source: kde/kde-intro.xml@ 2dae8b3

<partintro>
<title>Introduction to <acronym>KDE</acronym></title>

<para><acronym>KDE</acronym> is a comprehensive desktop environment that builds on 
<application>XFree86</application> and <application>Qt</application> to provide
a window manager and many user tools, including a browser, word processor, 
spreadsheet, presentation package, games, and numerous other utilities. It 
provides extensive capabilities for customization.</para>

<para>We divide the <acronym>KDE</acronym> instructions into two parts. The first part, the
core packages, are needed for the rest of <acronym>KDE</acronym> to work. The second part
presents additional packages which provide functionality in various areas
(multimedia, graphics etc).</para> 

<para><acronym>KDE</acronym> also has many internationalization packages in the form of:
<filename>kde-i18n-xx-&kde-version;.tar.bz2</filename>
where the xx is a two to five letter code for the country covered. We
do not cover the installation of these packages here.</para>

<para>There are two alternatives for installing <acronym>KDE</acronym>. Option one, that
is used by most of the commercial distributions, is to
install <acronym>KDE</acronym> in the standard system prefix: <filename>/usr</filename>.
This option allows the use of KDE without the need for any additional configuration such
as modification of various environment variables or configuration files. Option two is
to install it in a unique prefix such as <filename>/opt/kde</filename> or
<filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>. This option allows for easy removal of
the package.</para>

<para>Based on your preference, set <envar>KDE_PREFIX</envar>.</para>
<para>If <application><acronym>KDE</acronym></application> is your desktop of choice:</para>
<screen><userinput><command>export KDE_PREFIX=/usr</command></userinput></screen>
<para>If you want to try-out <application><acronym>KDE</acronym></application>:</para>
<screen><userinput><command>export KDE_PREFIX=/opt/kde-&kde-version;</command></userinput></screen>

<para>Remember to execute <command>ldconfig</command> after installation of libraries to
update the library cache.</para>

<para>If you are not installing <acronym>KDE</acronym> in <filename>/usr</filename> you will need to make some
configuration changes:</para>

<para>Add to your system or personal profile:</para>

<screen><userinput><command>export PATH=$PATH:/opt/kde-&kde-version;/bin
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/opt/kde-&kde-version;/lib/pkgconfig</command></userinput></screen>

<para>Add to your <filename>/etc/ld.so.conf</filename>:</para>

<screen><userinput><command>cat &gt;&gt; /etc/ld.so.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"</command>
# Begin kde addition to /etc/ld.so.conf

/opt/kde-&kde-version;/lib

# End kde addition
<command>EOF</command></userinput></screen>

<para>Add to your <filename>/etc/man.conf</filename>:</para>

<screen><userinput><command>cat &gt;&gt; /etc/man.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"</command>
# Begin kde addition to man.conf

MANPATH /opt/kde-&kde-version;/man

# End kde addition to man.conf
<command>EOF</command></userinput></screen>

<tip>
<para>If you prefer installing <acronym>KDE</acronym> in <filename>/opt</filename>
one trick to avoid the above configuration changes is to replace <filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>
with <filename>/opt/kde</filename> and to create a symlink from <filename>/opt/kde-&kde-version;</filename>
to <filename>/opt/kde</filename>.</para>
<screen><userinput><command>ln -sf &kde-version; /opt/kde</command></userinput></screen>
</tip>

<tip>
<para>All the <acronym>KDE</acronym> packages are comprised of various components. 
The default is to
install most of the components. If specific components are to be eliminated, the
official way is to set the variable <envar>DO_NOT_COMPILE</envar>.
This comes in handy when there are problems compiling a particular
component.</para>

<screen><userinput><command>DO_NOT_COMPILE="component1 component2" \
    ./configure --prefix=/opt/kde...</command></userinput></screen>

<para>The core <acronym>KDE</acronym> packages also honor this variable, but omitting components
from the core packages is not advisable since it may result in an
incomplete <acronym>KDE</acronym> installation.</para>
</tip>

<note><para>In each of the packages,
one other option to <command>configure</command> can be added: 
<parameter>--enable-final</parameter>. This option can speed up the build 
process, but requires a lot of memory. If you have less than 256MB of RAM, 
this option may cause swapping and significantly slow compilation.</para></note>

</partintro>