So this is completely on me:
I installed Arch
I installed the plasma desktop without any additional programs
I installed sddm and told it to launch plasma desktop
I rebooted
And it did what I told it to do perfectly:
I'm now within plasma desktop.
I have no terminal emulator installed, so no way of accessing a command line from within the GUI.
Whenever I reboot, I get put back into plasma desktop.
I tried to switch to a different tty with Ctrl+Alt+F-keys but that key combo seems to be used for additional desktop sessions instead (shows me the sddm login again).
I tried creating a shell script that launches pacman and installs a terminal, but I can't, since I don't have a text editor installed.
Help!
[Edit: Solved. I was able to go to a different tty after disabling function keys]
Alt-F2 or similar maybe gets you a run dialog or alternatively pass the “init=/bin/bash” option to the kernel.
Alt-F2 launches a program search window.
It seems the KDE folks have hijacked all the standard key combos.
But that gave me an idea: I might be able to configure key-combos to launch bash commands from within the system setting tools...
Try ctrl alt f2. This also should work at the login screen if you have one
It's ctrl alt and t for me btw..