How to Install KDE Plasma on Kali Linux [Step-by-Step Guide]

Thinking about Install KDE Plasma on Kali Linux? I was in the same boat not long ago XFCE is fine, but sometimes you just want something that looks and feels different. Kali ships with XFCE by default, but switching to KDE Plasma is honestly way easier than I expected. Let me walk you through how I got it running. It’s actually pretty straightforward. And yeah, I tried this on a Eldernode Linux VPS, which worked just fine.

What is KDE Plasma?

It’s just one of those desktop environments that feels nice. Super tweakable. You can move stuff around, change themes, make it look however you want. Way more polished than XFCE, honestly. 

According to the KDE community: “Plasma is made to be simple by default, powerful when needed.” — kde.org

Kali doesn’t come with it by default, but installing it takes like two commands. Totally worth it if you’re into customizing your setup.

KDE Features You’ll Probably Love

Dolphin’s just easier than whatever I was using before. Fast, and doesn’t try to be fancy.

You can mess with everything. Like seriously buttons, colors, window behavior, all of it.

On my 2K screen, stuff actually scales right. Fonts aren’t tiny like in some other DEs.

Tray doesn’t feel messy.

Notifications don’t yell at you.

Okular opens PDFs without needing to install anything.

Themes there’s like… too many. I spent half an hour just flipping through them.

Didn’t expect to stick with it, but here we are.

Installing KDE Plasma on Kali Linux

First, update your system using the following command:

sudo apt update

You can install KDE Plasma on Kali Linux by running the following command:

sudo apt install kali-desktop-kde

Next press “Y” and then Enter to allow the installation.

If you are prompted to select a display manager to configure your current desktop environment, choose SSDM and press Enter.

Finally, restart your system by running the following command:

sudo reboot

How to Use KDE Plasma on Kali Linux

First, you should choose KDE Plasma on the login screen as your desktop session environment:

Then enter your user credentials to log in to Plasma Desktop:

KDE Plasma Desktop Environment is as follows:

That’s it!

How to Uninstall KDE Plasma on Kali Linux

If you want to uninstall KDE Plasma from Kali Linux, follow the steps below.

When I wanted to get rid of KDE, this is what I used:

sudo apt purge --autoremove kali-desktop-kde

And restart your system.

Conclusion

And that’s pretty much it. KDE Plasma gives Kali a whole different vibe clean, fast, and super customizable. I’ve personally found it way nicer than XFCE for daily use, but hey, it all comes down to what you’re into.

Anyway, hope this helped you get things running smoothly. If anything didn’t work or you got stuck somewhere, drop a comment always happy to help out.