Plasma-Manager

Plasma-Manager lets your write down your KDE settings. It mimics the style and syntax of configuration.nix. If you have more than a handful of computers it can help you set them up consistently. It's also useful if you reinstall your OS or change PC's.

Plasma-Manager is an add-in for Home Manager. Home Manager is like Chezmoi or GNU Stow. It lets you write down and version control your dotfiles. It also lets you install packages for yourself rather than system-wide. You do not need to be proficient with Home Manager to use Plasma Manager. Also, you do not need to replace Chzemoi/Stow if you use it. (The author personally uses Chezmoi for dotfiles and Plasma-Manager for KDE.)

How to setup Standalone Home Manager

In this context the term Standalone means you are installing it in your home directory. You do not need to change your configuration.nix. Also, you do not need to be a member of the wheel group nor do you need sudo.

1. Add Channels as Your User

   nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-25.05.tar.gz home-manager
   nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/plasma-manager/archive/trunk.tar.gz plasma-manager
   nix-channel --update

2. Install Standalone Home Manager

   nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install

3. 3) Edit this file to suit your needs
4. 4) Apply the Changes
5. home-manager switch
6. 5) Verify and Customize
7. - Import existing settings
8. 1) `nix run github:nix-community/plasma-manager/trunk#rc2nix > plasma.nix`
9. 2) Manually merge the output into your home.nix
10. - How to troubleshoot
11. 1) Review the output of `home-manager switch`
12. 2) Check logs: `journalctl --user -u home-manager.service`
14. References
15. - Plasma options: https://nix-community.github.io/plasma-manager/options.xhtml
16. - Examples: https://github.com/search?q=programs.plasma+language%3Anix&type=code