What is KDE?
KDE (the K Desktop Environment) is a powerful open source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
KDE in Debian
You can find information about KDE in Debian from the Debian Qt/KDE maintainers website.
Lenny and Squeeze contain a mix of KDE 3.5.9 and 3.5.10 (that are rock stable).
DebianUnstable contains KDE 4.2.2.
DebianEtch contains KDE 3.5.5, and always will. Most of KDE 3.5.7 is available for Etch from Backports.
Installation
There are three options to install KDE in Debian:
How to install |
Description |
|
"KDE Desktop" |
Debian's selection of applications |
|
KDE (Upstream) |
kde package |
The standard/upstream distribution of the KDE desktop environment. |
KDE (core only) |
kde-core package |
This is a minimalist KDE installation |
Watch out recommended packages (i.e packages dependencies) !
(you might or might not want to install them).
For developers:
kde-devel - A full development suite for developing KDE-based applications.
Installing "KDE Desktop" task
KDE Desktop task is what is installed by Debian-Installer's Desktop "task" (if you typed install desktop=kde at DebianInstaller CD prompt.)
To install KDE later, first make sure that tasksel and aptitude are installed:
apt-get install aptitude tasksel
Then, install the kde-desktop task:
aptitude --without-recommends install ~t^standard$ ~t^desktop$ ~t^kde-desktop$
(This is what DebianInstaller would have installed in a new system, but you might want/need to uninstall the current display manager).
KDE Desktop - Content
FYI,
The "KDE Desktop" task is actually the sum of tasksel's common desktop (desktop) and tasksel's selected desktop (kde-desktop) :
#tasksel -t install kde desktop debconf-apt-progress -- aptitude -q --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install ~t^desktop$ ~t^gkde-desktop$
As of DebianLenny, this corresponds to:
(tasksel --task-packages desktop ; tasksel --task-packages kde-desktop) | sort -u
alsa-base
alsa-utils
anacron
avahi-daemon
cpufrequtils
cups
cups-bsd
cups-client
cups-driver-gutenprint
desktop-base
eject
foo2zjs
foomatic-filters-ppds
gimp
hpijs
hplip
hp-ppd
iceweasel
k3b
k3b-i18n
kde
kdeadmin
kdeartwork
kde-core
kdegraphics
kdemultimedia
kdenetwork
kdepim
kdesudo
kdeutils
kdm
kerneloops
kpackage
kpowersave
libgl1-mesa-dri
libnss-mdns
libqt-perl
menu
menu-xdg
myspell-en-us
network-manager-kde
openoffice.org
openoffice.org-gcj
openoffice.org-help-en-us
openoffice.org-kde
openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us
printconf
swfdec-mozilla
twm
vbetool
xdg-utils
xorg
xserver-xorg-input-all
xserver-xorg-video-all
xterm