I’m going to give Regolith DE a go! Reading up on docs now, but I’m either going to just install on current Kali Linux and switch from Gnome w/ Forge Tiling over to Regolith 3.3.
Or… I’ll install Ubuntu 24.04 LTS enable ESM (Ubuntu Pro) so that I don’t have to worry about upgrading until 2034.
See Ubuntu & Debian instructions.
Regolith 3.3 on Kali Linux (Debian Testing) Install guide:
Kali tracks Debian Testing, so use the testing repo line.
- Add the signing key
wget -qO - https://archive.regolith-desktop.com/regolith.key | \
gpg --dearmor | \
sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null
- Add the Regolith repo
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg] \
https://archive.regolith-desktop.com/debian/testing testing main" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/regolith.list
- Install
sudo apt update
sudo apt install regolith-desktop regolith-session-flashback regolith-look-lascaille
OR, for Wayland instead of X11:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install regolith-desktop regolith-session-sway regolith-look-lascaille
- Reboot and pick the Regolith session at the login screen.
Heads-up
- Debian Testing (and therefore Kali) can hit the occasional broken dependency. Snapshot or sandbox before major upgrades for an easy rollback. If you need long-term stability, Bookworm or Ubuntu LTS is safer.
- Themes live in
regolith-look-*packages (gruvbox,nord, etc.). regolith-session-swaygives you Wayland if you prefer it to X11.
Sanity check after apt update:
apt policy regolith-desktop | head
You should see the package coming from archive.regolith-desktop.com with version 3.3.x.
Troubleshooting
This seems to be Debian 13 (or Kali via deb testing) specific. I had this error:
Xsession: unable to launch "/usr/bin/regolith-session regolith-x11"
X session --- "/usr/bin/regolith-session regolith-x11" not found;
falling back to default session.
Found solution here:
