1 | <partintro>
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2 | <title>Introduction to <acronym>KDE</acronym></title>
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3 |
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4 | <para><acronym>KDE</acronym> is a comprehensive desktop environment that builds on
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5 | <application>XFree86</application> and <application>Qt</application> to provide
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6 | a window manager and many user tools, including a browser, word processor,
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7 | spreadsheet, presentation package, games, and numerous other utilities. It
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8 | provides extensive capabilities for customization.</para>
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9 |
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10 | <para>We divide the <acronym>KDE</acronym> instructions into two parts. The first part, the
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11 | core packages, are needed for the rest of <acronym>KDE</acronym> to work. The second part
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12 | presents additional packages which provide functionality in various areas
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13 | (multimedia, graphics etc).</para>
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14 |
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15 | <para><acronym>KDE</acronym> also has many internationalization packages in the form of:
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16 | <filename>kde-i18n-xx-&kde-version;.tar.bz2</filename>
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17 | where the xx is a two to five letter code for the country covered. We
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18 | do not cover the installation of these packages here.</para>
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19 |
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20 | <para>There are two alternatives for installing <acronym>KDE</acronym>. Option one, that
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21 | is used by most of the commercial distributions, is to
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22 | install <acronym>KDE</acronym> in the standard system prefix: <filename>/usr</filename>.
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23 | This option allows the use of KDE without the need for any additional configuration such
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24 | as modification of various environment variables or configuration files. Option two is
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25 | to install it in a unique prefix such as <filename>/opt/kde</filename> or
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26 | <filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>. This option allows for easy removal of
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27 | the package.</para>
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28 |
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29 | <para>Based on your preference, set <envar>KDE_PREFIX</envar>.</para>
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30 | <para>If <application><acronym>KDE</acronym></application> is your desktop of choice:</para>
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31 | <screen><userinput><command>export KDE_PREFIX=/usr</command></userinput></screen>
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32 | <para>If you want to try-out <application><acronym>KDE</acronym></application>:</para>
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33 | <screen><userinput><command>export KDE_PREFIX=/opt/kde-&kde-version;</command></userinput></screen>
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34 |
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35 | <para>Remember to execute <command>ldconfig</command> after installation of libraries to
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36 | update the library cache.</para>
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37 |
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38 | <para>If you are not installing <acronym>KDE</acronym> in <filename>/usr</filename> you will need to make some
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39 | configuration changes:</para>
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40 |
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41 | <para>Add to your system or personal profile:</para>
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42 |
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43 | <screen><userinput><command>export PATH=$PATH:/opt/kde-&kde-version;/bin
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44 | export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/opt/kde-&kde-version;/lib/pkgconfig</command></userinput></screen>
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45 |
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46 | <para>Add to your <filename>/etc/ld.so.conf</filename>:</para>
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47 |
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48 | <screen><userinput><command>cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"</command>
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49 | # Begin kde addition to /etc/ld.so.conf
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50 |
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51 | /opt/kde-&kde-version;/lib
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52 |
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53 | # End kde addition
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54 | <command>EOF</command></userinput></screen>
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55 |
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56 | <para>Add to your <filename>/etc/man.conf</filename>:</para>
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57 |
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58 | <screen><userinput><command>cat >> /etc/man.conf << "EOF"</command>
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59 | # Begin kde addition to man.conf
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60 |
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61 | MANPATH /opt/kde-&kde-version;/man
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62 |
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63 | # End kde addition to man.conf
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64 | <command>EOF</command></userinput></screen>
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65 |
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66 | <tip>
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67 | <para>If you prefer installing <acronym>KDE</acronym> in <filename>/opt</filename>
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68 | one trick to avoid the above configuration changes is to replace <filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>
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69 | with <filename>/opt/kde</filename> and to create a symlink from <filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>
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70 | to <filename>/opt/kde</filename>.</para>
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71 | <screen><userinput><command>ln -sf &kde-version; /opt/kde</command></userinput></screen>
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72 | </tip>
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73 |
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74 | <tip>
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75 | <para>All the <acronym>KDE</acronym> packages are comprised of various components.
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76 | The default is to
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77 | install most of the components. If specific components are to be eliminated, the
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78 | official way is to set the variable <envar>DO_NOT_COMPILE</envar>.
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79 | This comes in handy when there are problems compiling a particular
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80 | component.</para>
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81 |
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82 | <screen><userinput><command>DO_NOT_COMPILE="component1 component2" \
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83 | ./configure --prefix=/opt/kde...</command></userinput></screen>
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84 |
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85 | <para>The core <acronym>KDE</acronym> packages also honor this variable, but omitting components
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86 | from the core packages is not advisable since it may result in an
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87 | incomplete <acronym>KDE</acronym> installation.</para>
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88 | </tip>
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89 |
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90 | <note><para>In each of the packages,
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91 | one other option to <command>configure</command> can be added:
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92 | <parameter>--enable-final</parameter>. This option can speed up the build
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93 | process, but requires a lot of memory. If you have less than 256MB of RAM,
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94 | this option may cause swapping and significantly slow compilation.</para></note>
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95 |
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96 | </partintro>
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