KDE is open and free software, so you are always at liberty to install, build, and generally fiddle with any version that you like. However, the current release is ALPHA software, and is fairly unstable. If you enjoy (and are capable of) tinkering with Makefiles, pouring over source code in search of errors, applying daily patches, etc., then install away.
If, on the other hand, you're a little less experienced with programming and are really just looking for a great GUI, you may be better off waiting until the first BETA release is ready. With the current state of flux in the libraries and applications, KDE may be more trouble to you than it's worth (in its current form). When the BETA is ready, an announcement will be posted on comp.os.linux.announce.
KDE is available from the following ftp sites. The main site is listed first, while those that follow are mirrors.
KDE is made up of various libraries and applications that sit on top of other software. The best way to see how all this fits together is to look at a diagram:
This may look a little intimidating, but it's actually quite straightforward. If you are reading this document (a safe assumption!), you probably already have a working UN*X box. To install KDE, you just need to work backwards up the diagram. All the steps are detailed in what follows.
The first major component of any KDE installation is the Qt library. This software must be installed and working on your machine before any of KDE can be compiled. It is available for download from Troll Tech. KDE now requires Qt v1.2, so if you have v1.1 (or older) you will have to upgrade.
To install KDE itself, you have two broad options: install one of the prepackaged distributions (highly recommended!), or install all the bits and pieces yourself (see the following two sections).
Grab the library, support, base, and applications bundles from the ftp
site(s). You need to choose a location to unpack the archives (many people
use /usr/src/kde
). If, for example, you have downloaded the .tgz
files into a directory called /home/herbie/
, you will
issue a set of commands (as root) such as:
cd /usr/src/
mkdir kde
cd kde
tar -xvzf /home/herbie/kdeapps-970704.tar.gz
tar -xvzf /home/herbie/kdebase-970704.tar.gz
tar -xvzf /home/herbie/kdelibs-970704.tar.gz
tar -xvzf /home/herbie/kdesupport-0.9.00.tgz
Next, you must choose a location for files that are created during
the building process to be installed to. This is referred to as your KDE
directory, and most people use /usr/local/kde
. Do this with a
series of commands (as root) such as:
cd /usr/local/
mkdir kde
export KDEDIR=/usr/local/kde
export PATH=$PATH:KDEDIR/bin
To ensure that these variables are available to all users on your
system, you may want to add the last two export
commands to your
/etc/profile
file. If you only want KDE to work for a particular
user (eg. yourself), then you can just add these export commands to the
.bash_profile
file in that user's home directory. Note that if you
are using a different shell than bash (such as csh), the syntax for
exporting environment variables is slightly different (anyone know what it
is?).
Now that you have the source files unpacked and the KDE destination
directory setup, you can begin building the software. Change directories
into the kdesupport directory and type ./configure
. This will
customize the Makefiles for your particular machine. (Note that ./configure
can be passed command line options. See
configure options.) You should also have a
look at the Next, type make
and sit back while the jpeg and gif
libraries included in the kdesupport package are created. If all goes well,
you can then type
make install
to have these libraries installed in the KDE
directory hierarchy.
The kdelibs package is built and installed in a similar fashion;
change directories to kdelibs/
, run ./configure
, type
make
, wait for the libraries to build, and then type make
install
. This process will create all the libraries that KDE
applications require, including libkdecore (common look 'n feel, UI widgets,
etc.) and libkhtml (set of HTML routines). They will be installed in
KDEDIR/lib
.
Next, you need to ./configure
, make
, and
make install
the base package from the kdebase directory. This
process can take a little time, as the directory includes kwm
(the KDE window manager), kfm (the KDE file manager), kpanel (application
organizer and launcher), kdehelp (hypertext help system), and a number of
other applications.
Finally, you need to install the actual applications. You do this in
exactly the same way, by changing into the kdeapps directory, and going
through the same ./configure
, make
, and make
install
process.
Once everything is finished building and installing, fire up X and
try out a few programs (eg. run kfm). To setup KDE as your default X
environment, you'll have to change your .xinitrc
file (located in
your HOME directory). A typical one might look like this:
#!/bin/sh
exec kfm &
exec kdisplay -init &
exec kpanel &
exec kwm
If you have any problems, see if you can find an answer in the rest of this FAQ (see Problems). If that doesn't help, then you can always find more information on the mailing lists ( see More Info). If you find a bug in a particular package, then please send e-mail to the relevant maintainer.
Like virtually all implementations of configure (ie. scripts generated using the autoconf package), the KDE configure scripts can be passed a number of command line parameters. These can be useful for specifying the location of your Qt files, your (desired) KDEDIR, etc. To get a summary of what options are available to each of the configure scripts (the one for support, the one for libs, the one for base, etc.), just use the following coammand:
./configure --help
If you're running A RedHat system, then you'll probably find the rpm distribution of KDE a little more straightforard to install. Go to the rpm section of the distributions area at the ftp site and get the latest version. It should look something like this:
kde-0.10.2-1.i386.rpm
Grab the README file included with the RedHat distribution and refer to it for more details. The general idea is to change to the directory where you downloaded the package, become root, and type:
rpm -Uvh kde-0.10.2-1.i386.rpm
Like any other Debian package, the KDE related .deb's can be installed from the command line with:
dpkg -i package_name.deb
An equivalent form of this command is:
dpkg --install package_name.deb
If you'd rather build a KDE installation by hand (ie. if you enjoy making your life more difficult than it needs to be), then you need to begin by grabbing the individual library files. You'll need the gif, jpeg, deui, core, and html widgets libraries.
You can unpack these archives anywhere you like; ``cd
'' to wherever
you installed them, become root, and try ``make
''. If you receive
no error messages, make sure that you have declared KDEDIR
and try
``make install
''. If you do get errors while building, it may be
that the programs cannot find all the bits and pieces of
Qt that they need. Ensure that
all of your
Qt
environment variables have been declared as per the
Qt documentation. If you are
still having problems, it's time to join a mailing list (see
More Information).
Once you have the libraries in place, you have to inform your system
that these new libraries exist. One way of doing this is to make symbolic
links from files in a conventional library directory (such as /usr/lib/) to
your KDE library directory (eg. /usr/local/kde/lib/). You can do this with a
command like ``ln -s /usr/local/kde/lib/libkdecore.so
/usr/lib/libkdecore.so
'' (NB: You must do this for each of the
libraries that now exist in your KDE lib/ directory). You can then let your
machine configure itself to use these new libraries by typing
``ldconfig
''.
An alternative method, and one that is probably much easier in the
long run, is to add your KDE lib/ directory to the set of directories that
ldconfig
checks whenever it is invoked. Just edit the file
/etc/ld.so.conf and add your kde lib/ directory to the list. Then just make
sure to run ldconfig
each time you install new KDE libraries.
The next step is to download, compile, and install the five KDE core components:
In each case, make sure to check the included READ.ME's in each archive to
get the latest information about the package. Each of these five components
should configure themselves with the `` ./configure
'' command, build
with the ``make
'' command, and install themselves in the right place
with ``make install
''.
Any problems that you cannot solve yourself should be directed either to the author of the package or to one of the relevant mailing lists.
Having got the basic system up and running, you are now free to install whatever KDE applications you like. These are all designed to build and install in an analogous way.
In addition to the libraries (libkdecore, libkhtml), the absolutely essential pieces of KDE are:
These seven packages all assume the other six are available on your system. You can find useful summary information about the current state of these packages at http://www.kde.org/components.html.
All the rest of the KDE applications are optional, although since it is the applications that actually let you do something useful, you will certainly want to install some of them. Current KDE applications include a calculator, text editor, ghostscript previewer, and a dvi viewer. You can find useful summary information about the current state of these packages at http://www.kde.org/components.html.
The status of KDE binaries is a little unstable as we are still at the ALPHA stage. Stable binaries for general use will be made available as soon as we have progressed to the BETA stage.
Although not quite complete, the command make uninstall
already reverses most of intallation process.
Just use the same command you would with any other RedHat package. That is, to uninstall the base distribution, try:
rpm -e kde
Likewise, a development distribution can be uninstalled with:
rpm -e kde-devel
To uninstall a Debian KDE package, use a command like this:
dpkg -r package_name
or (equivalently):
dpkg --remove package_name
Varying degrees of success have been reported with FreeBSD, NetBSD, Sun, Irix, etc. As the code matures towards a first public release, compatibility with other platforms will become increasingly important, but, for the time being, your best bet is to just try and install the latest distribution and hope for the best. As with any other problems, the mailing lists (see More Information) are a very useful source of advice.