Desktop Stack

Arch-based only

This page covers the Arch/CachyOS stack, verified from a real PS5 running Arch (kernel 7.1.3-FullLTO-exp) plus a daily-driver laptop.

Recommendation: sway (or Hyprland)

sway is the pick for PS5 Linux. It's what's actually running on rmux's own PS5 right now, and this is a direct recommendation from the guide maintainer, who's also a PS4/PS5 kernel developer. Hyprland is the other solid option if you want more eye candy for a small GPU cost. Reasons for sway:

• wlroots-based, minimal compositor overhead - matters on shared APU memory (GPU + CPU share the same pool)
• No animation/blur/effect pipeline eating GPU cycles you'd rather give to a game
• Config is a flat text file, easy to strip down further
• Idle desktop session footprint on the reference PS5: ~762MB RAM (sway + waybar + foot + swaync running)

Verified working sway stack (from the PS5)

Component	Package	Role
Compositor	sway	Window manager
Status bar	waybar	Top/bottom bar, workspaces, clock, network, temps
Notifications	swaync	Notification daemon + do-not-disturb
Terminal	foot	GPU-accelerated, fast startup, server mode supported
Launcher	fuzzel	App launcher (rofi-equivalent)
Wallpaper	swaybg	Static wallpaper daemon
Logout menu	wlogout	Power menu (lock/logout/reboot/shutdown)
Greeter	greetd + greetd-regreet	Login manager, wayland-native

Install:

sudo pacman -S sway waybar swaync foot fuzzel swaybg wlogout greetd greetd-regreet
sudo systemctl enable greetd

Other WMs/DEs - when they make sense

You don't have to run sway. What matters more than the DE choice is trimming background daemons regardless of which one you pick - a heavy DE with everything disabled can beat a light WM left at defaults.

DE/WM	Weight	Notes
sway	Lightest	Top recommendation. wlroots, no compositor effects
Hyprland	Light-medium	Also recommended. wlroots-based, more eye candy (blur/animations) than sway at some GPU cost
GNOME	Heavy	Works fine on PS5 hardware. Mutter compositor overhead is real but the APU handles it
KDE Plasma	Heaviest	Confirmed working intermittently - has been flaky on some setups. If you want KDE, budget more RAM headroom and expect to trim plasma-* background services

Trimming background apps

Whatever DE you land on, check systemctl --user list-units --state=running and disable anything you don't use (indexers, telemetry-adjacent services, duplicate polkit agents). This matters more for total headroom than the WM pick itself.

Extra utilities worth having

Common across both a PS5 and a normal Arch laptop setup:

Tool	Purpose
grim + slurp	Screenshot (full/region)
swappy	Annotate screenshots
cliphist	Clipboard history for wayland
playerctl	Media key control (play/pause/next from keyboard)
nwg-look	GTK theme switcher for wayland
starship	Shell prompt (works with fish/bash/zsh)
zoxide	Faster cd, jumps to frecent dirs