Monthly Archives: February 2026

Using KWallet in Sway for Chrome

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If you use KDE and Sway (or Hyprland) on the same machine with the same user (something I’m experimenting with), when you launch Chrome and log in with your user in KDE, and then switch to Sway, you’ll see that your account is marked as “Paused”: you have to log in again. The same holds the other way round.

That’s because in KDE, Chrome stores the credentials in KWallet, while Sway does not.

To fix this annoying problem, you have to ensure to run Chrome in Sway with the option “–password-store=kwallet6”.

To do that, you can either manually launch Chrome with that option or create the file “~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop” starting from the default file (in Arch it’s “/usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop”) and ensure the occurrences of the “Exec” line have that option, i.e.,

The desktop file in your home folder will have precedence over the default one.

However, while KDE automatically unlocks the KWallet when you log in, Sway does not. The first time you launch Chrome from a Sway session, you’re asked to open the wallet with your login password:

To let KWallet use your login credentials automatically (as KDE does, thanks to “/etc/xdg/autostart/pam_kwallet_init.desktop”), you need to tell Sway to start the corresponding PAM module.

The ArchWiki recommendation for “a window manager” setup is simply: run pam_kwallet_init from your WM/compositor startup.

Add this to ~/.config/sway/config (early in startup, before apps that need secrets):

That’s usually enough to avoid the post-login password prompt, provided PAM is already set up correctly (see the next section).

Important: pam_kwallet_init only works if PAM captured your password

pam_kwallet_init does not magically know your login password. It relies on the PAM module (pam_kwallet5.so) having captured it during login and made it available for the session handoff.

So:

  • If you start Sway via a display manager/session that already has pam_kwallet5.so in its PAM stack, then running /usr/lib/pam_kwallet_init In Sway, the wallet should unlock automatically.

  • If you start Sway via a path that doesn’t run the kwallet PAM module (common when starting from TTY, or via some greeters, depending on config), then pam_kwallet_init won’t have credentials to use, and you’ll still be prompted.

Installing Linux on a Dell Pro Max Tower T2

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I’ll show how I installed Linux (EndeavourOS, i.e., Arch) on a Dell Pro Max Tower T2.

This is quite a powerful computer! Here are a few screenshots taken from Windows 11:

Before installing Linux on this computer, I had to change the SSD SATA mode from RAID to AHCI, as documented in a previous blog post. Otherwise, Linux will not detect any SSD.

Prepare the disk with “Disk Management”.

Current situation:

I will not wipe the whole disk because I want to use Windows as well. I won’t touch the other recovery and health partitions either.

Right-click on “C:” and choose “Shrink Volume…”. About 200Gb should be enough for Windows on this computer. Unfortunately, the UI of this dialog is not the best one: you have to compute how much space to remove from the current partition and check whether the “Total size after shrink” is what you want.

I’m also deleting the “D:” volume (I’ll use it for additional partitions both on Linux and maybe on Windows).

Here’s the final result:

Let’s reboot the computer and turn off secure boot. Press F2 when the computer is turning on to enter the BIOS.

Very nice looking:

NOTE: You can use the mouse to navigate the BIOS. In my case, the computer is connected to a KVM switch for keyboard and mouse. When in the BIOS, the mouse just moves vertically. I had to plug the mouse directly into the USB port of the computer to use it inside the BIOS.

Select “Boot Configuration” where you see the “Boot Sequence” (that’s useful in the future to change the boot order or delete old entries). Scroll down til you get to secure boot and disable it:

Let’s apply changes and exit.

I downloaded the EndeavourOS ISO Mercury Neo 2025.03.19, put it into a Ventoy USB stick.

It looks like this PC can boot from USB only from the first port from the bottom (at least in the front: I haven’t tried the ports on the back):

When the computer starts, press F12 for the temporary boot menu. Select the USB stick. Then you get the Ventoy menu where you select the EndeavourOS distribution. I’ll use grub2 mode.

The installation is the typical one for EndeavourOS, which I have already blogged about.

After several weeks, I can confirm that Linux works like a charm on this powerful computer! 🙂

Install Endeavouros with Disk Encryption

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A small blog post on how to install EndeavourOS with LUKS disk encryption.

The installation starts and proceeds as usual (see, e.g., my older post). I’m using KDE for this installation.

When you get to disk partitioning, choose manual:

If you start from a fresh disk, create a new partition table and choose GPT:

If you start from a fresh disk, first create the partition for EFI:

In the rest of free space, I personally prefer to have a swap partition:

But I prefer not to encrypt that (to avoid being asked for the decryption password twice; at least, that’s what I guess… I’ll experiment that in the future):

Then, the partition for the actual system (in this case, I’m not using the whole disk); here, you specify the filesystem (I prefer BTRFS) and check “Encrypt”; you’ll be asked for the encryption password (of course, choose a strong one and ensure you remember that password):

Here’s the final layout:

Now, proceed as usual.

When you reboot, before getting to GRUB, you’ll be asked for the encryption password:

Once inserted, wait for the system to verify that:

And then, you finally get to GRUB as usual.

In fact, I haven’t created a separate partition for “/boot” (which would be a bad idea if you want to use BTRFS snapshots); thus, the grub configuration is in the encrypted file system, and when EFI boots, it needs the encryption password right away.

When you log in, you should see the directory layout with LUKS encryption:

Enjoy your encrypted system! 🙂