I've upgraded my old KDE/Plasma v4 to v5 last weekend, which took 29 hours of compiling, after two hours needed to resolve the blocks by removing the packages in question. The upgrade worked without any hassles - a big THX to you! :) But there is one point: under /etc/X11/Sessions the old KDE-4 file has been deleted, but no KDE-5 file, with startkde as content, has been created - after creating it by hand, KDE came up. I start X by running startx with env XSESSION=KDE-5 set. After 10 minutes waiting for the cpu usage not running at 100%, I've notice that the baloo file indexer is the program responsible for sucking too much cpu time, so I've deactivated it. Now it runs smooth, even though somewhat slower than v4. Cheers Tom # output of: emerge --info Portage 2.3.0 (python 2.7.12-final-0, default/linux/x86/13.0, gcc-4.9.4, glibc-2.22-r4, 4.4.39-gentoo i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-4.4.39-gentoo-i686-Pentium-R-_Dual-Core_CPU_T4500_@_2.30GHz-with-gentoo-2.3 KiB Mem: 2036244 total, 322436 free KiB Swap: 2160736 total, 2006520 free Timestamp of repository gentoo: Mon, 23 Jan 2017 06:00:01 +0000 sh bash 4.3_p48-r1 ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.25.1 p1.1) 2.25.1 app-shells/bash: 4.3_p48-r1::gentoo dev-java/java-config: 2.2.0-r3::gentoo dev-lang/perl: 5.22.3_rc4::gentoo dev-lang/python: 2.7.12::gentoo, 3.4.5::gentoo dev-util/cmake: 3.6.3::gentoo dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.28-r2::gentoo sys-apps/baselayout: 2.3::gentoo sys-apps/openrc: 0.22.4::gentoo sys-apps/sandbox: 2.10-r1::gentoo sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13::gentoo, 2.69::gentoo sys-devel/automake: 1.11.6-r1::gentoo, 1.14.1::gentoo, 1.15::gentoo sys-devel/binutils: 2.25.1-r1::gentoo sys-devel/gcc: 4.9.4::gentoo sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.7.3::gentoo sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.6-r2::gentoo sys-devel/make: 4.1-r1::gentoo sys-kernel/linux-headers: 4.4::gentoo (virtual/os-headers) sys-libs/glibc: 2.22-r4::gentoo Repositories: gentoo location: /usr/portage sync-type: rsync sync-uri: rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage priority: -1000 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-stack-protector" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt /var/bind" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-stack-protector" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FCFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-stack-protector" FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr" FFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-stack-protector" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo/" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" USE="X Xaw3d a52 aac acl acpi alsa amr apache2 berkdb bs2b bzip2 cairo cdda cddb cdr cli cracklib crypt css cups curl cxx dbus device-mapper dri dts dv dvd dvdr encode exif extensions extras fam ffmpeg fftw firefox flac flatfile fontconfig fortran ftp gdbm gif gmp gphoto2 gstreamer iconv icu id3tag imagemagick inotify ipc ipv6 javascript jbig jit jpeg jpeg2k kde kpathsea ladspa lame latex lcms libnotify libsamplerate libsoxr lzma mad mbox mikmod mime mmap mms mmx mmxext mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg ncurses nls nntp nptl nsplugin nss ogg opengl openmp opus pam pcmcia pcre pdf plasma plotutils png postscript qt3support qt4 qt5 raw readline seccomp session snmp sockets speex sqlite sse sse2 sse3 ssl ssse3 startup-notification svg syslog sysvipc taglib tcpd theora tiff toolame truetype twolame udev unicode usb vcd vhosts vim-syntax vorbis vpx wavpack webp x264 x265 x86 xattr xft xine xinetd xml xpm xv xvid zlib" ABI_X86="32" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" CAMERAS="ptp2 canon" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmx mmxext sse sse2 sse3 ssse3" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" L10N="de en en_US en_GB" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="de en en_US en_GB" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-6" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby21" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="vesa vmware intel" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" Unset: CC, CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, CXX, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, USE_PYTHON
kde-plasma/plasma-workspace does install /usr/share/xsessions/plasma.desktop, I'm not sure how/if that fits into XSESSION.
The old KDE-4 file was installed by the Gentoo ebuild, not as part of the upstream tarball. And it's mostly just a copy of xinit's Xsession file, simply doing exec "/usr/bin/startkde" at the end. So I don't see any use for it. If you want to start Plasma-5 via startx, then please add the following line in ~/.xinitrc: exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session startkde This is assuming you use openrc/consolekit, I don't know the equivalent for systemd.
