The first beta of KDE 4.1 was released a couple of days ago, and of
course, we did upload packages to experimental.
It is finally time of encouraging users to try KDE 4. So here are some
instructions of how installing KDE 4 and how going back to KDE 3.5 if
you feel like KDE 4.1 is not yet for you :)
If you do not want to risk your system, you can use this instructions to install KDE 4.1 in a virtual system such as qemu or VirtualBox.
Some previous notes:
- Please, pretty please, report the KDE related bugs in the KDE bugzilla at: http://bugs.kde.org Report it in the Debian BTS only gives us extra work that we do not have resources to handle.
- Report in the Debian BTS the packaging problems you find. If you are
not sure, ask in the users mailing list:
debian-kde@lists.debian.org
Archives at http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/
Update to KDE 4
1 Add experimental sources to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
2 Run:
aptitude update
3 Install minimal functional KDE 4 system.
This requires some polishing and if you are using non official
repositories for KDE related stuff, your system might break badly. Then
run:
aptitude install -t experimental kde4-minimal
It will need remove some packages like: kwin, kicker or ksmserver, that is fine.
4 Restart your system.
Assuming you are using kdm, after restar, you will get kde4's kdm. Log in and voila! KDE 4.
5 Installing the remaining packages.
You still will have KDE 3 stuff in your system and plenty of KDE 4 to install. I would recommend upgrade module to module, for example, for upgrading kdeutils:
aptitude install -t experimental kdeutils
So you can see clearly what is being updated, what programs dissapear and what is new. And if you do not want to test all the KDE modules, you do not need to install it all.
Available KDE 4 modules are:
kdeadmin kdeartwork kdeedu kdegames kdegraphics kdemultimedia kdenetwork
kdepim kdetoys kdeutils kdepim and extragear-plasma
6 You can see all the KDE 3.5 packages that are still in your system from a Konsole with:
dpkg -l | grep 4:3.5
Translations are in the package kde-l10n-XX where XX is your language code.
Once you have installed all the KDE 4 packages you want, I would suggest you comment out the experimental source line by adding a # in the beginning.
How to go back to KDE 3
1 Remove experimental from your sources.list
2 Remove all the base packages:
aptitude remove kdelibs5 kdelibs5-data kdepimlibs5 kdepimlibs-data
kdebase-data kdebase-bin kdebase-runtime kdebase-runtime-bin-kde4
kdebase-runtime-data kdebase-runtime-data-common kdebase-workspace
kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdebase-workspace-libs4+5
libphonon4
3 Install the minimal KDE 3:
aptitude install kdelibs kdebase kdm
4 Restart your system and the good old kdm should be on your screen again.
5 Now you can continue installing all the KDE 3 packages you like
using.
You always can use aptitude install the meta package KDE, but since that
installs a lot of packages I would recommend install the metapackages
you really want.
The list:
kdeaccessibility kdeaddons kdeadmin kdeartwork kdeedu kdegames
kdegraphics kdemultimedia kdenetwork kdepim kdetoys kdeutils kdewebdev
5 You can see the remaining KDE 4 bits on your system with
dpkg -l | grep 4:4.0.80
What KDE will be available in Lenny?
We do not know yet, we would like to ship KDE 4.1 but it is still early to know for sure.
