Debian Linux 8 – Installing KDE Plasma 5.x Graphical Desktop

Plasma is, in my opinion, one of the best looking graphical desktops for Linux, for more information on KDE Plasma itself see here: https://www.kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/

Note that deploying plasma on Debian 8.x requires that you move from the “stable” branch to “testing” branch. What does this mean? See here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting

Be sure to fully review what will be installed / removed as part of this upgrade. Rollback will be very “challenging!”

# First upgrade to non-stable "testing" variant of Debian Linux
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list ~/
sudo sed -i -e 's/jessie/testing/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo reboot

# Upgrade any remaining packages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudp reboot

# Install plasma desktop, when prompted for desktop environment selection, choose "sddm"
sudo apt-get install plasma-desktop sddm
sudo reboot

# Cleanup unused packages
sudo apt-get autoremove

I’ve tested and can confirm that, unlike Gnome, Plasma 5.x works when using x11rdp to connect remotely.