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Before starting to install KDE, make sure you have a working X Window system that runs with a Red Hat window manager. This way, you will not confuse X Window system problems with KDE installation problems.
You need to know if
your X Window system has been customized with
hidden configurations files like .xinitrc
, .xsession
,
or .Xclients
present in your (or other users') home
directory; such files will be moved out of the way if you run the
usekde
post-installation script.
You also need to know if the default X
startup scripts provided by Red Hat
(/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
,
/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients
, installed by the xinitrc
rpm package, and
/etc/X11/xdm/Xsession
, installed by the XFree86
rpm
package)
have been customized on your system: you can test for this with
rpm -V xinitrc
rpm -V XFree86
which will report if there are any differences between
the installed versions and the original files supplied
by the Red Hat distribution. If there are any special modifications
of these files needed by your system, you may have to modify
the default KDE configuration files, as explained below
in the section on
"
Customizing the default Desktop". (These
instructions will assume that no special customizations are
needed by your X Window system.)
You must be logged in as the superuser, root
,
to carry out most of the installation steps.
A full KDE installation
will need at least 30-40 MB.
The default KDE installation directory is
/opt/kde/
, but the binary RPM packages are now "relocatable",
to install to a different location with: the rpm
option
rpm ... --prefix=/usr/kde
will replace
/opt/kde
by /usr/kde
, for example.
/opt/kde
.Note that /opt
is not part of the Linux File System Standard (FSSTND) and may not exist on your system.
It is commonly used by large application packages.
If a directory
/opt
does not exist, it is recommended that you
create it with
mkdir /opt
You may wish to create a new partition
on your hard disk, and mount it at /opt
.
If such a new partition is not available,
and you do not wish to install KDE on your root
partition /
(which is often small),
you will have to
make /opt/kde
a symbolic link to some other
location.
Check the size and available space in your partitions with
df
If, for example, df
reports that
/usr/local/
has a lot of free space, and you
wish to put the KDE installation there, create a directory
/usr/local/kde
, and make /opt/kde
a (relative)
symbolic link to it:
mkdir /usr/local/kde
ln -s ../usr/local/kde /opt/kde
(this assumes /opt/kde
does not already exist).
Make sure you know whether you are using Red Hat 4.2, 5.0, 5.1 or 5.2. (The "rh42" RPM packages may work with Red Hat 4.0 or 4.1 systems, but some of the configuration files may need changing: you are on your own in this case!)
If you are installing on Red Hat 5.0, you should now obtain and
install the libstdc++-2.8.0
RPM (providing the C++ library needed
by binaries compiled with egcs-1.0.x)
from the Red Hat 5.2 distribution:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.2/i386/RedHat/RPMS/libstdc++-2.8.0-14.i386.rpm
or the older RPM from the Red Hat 5.1 distribution:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.1/i386/RedHat/RPMS/libstdc++-2.8.0-8.i386.rpm
Now install it:
rpm -Uvh libstdc++-2.8.0-*.i386.rpm
You are now ready to proceed to the next step, installing the RPM packages.
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