How do `startplasma` and `startplasma-wayland` differ?

Help
, ,
1

I’m aware that startx invokes the XOrg 11 display server, which invokes PlasmaShell, in KWin-X11’s compositor, whereas startplasma-wayland invokes PS in KWin’s Wayland compositor. Consequently, how does startplasma differ?

2

file /usr/bin/startplasma will tell you its a symlink to startplasma-wayland

3

I haven’t got ‘startplasma’.

It seems logical that it was replaced with startplasma-x11 to make room for startplasma-wayland.

❯ file /usr/bin/startplasma-x11
/usr/bin/startplasma-x11: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=df20625537dfb6176b8784430fa0b37b5b0e00c4, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, stripped
❯ file /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland 
/usr/bin/startplasma-wayland: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=2cd75db5fe0c10a412f8abdc6629ea0da58f1b55, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, stripped

So startplasma would initially have been what is now startplasma-x11, then when wayland came there was startplasma-wayland, and now the old term ‘startplasma’ was put in to point to the default (Wayland).

If you have a distribution avoiding wayland, then it’s going to be X11.

4

Ah. So, perhaps, those who use XOrg should be using startplasma-x11, and were being lazy when using startx. Then, startplasma is a now-redundant abstraction over startplasma-x11 and startplasma-wayland, but which used to choose the correct one.

Thanks, @ben2talk, and apologies for not bothering to check that, @barryascott.

5

Not at all - startx isn’t a KDE command, it’s a generic X11 client that starts X and runs the ~/.xinitc script.

That script, to start Plasma under X11, must contain a line for exec startplasma-x11.

startx is the only way to launch the X server from console, and startplasma-x11 would be the last execution in that chain.

startplasma points to whatever the default session is… so it was x11 until Wayland came along, then it pointed to ‘startplasma-x11’ whilst wayland was experimental, then it pointed to startplasma-wayland when that became the recommended/default session… so it’s not a ‘redundant abstraction’ but a pointer to the default.

Assuming that X11 will eventually vanish, or that something else could arise, it will remain the default command to start plasma.