I just set up Niri + Noctalia, previously I was running KDE Plasma. The distro I am using is EndeavourOS (which is awesome!)
I am able to successfully install Noctalia, and by reading the docs, I was able to figure out how to set up unified theming for both GTK and Qt-based applications.
As I am using the Noctalia greeter for the unified sort of aesthetic, I’m not using sddm anymore, and I had Howdy set up for face recognition (yes, I know it’s not as secure, but I like the convenience and my laptop has the IR sensors to do it). What PAM file do I need to change to get that working on the Noctalia Greeter? The “greetd” file doesn’t seem to be the one, do I need to create a new file, and in that case, what should it be called?
It would also be great if I could get the Noctalia Polkit thing (system auth prompt thing) to work with Howdy too, but I was never able to make it work even on KDE Plasma, so not sure if that’s feasible
Second question, I don’t know why, but Thunderbird does not want to open via the launcher after Noctalia was installed. Weirdly enough, it does launch when run in the terminal (“thunderbird”, no special flags or anything), or when you right click in the launcher to do secondary functions (compose a message / check address book). Right now I’m just opening Thunderbird via the address book, which is a little inconvenient, so is there any way I can fix this?
Third, I can’t seem to get KWallet to unlock automatically on login. I have it set up as “kdewallet”, blowfish encryption with login password set up, tried deleting it and making a new one, but it still doesn’t work! I think this is in a similar vein to the Howdy thing where I need to add a line or two to the PAM file to make KWallet autostart. Alternatively, I could go with Gnome Keyring (which has a bit more documentation on the Noctalia docs it seems?)
Finally, does anybody have some tips on Niri/Noctalia, any extensions or plugins that I should look at, etc.?
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Im on mobile, but I’ll try to circle back later and provide more details and links. Also I use NixOS, Niri, and DMS, but also was on KDE before switching over, so a similar setup but not the same.
Problems 1 and 3 are related. Basically there should be some configuration file for polkit/pam, and in there you have to configure to allow fprintd (or try and see if theres a setting for howdy, I know theres extra config you have to do for fido2 and it should be similar if possible) to unlock greetd. Should should also be something about unlocking kwallet on login, but with kwallet you have to do some weird settings on top of it to enable to login password to work, or setup a blank password wallet and set thag to default. I switched to gnome-keyring and seahorse (gui) when making the change to niri for the reason you mentioned, its better supported and needed less tinkering.
Problem 2. Kde keeps like a cache of its “.desktop” apps somewhere, and you probably have to blow it way and update xdg on where to find the “app launchers”.
For extensions or extras. Honestly I would try to stick with anything noctalia has in its plugins store, and let it handle any “enhancements”. The only other things id recommend is when youre looking for replacements for KDE apps, like dolphin, Kate, etc, is to look for all the lightweight wayland native ones that people typically install when they are building their own “DE” on top of niri (instead of installing noctalia or DMS), aka look for post where people are showing off their waybar setups. I switched to whatever the popular image view is, among other tools, and even though they seem like they’d lack features or be more geared towards terminal users, they’ve been great. Replacing dolphin has been the only hurdle, i cant find anything that’s as clean and powerful yet, but have high hopes for Cosmic to mature so i can start stealing from thag instead.
Again, apologies for the vagueness, I dont have my config in front of me, hopefully its enough to get you on the right track.
