Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [53]
kartwork
This package contains graphics artwork for KDE, including different sets of icons, wallpapers, and so forth.
kde-i18n
There are a large number of packages starting with kde-i18n-. Each of these contains translations for one particular language. (American) English is the default, even in the KDE world, so if that's the language you want to use, you do not need any of the kde-i18n- packages. But if you are British and frown at the spelling, there even is a UK English package.
kdetoys
This package contains a number of smaller programs that do not really have a very useful purpose, but are often funny or interesting to use or to look at. Try, for example, AMOR, the Amusing Misuse of Resources.
kdewebdev
If you are developing web pages, you may want to install this package. It contains tools such as the Quanta HTML editor.
koffice
KOffice is no less than a complete feature-rich office productivity suite. It may have a few rough edges here and there, but many people use it already for their daily work.
The release cycle of KOffice is today decoupled from KDE's release cycle. At the time of this writing, the current version was 1.3.5. You can read all about KOffice at http://koffice.kde.org.
Developer tools
There are a number of packages for developers of KDE applications. kdesdk contains tools, scripts, and information for developers of KDE programs (if you plan to develop your own KDE programs, you may also want to see http://developer.kde.org), kdebindings contains bindings for developing KDE programs in programming languages other than the default C++, and finally, KDevelop is a complete integrated development environment, not only for developing KDE applications, but for developing all kinds of applications.
In addition to the packages mentioned here, which are officially provided by the KDE team, literally hundreds of other KDE programs have been developed. See http://www.kde.org/applications.html for a list of applications that are currently available.
Once you have selected which packages to install, your procedure for the actual installation depends on which Linux distribution you use and whether you install a binary package or compile KDE yourself from the source code. If your distribution contains KDE, you will also be able to install KDE during your system installation.
Once the software is loaded onto your hard disk, there are only a few steps left to take. First, you have to make sure that the directory containing the KDE applications is in your PATH environment variable. The default location of the executable KDE programs is /opt/kde3/bin, but if you have chosen to install KDE to another location, you will have to insert your path here.[*] You can add this directory to your PATH variable by issuing:
export PATH=/opt/kde3/bin:$PATH
To make this permanent, add this line to either the .bashrc configuration file in your home directory, or the system-wide configuration file, /etc/profile.
Next, do the same with the directory containing the KDE libraries (by default /opt/kde3/lib) and the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/kde3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Now you are almost done, but you still need to tell X that you want to run the KDE desktop when X starts. This is done in the file .xinitrc in your home directory. Make a backup copy first. Then remove everything in this file and insert the following single line:
exec startkde
startkde is a shell script provided with KDE that simply starts up the KDE window manager kwin and a number of system services. Distributions will usually install a somewhat more complex .xinitrc file that may even start non-KDE applications and services.
If, for some reason, you plan to install KDE packages in more than one directory tree, you will also need to set the environment variable KDEDIRS to contain the path to all the trees. Normally, this is not necessary.
Using KDE
Using KDE is quite easy. Most things are very intuitive, so you can often simply guess what to do. We will, however,