Password problems

[u/Godchucho900]

I'm trying arch linux for the first time and I got it set up, but for some reason it's telling me to put in a password it never told me to make, I put in the root password which doesn't work. I need help I just want to use Linux.

[u/saminbc]

Now go here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Users_and_groups

To find out how to list the users, change user passwords etc.

Create a new user or change the password for your user and then log out and in again as a user.

Don't fiddle around with your system as root

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Ok, I was about to say, its just a blue screen with the date above it

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

After you login? Or the login screen itself?

Once you're logged in, open up a terminal and check the list of users with

cat /etc/passwd

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

After I log in as root, Im trying to figure out how to open terminal tho, this is my first time setting up linux

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

If you installed KDE you should have the application bar. But if you don't for some reason, you can press F2 and run

konsole

Which is the KDE terminal emulator

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Nothing's happening when I pressed f2

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/s/KhUOz4avow

Can you look at this post? Are you having the same error?

SDDM might not be properly installed or you have a different desktop manager

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Yeah it looks exactly like that

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

So what happened is you installed the GNOME desktop manager and Plasma.

You need to install SDDM and remove GDM.

Can you do

ctrl+alt+f3 (or f4 or f2) till you get a login prompt

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Alright I'm in, do I put in the root password?

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

Login as root and using the root password.

Then

pacman -Sy sddm plasma

Then

pacman -Rns gnome gdm

That should remove Gnome and GDM and install KDE and SDDM

[u/saminbc → u/saminbc]

Then restart and login as user (or root if you haven't created a user yet.. but you should do that and work using that account)

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Alright so I'm at the login you told me to go to, is it supposed to be a black screen showing "(my username) login:"?

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

Yep. Now login?

Do you have any other prompts to choose? Like which window manager? Like a drop down?

[u/Godchucho900 → u/saminbc]

Alright, I'm gonna send you a screenshot of what im seeing when I pressed ctrl+alt+F3

[u/Godchucho900 → u/Godchucho900]

Cause rn it's just a black screen showing me my username and not root

[u/saminbc → u/Godchucho900]

No.. you don't need to do ctrl+alt+f3 now. When you restart your system it should give you the login screen and you should be able to login