kde-settings etc/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/Trolltech.conf
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/arkrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/baloofilerc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/dconf/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/dconf/user
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/gtk-3.0/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/gtk-4.0/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kcminputrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kdedefaults/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kdedefaults/kdeglobals
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kdedefaults/kwinrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kdeglobals
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/kwinrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/libinput-gestures.conf
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/plasmashellrc
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/xsettingsd/
cachyos-kde-settings etc/skel/.config/xsettingsd/xsettingsd.conf
cachyos-kde-settings usr/
cachyos-kde-settings usr/lib/
cachyos-kde-settings usr/lib/sddm/
cachyos-kde-settings usr/lib/sddm/sddm.conf.d/
cachyos-kde-settings usr/lib/sddm/sddm.conf.d/general.conf
cachyos-kde-settings usr/lib/sddm/sddm.conf.d/zz-wayland.conf
But with most of them in /etc/skel that means those would only be offloaded onto new users when they are created so they are not ‘active’.
They are mostly default style choices so not critical either.
The few that are not in skel are SDDM configuration files.
They are not required, but you could copy or reference them from;
And if you do not use SDDM then you can totally ignore all of that.
Yep, forgot about those. Didn’t realize there were non-skel files tucked in there.
I made the installation as mention, all is working as normal in KDE, but Niri not show up at login.
I looked for niri.desktop in /usr/share/wayland-sessions/ and it exist. but not able to choose it at login
maybe they update how sddm and kde-login-manager is working?
I got it working now. Sometimes I’m blind and not see all. Now I just need to learn niri. It looks very nice 
Wow that lobotomised my SDDM! 
I’ll roll-back to snapshot and I better do my homework first, through guides I suppose, as I saw no configuration for it.
EDIT: I watched a video, which said just run that same command as I did, so I tried again and same result. Perhaps my install of cachy (from August 2025) is too old or has some cruft files which are interfering. In the video he only creates a freshly installed VM of cachy and just runs that one command and it doesn’t break his SDDM. Beats me.
Also mine had no taskbar, settings, launcher, or ALT+F2.
Gemini told me there might be conflicts if I install mango CW alongside KDE and told me to wait and install Mango after.
I’m thinking of now remove the plasma desktop environment. Since I think niri works good with me. I will have some tools install like dolphine as filemanager. Then some editor qview for image viewer.
Is it better to save my dot files and then do a reinstall with just niri instead of trying to remove/ uninstall kde plasma workspace?
That’s what I would do but if you’re going to keep using Dolphin and any other KDE software with Niri then perhaps it’s better to start out by removing the Plasma pieces you don’t need. And then further down the line do the reinstall once you’ve got a better idea about what you want to keep from your ~/.config directory.
You’re braver than I am. I’m still playing with it in a VM (when I can get the VM to work).
I do like what I see so far, and that’s just with playing around with the GUI settings. I haven’t touched the .conf files so far.
It’s better to learn in calm mode than stress with it. I need to backup my dot files so I don’t need to do all this again.
I just passed the testing zone and moved into a CachyOs no desktop install and added Niri from CachyOs repository alone and then added DMS (Dank Material Shell) from suggested script and everything went great so far. I also added this CachyOs no desktop + Niri +DMS shell in a second laptop and both are running great. One thing to stand out is the solid non break after kernel updates for this combined install with no desktop, and now this week I have been testing some high perfomance suggested packages working with Niri and DMS ( like Yazi a TUI file manager and Zathura or MuPDF ). Use the script as a starting point , instead of CachyOs packages ( Niri & Dank Material Shell (DMS) ) avoid Niri and Noctalia install or Niri with MangoWC from CachyOs desktop choices , they work slower and don’t let Niri reach full functional performance (Cause it includes limited quickshell repository package). Reboot from your CachyOS no desktop install, install niri fully, and then check this link and copy in terminal the curl command line recommended. Leave the link for installing DMS and Niri using graphical install, after you get your CachyOS no desktop install done.