KDE, installing

Congratulations! You have installed Xorg and are now ready to get KDE running.

First, su to root. After you have root privileges, you must install KDE. As of the time of writing this artical KDE 3.3 is the most current.

You have 2 options for installing KDE, build from ports or use the BSD packages.

To build KDE from source, use the ports tree:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3 && make install clean

OR

# pkg_add -r kde

Notice: If you look at the command above, it's 'kde' and NOT 'kde3'. BSD has been nice enough to keep with the times. If you are adding a package as a general rule, you leave off the version number and you'll get the most stable version.

After KDE is installed you must tell the X server to invoke KDE at the start of the X server and NOT to use the default WM. This is done though editing the .xinitrc file.

# % echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

Note: Sometimes if you are already using a window manager (i.e. XDM) you might have to edit the .xsession instead of the xinitrc

If all has gone well, you SHOULD be able to:

# startx

and have X start up and then invoke KDE.

Note: A lot of this artical has originated from http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11-wm.html