CachyOS KDE Ricing Target

Status: deferred Last reviewed: 2026-06-20 Superseded by: CachyOS KDE Plasma

This page records the previous MacTahoe/WhiteSur ricing direction. It is not the active CachyOS KDE target. The active target is the Breeze Dark KDE safety-net baseline documented in CachyOS KDE Plasma and Desktop Rollback And Safety.

The material below remains useful as inventory and historical context for a future ricing experiment, but it must not drive default dotfiles-cachyos-theme behavior, package refreshes, panel recovery, or chezmoi apply.

Current Position

• Breeze Dark is the active KDE safety baseline.
• MacTahoe and WhiteSur asset helpers are deferred/manual experiment paths.
• install-assets --theme mactahoe|whitesur|all may still install user-local assets explicitly, but active data does not select those families.
• audit-upstream remains read-only historical parity reporting.
• The old apply-layout --macos-like-panels command is not part of Breeze reset, panel recovery, or the active KDE baseline.
• Hyprland experiments happen separately from this KDE safety-net baseline.

Deferred Direction

The deferred target was a CachyOS-only KDE Plasma 6 rice intended to make the desktop feel like a coherent modern macOS-style workstation while staying recoverable and explicit.

Earlier decisions used this role table:

Role	Primary	Fallback	Emergency
Whole desktop direction	MacTahoe	WhiteSur	Breeze
KDE global/look-and-feel	MacTahoe KDE	WhiteSur KDE	Breeze
Qt widget style	MacTahoe Kvantum	WhiteSur Kvantum	Breeze or Fusion
GTK theme	MacTahoe GTK	WhiteSur GTK	Default Adwaita or Breeze-compatible default
Icons	MacTahoe icons	WhiteSur icons	Breeze
Cursor	MacTahoe cursor or matching family	WhiteSur cursor	Breeze
Wallpaper	MacTahoe-compatible wallpaper	WhiteSur-compatible wallpaper	Plain KDE wallpaper

That table is no longer the active target. Future ricing work should restart from current pain points and keep Breeze recovery proven first.

Historical Implementation Notes

The implemented asset path previously leaned upstream Git for freshness:

• vinceliuice/MacTahoe-kde
• vinceliuice/MacTahoe-gtk-theme
• vinceliuice/MacTahoe-icon-theme
• vinceliuice/WhiteSur-kde
• vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme
• vinceliuice/WhiteSur-icon-theme
• vinceliuice/WhiteSur-cursors

The installer copied KDE/Kvantum/Aurorae/color/wallpaper assets, extracted GTK release archives into ~/.themes, and installed icon/cursor assets under ~/.local/share/icons. It deliberately skipped SDDM assets, Latte Dock, Flatpak overrides, Apple font binaries, and live desktop setting changes.

Phase 9.5 also copied upstream MacTahoe Plasma layout templates as installed assets only. Asset installation did not apply them.

Deferred Layout Notes

The old MacTahoe layout implementation used Plasma-native pieces:

• Top panel: fill width, height 40, opaque, applets-only floating, launcher, optional global menu, spacer, status widgets, clock, search, and show desktop.
• Bottom dock-like panel: centered, fit content, height 68, dodge windows, translucent, floating panel and applets, icons-only task manager.

This is not the Breeze recovery layout. Breeze panel recovery now restores captured reference panel files through:

dotfiles-cachyos-theme reset-breeze --appearance dark --from-reference latest --reset-panels

No future ricing implementation should hide panel mutation inside theme apply, asset install, chezmoi apply, or package upgrades.

Non-goals That Still Apply

• No WSL or Windows ricing.
• No Latte Dock.
• No GRUB theme work.
• No Plymouth or boot splash work.
• No kernel, driver, PRIME, display-manager service, autologin, or initramfs changes.
• No SDDM/login theming in the normal desktop theme path.
• No bulk Plasma config export as a default reset path.
• No system-wide mutation where user-local installation is practical.
• No Apple-logo branding requirement.
• No replacement of terminal, editor, shell, or development-tool themes unless a later decision explicitly changes that scope.

Future Restart Criteria

MacTahoe/WhiteSur ricing can be reconsidered only after:

• Breeze reference capture, diff, reset, panel reset, and backup restore are validated on the CachyOS KDE host.
• SDDM/login and Plymouth/boot splash remain out of the normal path.
• The implementation keeps WSL and Windows renders unaffected.
• The user explicitly asks to restart ricing work rather than KDE safety baseline work.