These are the generic installation instructions for the K Desktop Environment. Please complement your reading with the READMEs and INSTALLs that come along with the package. Please read them carefully and try to help yourself out if anything goes wrong. If you need further assistance, consider joining the &kde; mailing lists (see our web site instructions for joining the &kde; mailing lists) or newsgroups. To the would-be converts So you have heard the rumours. Or you have seen the screenshots. And you are dying to get hold of &kde;. But you know next to nothing about this whole alternative OS business. Don't worry! You only need to do some (well, maybe not some) reading, that's all! &kde; does not run on any version of &Microsoft; &Windows; or OS/2 (yet). To run &kde;, you need to have a &UNIX; system. Please refer to for more details. Decide on a platform and set it up for your system. This FAQ can not help you with this, since &kde; runs on many &UNIX; platforms. Finally, you are ready to commence the &kde; installation. Please start reading from the next section. To get &kde;, please refer to . Last but not least, if you encounter any problems while installing &kde;, please do not hesitate to make use of the &kde; mailing lists and newsgroups. But do bear this in mind: no question is too silly to ask, but some are too silly to answer, especially when they are already answered in this FAQ. Good luck and have fun! Available package formats You can find several kinds of binary and source packages for different distributions and operating systems on the &kde-ftp;. The binary packages are not made by the &kde; Team, but by the distributors themselves, or some dedicated individuals. Please refer to &kde; Package Policy Explained for information about the &kde; Package Policy. The only official release is the source tar.bz2 packages. Please refer to the READMEs and INSTALLs in the several binaries folders. For a list of the available packages for a release, refer to the relevant info page. For the latest release this is the &kde; 3.2 Info Page. Prerequisites For &kde; 3.2, you need the &Qt; library version 3.2 or greater. Please make sure you download the correct &Qt;. You will also need the header files, if you want to compile &kde; yourself. They are all available, at no cost, from http://www.trolltech.com/download. In addition, there are optional libraries that might improve &kde; if installed on your system. An example is OpenSSL which will enable &konqueror; to browse web pages securely and is needed in a version >=0.9.6. These should be provided by your distributor; if not, ask for an update. Description of the base packages The base distribution currently consists of eleven packages. Some are required, while others are optional. Each package is available in each of the aforementioned package formats. kdelibs Required This package contains shared libraries that are needed by all &kde; applications. kdebase Required This package contains the base applications that form the core of the K Desktop Environment like the window manager, the terminal emulator, the control centre, the file manager, and the panel. &arts; Required The &arts; sound server. A powerful, network transparent sound server. kdeaddons Optional Various plugins for &kate;, &kicker;, &knewsticker;, &konqueror; and &noatun; kdeartwork Optional Additional wallpapers, themes, styles, sounds ... kdebindings Optional Various bindings for other languages, including &Java;, Perl, Python, ... kdegames Optional Various games like &kmahjongg;, &ksnake;, &kasteroids;, and &kpatience;. kdegraphics Optional Various graphics-related programs like &PostScript; previewer, &DVI; previewer, and a drawing program. kdeutils Optional Various desktop tools like a calculator, an editor and other nifty stuff. kdemultimedia Optional Multimedia applications like a &CD; player and a mixer. kdenetwork Optional Network applications. Currently contains the mail program &kmail;, the news reader &knode;, and several other network-related programs. kdeadmin Optional System administration programs. kdeedu Educational and entertaining applications for &kde;'s younger users. kdetoys Optional Toys! kdevelop Optional A complete Integrated Development Environment for &kde; and Qt &arts; and then kdelibs should be installed before everything else, and kdeaddons last. The other packages can be installed in any arbitrary order. Most package management tools will let you put all these packages in one folder and install them all at once, figuring out the dependencies as they go. Installation instructions for the different package formats Please do not forget to read the README and INSTALL files if they are available. Installation of the Debian packages The Debian packages install in accordance with the upcoming FHS (File Hierarchy Standard). become superuser run dpkg -i packagename.deb for every package you want to install. Installation of the RPM packages become superuser execute rpm -ivh packagename.rpm Installation of the source .tar.bz2 files Since there are always changes and updates to the way &kde; is compiled, please refer to Download and Install from Source for the most up to date installation instructions for the source packages. The general approach should work in most cases though. The source .tar.bz2 package installs into /usr/local/kde by default. You can override this setting by using the --prefix option of the configure script. unpack the packages with tar jxvf packagename.tar.bz2 change folder to the package folder: cd packagename configure the package: ./configure Some packages (notably kdebase) have special configuration options that might be applicable to your installation. Type ./configure --help to see the available options. build the package: make install the package: su -c "make install" (if you aren't already root). If you already are, just type make install. Post-installation procedures First of all, please make sure that you have added &kde;'s binary installation folder (⪚ /usr/local/kde/bin) to your PATH and &kde;'s library installation folder to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (only necessary on systems that do not support rpath; on &Linux; &ELF;, it should work without). This environment variable may be called differently on some systems, ⪚ it is called SHLIB_PATH on &IRIX;. Then set the environment variable KDEDIR to the base of your &kde; tree, ⪚ /usr/local/kde. Please bear in mind that it is unwise to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH blindly. In the vast majority of cases it is unnecessary and can do more harm than good. There is a web page written by Dave Barr explaining the evils of LD_LIBRARY_PATH and it can be found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/ldpath.html. Even though you can use most of the &kde; applications simply by calling them, you can only benefit fully from &kde;'s advanced features if you use the &kde; window manager and its helper programs. In order to make it easy for you, we have provided a simple script called startkde which gets installed in $KDEDIR/bin and is therefore in your path. Edit the file .xinitrc in your home folder (make a backup copy first!), remove everything that looks like calling a window manager, and insert startkde instead. Restart the &X-Server;. If you use &kdm;/xdm, you will have to edit the file .xsession instead of .xinitrc. And if there is no .xinitrc or .xsession in your home folder, simply create a new one with just one line containing startkde. Some systems (notably &RedHat; &Linux;) use .Xclients instead. This should present you with a new shining &kde; desktop. You can now start to explore the wonderful world of &kde;. In case you want to read some documentation first, there is a highly recommended Quick Start guide available. Furthermore, every application has an online help that is available via the help menu. Should I remove old version xyz before installing a new one? In principle, this is not necessary. RPM and Debian packages should take care of all dependencies. If you compile the source code yourself, you should take more care. Instructions for running two different versions of &kde; on the same system are given at http://developer.kde.org/build/kde2-and-kde3.html. However, please note that running two different versions of &kde; from source can lead to problems if you are not careful. How do I start &kde;? The most comfortable method to start &kde; is to use the startkde script. Simply put the line startkde at the end of your .xsession file (or your .xinitrc or .Xclients file if you are not using &kdm; or xdm). Please also remove the lines that start your previous window manager. If there is no .xsession, .xinitrc, or .Xclients in your home folder, simply create a new one that contains just one line: startkde. Is it possible to install &kde; in a user folder? Yes, you can install &kde; in any folder you want. What you have to do depends on the kind of packages you want to install: Configure and install the package using configure --prefix=/users/myhome/kde; make; make install to install into /users/myhome/kde. Add the following to your init files. Please note that if it is not necessary for you to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH, it is better to leave it out. For csh or tcsh: setenv KDEDIR /users/myhome/kde if ( $?LD_LIBRARY_PATH ) then setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH else setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $KDEDIR/lib endif if ( ! $?LIBRARY_PATH ) then setenv LIBRARY_PATH $LD_LIBRARY_PATH endif For bash: KDEDIR=/users/myhome/kde PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export KDEDIR PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH rpm allows you to use the --prefix option to select the folder you want to install to. For example, executing rpm -i --prefix=/users/myhome/kde package.rpm will install the package to /users/myhome/kde. Although &kde; will run from a user folder, there are some problems with programs that require suid root, ⪚ the programs in the kdeadmin package. But since they are not meant to be run by users in the first place, this is nothing to worry about. However, on systems using shadow passwords, the screensavers have to be suid root to enable password access for unlocking the screen, so this option will not work. startkde fails with can not connect to X server. What is wrong? You probably tried to start the X server with startkde. The X server is started with startx. startkde is the script that should be run from your .xinitrc, .xsession, or .Xclients to activate the window manager and the necessary server daemons for &kde;. See also . &kde; on &AIX;? IBM now officially support &kde; on &AIX;. You can find details at http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/index.html. There is also some older information at http://space.twc.de/~stefan/kde/aix.html. &kde; on a laptop? If you can get &X-Window; to run on your laptop, you should not have any problem getting &kde; to run on it. In addition, you might find the following links helpful: http://www.linux-laptop.net/ http://www.sanpei.org/Laptop-X/note-list.html I have a neomagic chipset in my laptop. Is there anything special I should do to run &kde;? On some laptops using the 2160 chipset (MagicGraph 128XD) the following options in XF86Config are needed to avoid a lock-up of the graphic engine: Option "XaaNoScanlineImageWriteRect" Option "XaaNoScanlineCPUToScreenColorExpandFill" If you have experienced desktop hangs while using &kde; please try this option. I do not like the default &kde; folder after installation. How do I move it without breaking anything? Assuming the default is /opt/kde and you want to move it to /usr/local/kde, here's what you have to do: change to superuser if you aren't already mv /opt/kde /usr/local/kde ln -s /usr/local/kde /opt/kde This will put all your &kde; files in /usr/local/kde but everything is still accessible from /opt/kde. What files can I delete from my &kde; install folder? Can all the *.h, *.c and *.o files be safely removed? There should not be any need to keep the .c and .o files, but you might want to keep the .h files, as they are used by includes if you ever want to compile your own &kde; programs. But if you wish to add patches to the source programs as they become available (rather than downloading everything again), then they should stay. Will I lose my current settings when I upgrade &kde;? No. In most cases &kde; will be able to transport your settings intact. You may need to reenter passwords in some applications (such as &kmail; or &knode;) but most other settings will be safe. There were mixed reports of results between some previous versions of &kde;. To be safe, you may like to back up your entire &kde; configuration. Settings are kept in the $HOME/.kde or $HOME/.kde2 subfolder in your home folder. Copy your old .kde/.kde2 folder to a backup location, install &kde; 3.2, and then copy back any necessary mail and news settings. That said, most people can make a direct upgrade, without removing the old .kde folder, without a hitch. You can override the use of $HOME/.kde by setting the $KDEHOME variable. I upgraded &kde; and it seemed to go fine, but when I start it, I get a blank grey screen, and nothing happens. There are errors in the console about DCOPserver. What's going on? &kde; uses several temporary files during its operation. These are usually to be found in the following locations: ~/.DCOPserver-* (there are usually two of these; one is a symlink to the other) ~/.kde/socket-hostname ~/.kde/tmp-hostname which is normally a symlink to the next file: /tmp/tmp-kde-USER ~/.kde/socket-hostname which is also normally a symlink to: /tmp/ksocket-USER If the symlinks get broken, usually because a cron or shutdown script is emptying out the /tmp folder, then strange things will happen. These files, and the symlinks, will all be created automatically at the start of &kde; so you can safely remove them while &kde; is not running. If you are only getting a grey screen when you start &kde;, or if you get an error message telling you to Check your installation, then shut down X and delete all the files listed above, then try to restart X. Normally (&ie; when not upgrading between &kde; versions) it's quite safe to leave these files intact, and you may shave a few seconds off your &kde; startup time by doing so. Compiling kdebase gives me a bin/sh: msgfmt: command not found error! You need the &GNU; msgfmt which is part of the &GNU; i18n package gettext. You should be able to download it from any &GNU; mirror. How do I uninstall &kde; applications compiled from source? You can uninstall your programs by typing make uninstall in the folder where you did make install. If you have already deleted that folder, then there is only one way, and it is not good: go to $KDEDIR/bin and start deleting files one by one. If you expect to find yourself in this situation, you might want to consider a program such as &GNU; stow, found at http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html. What is up with &GIF; support? This has to do with issues with Unisys' &LZW; patent. &GIF; support is turned off from &Qt; 1.44 onwards by default. When you want to use &GIF;s and have the relevant license, recompile &Qt; with &GIF; support. ./configure -gif. How do I install &kde; themes? Theme support in &kde; has been discontinued with this version. However, there are many opportunities to personalise and add eye candy to &kde; Look at, for example, Appearance & Themes in &kcontrol;.