Plasma/Snap

Note

This page has old content. See page history.

This is entirely experimental and not meant for general consumption!

X11

# Install the snap
snap install --edge --devmode plasma-desktop
# Put a supporting xsession desktop file into place
sudo wget https://metadata.neon.kde.org/snap/plasma-snap.desktop -O /usr/share/xsessions/plasma-snap.desktop

Then logout and you should find "Plasma Snap" listed as session option. Logging into that session should bring up the snapped Plasma running against a separate dbus session connection inside the snap.

Wayland

Currently not working. Wayland is not working properly because XWayland cannot be started because X11 cannot be started from inside the snap. The actual reasons of this are unclear but possibly related to relocatability problems. Notably kwin_wayland will crash because XWayland doesn't start.

Motivation

Testing Plasma pre-releases is often times not possible without building from source. Also upgrading an actual production system to a pre-release is a daunting and risky task. Putting plasma into a self-contained and confined bundle can make testing releases much easier.

Known Problems

Wayland not working
Cannot start applications from host system (other snaps should work fine)
Currently using unconfined devmode (needs special confinement profile in snapd to resolve)
Relies on hacked up versions of kdeinit and startkde (needs fixes applied in master)
ksmserver UI is somewhat broken

Code

https://github.com/apachelogger/plasma-snap