Installing Regolith Desktop Environment (on Ubuntu, Debian or Kali)

Debian
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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.

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See Ubuntu & Debian instructions.

Regolith 3.3 on Kali Linux (Debian Testing) Install guide:

Kali tracks Debian Testing, so use the testing repo line.

  1. 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
  1. 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
  1. 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
  1. 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-sway gives 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:

Screenshot

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Has anyone else tried Regolith DE or distro?

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This is my first time hearing about Regolith, but to be fair to them, I don’t tend to experiment with DEs. I’ve always used Gnome and haven’t gotten up enough gumption to try something different.

That being said… I am testing several new distributions on a laptop right now. I will try installing Regolith DE on one of those distros since it is a low-stakes environment.

I’m thinking I can try it in MX Linux, but if you’ve got a better distro suggest to try it out on, I’m all for it.

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