A_DESKTOP=xfce
none | console only, the default |
xfce | XFCE 4.22 with LightDM |
kde | KDE Plasma 6 with SDDM |
niri | Niri, scrollable-tiling Wayland |
dwm | dwm, suckless and tiny |
Each is a profile package that pulls the whole environment — session, applications, display manager, fonts and audio — so a desktop is one choice rather than a list of parts to keep in step by hand.
arctic-xfce | XFCE, foot, Thunar, notifyd, screenshooter, LightDM, X, PipeWire, fonts, Arctic theme |
arctic-kde | Plasma, foot, Dolphin, Kate, Ark, Spectacle, Gwenview, Okular, SDDM with the Arctic theme, PipeWire, fonts |
niri-dms | Niri, DankMaterialShell, foot, fuzzel, mako, swaylock, grim, slurp, XWayland, PipeWire, fonts, Firefox |
apiwow-dwm | dwm, dmenu, st, picom, slstatus, slock, X, fonts |
A_DM=lightdm # or sddm, greetd, none
Left unset, the desktop picks its own — LightDM for XFCE, SDDM for
KDE. none means logging in on the console and starting the
session yourself.
A_AUDIO=yes
Installs arctic-sound: PipeWire, WirePlumber, the
PulseAudio shim so anything expecting Pulse still plays, ALSA, and
alsamixer for setting levels directly. The service is
enabled at boot.
It can also be asked for as a package, which is the same thing:
SYS_PACKAGES=" arctic-sound "
Desktop profiles already include the audio stack, so
A_AUDIO matters mainly on a console-only system or
alongside a window manager you assembled yourself.
A_BLUETOOTH=yes
bluez and the PipeWire bluetooth backend, with
bluetoothd enabled. Needs dbus, which is always on.
A_GPU=auto # or nvidia, nouveau, amd, intel, generic
auto reads the PCI bus and installs what is actually
there.
A_FONTS="jetbrains-mono nerd-fonts-symbols noto noto-emoji"
JetBrains Mono and the Nerd Font symbol set are on the ISO already, so icons in a terminal work from the installer onward. The console gets Arctic's palette at boot regardless of what is installed.
More: arctic linux docs · install · declarative configuration · generations and rollback · init systems · kernels · packages (alpm) · ephemeral shells · musl · building from source