In order to start KDE on Gentoo when you run ‘startx’, you may need to add the following to your .xinitrc file (which is likely hidden) in your home directory:
exec startkde
If you are running OpenRC on Gentoo Linux, as opposed to systemd and the KDE desktop environment won’t start/the following happens:
The KDE logo appears and seems to be loading, then it bounces back to the shell with numerous errors regarding systemd, ending with an error along the lines of:
kf5.kcoreaddons.desktopparser: Property type "URL" is not a known Qvariant.
You might need to change the exec startkde line mentioned above in your .xinitrc file to this instead:
#!/bin/sh exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session startkde
One of the two options above (essentially adding exec startkde to your .xinitrc file) might solve the problem if you tried to run ‘startkde’ manually at the Gentoo shell but you get an error saying:
$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to the X server.
If you aren’t able to start any desktop environments and are stuck at the Gentoo console, then navigate to your home directory by typing cd ~ and then type nano .xinitrc to edit the file and add the line.