Desktops for Linux - Installing the KDE

  1. Installing the KDE

    • Installing the QT libs

      I installed the QT libraries using the RPM binary package from TrollTech's site. I have built the KDE from source twice, once against version 1.39 of the QT libs, and most recently against version 1.40.

      I found that the older version (1.39) worked better with the KDE. This may be because many of the KDE apps are looking for certain fuctions in shared QT libraries and can not find them due to dynamic linking. This is just my observation and is by no means a scientifically sound theory.

      I had to install both the regular QT libraries as well as the QT development libraries to get the KDE configure script to run.

    • Installing the KDE libs/packages

      I ftp'ed the compressed files from a KDE mirror site (kde.flash.net).

      Installing KDE is simple. The packages come as tar'ed gzip'ed files. After decompressing them with the command: 

      #tar -zxvf kdexxxxxxx-1.0.tar.gz

      I changed into the directory that had just been created, like: 

      #cd kdexxxxxxx

      Next, I ran the GNU-style configure script and let it create the right makefiles for my system with this command: 

      #./configure

      After the script ran, I did a make, followed by a make install, like: 

      #make && make install

      I repeated that process for each of the eight packages.

      For the record, I installed the packages in the following order:

      1. kdelibs
      2. kdebase
      3. kdesupport
      4. kdegraphics
      5. kdenetwork
      6. kdeutils
      7. kdemultimedia
      8. kdegames

      It probably does not make any difference in which order the packages are built.

    • Setting the environment

      I made the following entries to my /etc/profile file: 

      	QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt
	PATH=$PATH:$QTDIR:/usr/local/kde/bin
	LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
	LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
      I also added the following to my .xinitrc

      exec startkde

      This should be the *last* line of that file, and will probably replace something like:

      exec fvwm

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Presentation by Tom Wheeler @ SLUUG Linux SIG -- 9/19/1998