%general-entities; ]> $LastChangedBy$ $Date$ KDE4 Startup Dependencies Optional (runtime) After Kde-workspace has been installed, the first important milestone has been reached. Now you need to configure your system to start KDE4. You can start KDE4 from runlevel 3, using , or from runlevel 5, using a Display Manager, such as . To start KDE4 using , run the following commands: cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF" ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session startkde EOF startx The X session starts on the first unused virtual terminal, normally vt7. You can switch to a vtn (n=1, 2, ...) simultaneously pressing the keys Ctrl-Alt-Fn. To switch back to the X session, normally started at vt7, use Ctrl-Alt-F7. If started from vt1 (the usual case), you will see many messages there, including X starting messages, applications automatically started with the session, and eventually, some warning and error messages. You may prefer to redirect those messages to a log file, which not only will keep vt1 uncluttered, but also can be used for debug purposes. This can be done starting X with: startx &> ~/.x-session-errors You may wish to drop consolekit and/or dbus-launch, e.g., just using startlxde in .~/.xinitrc, but some functionalities such as mount/umount file systems from a file manager will not be possible, or the reboot option will be absent or not functioning, between other problems. Because X is (normally) on vt7, when you shutdown the vt is switched back to that one where the command starting it was executed. In this case, if you wish to see the shutdown messages, simultaneously press keys Alt-F7, because normally those messages appear on the vt where X was running. KDE4 comes with a graphical login interface called KDM (the KDE4 Display Manager), which provides a customizable graphical login at boot. To use KDM, you need to edit your /etc/inittab file (as the root user). First, setup run-level 5 to start KDM (adjust the path to kdm according to your system): cat >> /etc/inittab << EOF kd:5:respawn:/opt/kde/bin/kdm EOF Additionally, you need to change the default run-level from 3 to 5: sed -i 's#id:3:initdefault:#id:5:initdefault:#' /etc/inittab You can now restart your system and see the KDE4 login screen. You may want to install support for your locale language. The l10n packages can be found at &kde-download-http;applications/&kde-apps-version;/src/kde-l10n/. See for build instructions. If you are in a KDE4 session when installing a new language and configure KDE4 to use it, the session needs to be restarted, in order to see the effects. Every subsequent package can be built while having KDE4 up and running, but remember to keep &kde-dir; and &qt4-dir; set.