Raspberry Trixie with KDE Plasma

For an index to all my stories click this text

In the previous story I showed how to install the KDE desktop on a Raspberry Pi with the Raspberry OS Bookworm. Why ?? Well because the KDE desktop is beautiful while the Raspberry OS desktop is childish.As this story leans heavily on that previous story I urge you to read that first. Here is the link: http://lucstechblog.blogspot.com/2025/10/raspberry-os-bookworm-with-kde-desktop.html

And just when I was writing that story Raspberry introduced Trixie. The new OS based on Debian 13.
So I upgraded my setup (always recommended) and started experimenting to check if I could install the KDE desktop, called Plasma, on Trixie.

The official Raspberry site writes:
Something you will notice, however, is that we’ve made some changes of our own in the Trixie release. The most obvious is that we have updated the theme for the desktop — we have a completely new set of icons, a new font, new desktop backgrounds, and some other small tweaks to refresh the appearance of the system. This should be apparent as soon as you launch it.

Well actually the new theme looks indeed a bit better. But installing new software, and changing settings and a lot of other things still look dreadful. I wonder why they did not take the chance to upgrade tp KDE Plasma together with the new OS.

How to try this safely

A reader send me a mail telling that he was reluctant to do this as he was afraid to break things in his software. I told him not to worry.

You can try this safely before definitely stepping over.
Just use a fresh SD card. Install the Raspberry OS on that and follow the described steps. That will not harm your original setup and you can experiment as much as you like

But do yourself a favour and give it a try. You will not be disappointed.

Backup your data

First thing to do is to backup your valuable data. Good practice is to do that at least every week. I use an external harddisk for that and copy my complete home directory to that.

Installing KDE Plasma

Well actually most of the steps are equal to installing KDE Plasma on the previous OS: Bookworm.

So I refer to that story which you can find here:
https://lucstechblog.blogspot.com/2025/10/raspberry-os-bookworm-with-kde-desktop.html

The differences in the steps.

Step 7 in the story says:

And there we are.
The screen opens with your user name and you need to login with your password.

Well with Trixie that is not the way it works.
After rebooting the Raspberry GUI appears again.

Another difference is that when updrading Bookworm there is a dropdown menu on the top left side of the screen.
With Trixie this menu is at the left bottom side of the screen.

Just continue.

That is what you need to do. Just continue all the steps and when you reached the last step you will have achieved what you want: the KDE Plasma desktop on the Raspberry Pi !!!

The picture shows the Raspberry Config screen on the KDE Plasma desktop.

Keeping both: Raspberry Theme AND KDE Plasma

Actually it is possible to keep the Raspberry theme and KDE at the same time.
If you want this just omit the steps 10-11-12 from the previous story.

When the login screen appears you can then use the menu on the left-bottom side of the opening screen.

Be aware that it does not really look as a menu. There is just a text saying KDE Plasma on X11 (or Wayland). But that text is clickable and when you do the rest of the options are shown. Just click on the one you want and log in.

The only point with keeping all GUI's is that it will take up space on your root directory. And on a small SD card, like 32Gb, that might limit the amount of additional software you can install.

But when you have installed KDE Plasma and tried it you will see there is no reason to go back.

That's all for now
have fun


Luc Volders

Raspberry OS (Bookworm) with KDE Desktop !!!

For an index to all my stories click this text

This story tells how to get the KDE desktop running on a Raspberry Pi with the Raspberry OS. Why ?? Well because the KDE desktop is beautiful while the Raspberry OS desktop looks childish.

UPDATE:
This story tells how to install the KDE desktop on Raspberry Pi Bookworm. Just when I was writing this Raspberry brought out a new version of their OS: Trixie
At this moment I am testing whether this works with Trixie too. So come back if you want to use the KDE desktop with Trixie.

For those who have worked only in the Raspberry OS desktop I'll show you some screenshots from the KDE desktop and that will make it easier to decide if you want to switch.

The KDE desktop.

The screenshots below are actually made from my Raspberry Pi5 running Raspberry OS with the KDE desktop.

The Raspberry OS has a drop down menu at the top right of your screen. KDE has also a menu from which to choose the program you want to run. It looks far better as the Raspberry's.

This is the window from which you can choose to install or remove new software packages. On the left side there is a menu from which you can choose a category. And clicking on a category opens a screen with loads of programs. Clicking on one of the programs not only presents a good description and the possibility to install the program or remove it if it already is installed. You will also get the possibility to read some users reviews.

At the bottom of the screen there are icons that represent programs and actions that are direct available and do not have to be chosen from the menu. This is of course fully customizable.
The second icon (the one with the 4 squares) is the one I miss most from other distributions like the Raspberry OS or even Ubuntu.

The 4 squares (you can add more) represent 4 virtual screens. By clicking on one of them your current screen closes and another screen opens. This allows you to have multiple programs open at the same time (like Thonny and a browser and your file browser). The difference is that you can place each program on its own screen so they do not clutter.

This is the Raspberry's configuration screen.

And this is the way KDE offers you to alter your configuration settings. Just look at all the possibilities at the left side of the window.


Some background

I love the Raspberry Pi. I have several of them that each performs a specific task. There is one for example installed as a printer server so anybody in my home can use my office printer from their location. The others are my Domoticz system, two Pi Zero's each as an internet radio, an MQTT server, a Dweet server, A Pi3 running Octoprint for my 3D printer, and a Pi as a media system connected to my TV.

Not all of them are active at the same time. Octopi only when I am going to print, the internet radio's when they are needed. But some of them (Domoticz and the printer server) are running 24 hour a day and most have been doing this for years.

So you can say I am a fan.

My main PC is an old beast from 2018 on which I switched from Windows to Kubuntu about a year and a half ago. The main reason was that my PC was getting slooowwwww. So I tried Kubuntu and it made my computer about 3 times as fast as when running Windows. The most gain is achived at starting up and shutting down. But often Windows was doing so many tasks at the same time in the background that it made the computer unworkable. and I never had these issues with Kubuntu.

However the beast is getting old an I am getting memory errors. So more and more the computer freezes just when I am doing something important..... Time for a new beast.

Raspberry Pi 5 as my new desktop beast.

As soon ad I laid my hands on the new Raspberry Pi 5 (my model has 8Gb) I was blown away at it's speed. It is way faster than my Kubuntu desktop machine and runs all the software I need like Office for writing my books, Arduino IDE, Thonny, The Gimp, Cura, VNC madia player etc. etc. etc.

There is just that one thing.
I don't like the Raspberry Desktop User Interface. It does the job flawless but just looks ridiculous childish.

I could switch to Ubuntu which is robust. But Ubuntu's user interface is not intuitive. I also don't like the way of choosing the program I want to run. And it lacks the Raspberry specific software.

So what I wouild like is the Rapberry OS with the looks of Kubuntu. And guess what: you can have that setup.

KDE

Kubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that has a different User interface. It is called KDE and the looks come from Plasma.

So in Ubuntu you can replace the User Interface (GUI) with KDE and that is just what KDE did with Kubuntu.
But then I saw that you could install KDE on all kinds of different Linux Distributions. To mention a few: Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch Linux

Most of these Linux distributions are Debian based. Hey, but so is the Raspberry OS !!

So I dug deeper and I found it.

There are several Raspberry Pi users who have replaced the Raspberry OS desktop with the KDE desktop.
How to install the KDE desktop is not documented very well And it took me several tries to get it working. I found descriptions that did not work. Maybe that was because they were written for older versions of Raspberry OS (Raspbian).

So here is the step by step guide to install the KDE Desktop on your Raspberry PI.

KDE on Raspberry OS.

The first step is to install the Raspberry OS on your SD card.

Use the Raspberry pi Imager to install the Raspberry OS as described on the raspberrypi.com website: 
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-started.html

Install the full 64bit version. I advise not to install the OS Lite version.
If you install the full version you will get all Raspberry specific software.

Boot the Raspberry and open the console.

STEP 1

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

The first thing to do is to make sure your system is fully up to date.

STEP 2

sudo apt install kde-full -y

Then use this command to install the full KDE desktop with all major packages.
This might take a few minutes.

STEP 3

sudo reboot

Now reboot your system

The Raspberry will reboot but reboots the Raspberry OS with it's own Desktop. We now have to activate the KDE desktop.

STEP 4

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop sddm -y

This installs the KDE login manager (sddm)

STEP 5

sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm

And this command makes a dialog appear in which you can choose which display manager should boot. Choose sddm and press ok.

STEP 6

sudo raspi-config

We will use this to make sure the OS will start with the Desktop interface and not with the console. So choose Desktop/ Console and make sure to choose Desktop.

STEP 7

sudo reboot

And there we are.
The screen opens with your user name and you need to login with your password.

Just like in any Linux version you can add users later on if you have multiple people working at this computer. So this menu will expand when you have added users.

On the top right side of the screen there is a drop-down menu. Clicking that menu offers you the choice to boot to different versions. Choose for the Plasma (X11) session. On KDE X11 is more stable as Wayland.

The system will boot now.

Booting KDE takes a bit longer as booting the Rasberry desktop. 

But it is so much better looking !! And boooting is just done once every time you power up the Pi.

Remove the Raspberry desktop.

The last thing to do is to remove the Pixel/LXDE desktop so the Pi will boot into the KDE with Plasma desktop.

Open the console and give the following command:

STEP 8

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop sddm -y

Yes, I know we just did this. But we want to be on the safe side.

STEP 9

sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm

We did this in previous steps but do it again for safety. Choose for sddm and press ok.

STEP 10

sudo apt purge lxde* lightdm* openbox* -y

Pixel is based on LXDE, LightDM and openbox This command removes them., and frees some of your storage space.

STEP 11

sudo apt purge raspberrypi-ui-mods -y

And this removes the rest of the Raspberry Pi desktop. 

STEP 12

sudo apt autoremove --purge -y
sudo apt clean

And with these command s we clean up all unused packages, which frees even more storage.

STEP 13

sudo reboot.

Reboot the Raspberry Pi and it will boot straight into the KDE desktop.

And this is what my desktop looks like (at the moment of this writing) with a clock widget and a custom background.

Side notes

My Raspberry boots from an SD card.
Please note that booting KDE is a bit slower as booting Raspberry OS.
From powering up and filling in my password to the opening of the KDE Desktop took 43 seconds. And be aware that this includes typing in my password.


Concluding.

This setup is way faster than my Kubuntu desktop machine.
It looks every way that the humble Raspberry Pi5 with Raspberry OS and the KDE Desktop is going to be my new main computer.
There are however still some things to do. I want a different casing as my 3D printed case, and I want an SSD disk for storage. That's a future project.

Till next time
have fun


Luc Volders