I’ve googled and searched and don’t see any instructions for how to move to kde from gnome. As nearly as I can tell, my 11.2 installation only includes Gnome: when I boot the computer I get no option to pick the desktop. When I look in Software Mgr, there are hundreds of KDE apps. I’m sure I don’t need or want to install all of them–my GNOME installation only includes some of the apps in the GNOME group. But where do I find which I need? Or is there a shortcut that would be comparable to having installed KDE along with GNOME originally?
I’m not really wanting to switch to kde, just to use some kde apps–particularly quanta. While quanta seems to load OK, I can’t open the quanta handbook, for lack of khelpcenter, or go to the quanta homepage from the helpmenu for lack of kfmclient. Yet neither of those apps is listed in the kde desktop group in the software manager.
First thing I would do is to add the KDE repositories for openSUSE 11.2 and the version of KDE said to be 4.3.5 as I remember it. Next, I would start Software Management, press the view button and pick Patterns. In the list, you should see KDE 4 Base, check this and allow it to load onto your system. Once complete, Exit Gnome, select the Sessions icon and change the session from gnome to KDE or KDE 4. You can not have auto login selected otherwise you can’t change your session type without disabling auto login first.
> I’m not really wanting to switch to kde, just to use some kde
> apps–particularly quanta. While quanta seems to load OK, I can’t open
> the quanta handbook, for lack of khelpcenter, or go to the quanta
> homepage from the helpmenu for lack of kfmclient
When you search in yast look for “RPM provides”
On 11.3 khelpcenter is provided by the kdebase4-runtime package andk
fmclient by the package dolphin and konqueror.
No need to add extra kde repositories just to install some applications.
The kde version that ships with 11.2 works just fine.
From Yast, I’ve installed everything under KDE 4 Base and KDE 4 Desktop patterns that looked like it might be necessary, but I’m not getting anything prompts anywhere in the startup process that gives me an option of choosing KDE. Is there something else I have to do to make KDE an option along side of Gnome? I did check that auto login is not turned on.
When you are in the Login screen, look at the bottom left of your screen. Do you see something called SESSIONS? Select it with your mouse pointer and pick the KDE bullet from the list and then login as normal. Look thoroughly at your Login screen for the Sessions setting.
I went to Yast->System-> /etc/sysconfig editor -> Desktop -> Display Manager ->Display Manager. There I tried removing ‘gdm’ from ‘Setting of: Display Manager’. That move finally let me see, on restart, the page you’re referring to.
But when I chose KDM, it would not open properly. I got two dialogs on a white screen:
“This object could not be created for the following reasons: Could not find the requested component: icon”. (I could not close this dialog.)
“Update applet: unable to find any backend plugin. Please install one and restart Updater Applet.”
The second dialog would close, but I could not advance beyond this white screen.
The only apps from the KDE 4base I haven’t installed are Rascal and Redland, both of which look like they’re not relevant to general use.
The only apps from KDE Desktop Environment patterns I haven’t installed are: amor, arora, kalarm, kchmviewer, kdelirc, kdirstat,kfloppy, kmouth, kppp, krename, kteatime,ktimer, ktux, kweather, rsibreak, speedcrunch.
Again, to me, anyway, none of these look relevant.
I’ll send this off and then reboot again, to see what happens.
Well, next time I tried KDE is seemed to open, but to a strange green and black space scene with a little something in the upper right corner that opened something called “Plasma” when I clicked it. Seems a very confusing set of possible desktops. Where do I find help? There doesn’t seem to be any help that I see in this Plasma thing. All I see, after some experimenting, is a desktop full of folders, app icons, and documents, all mixed helter-skelter. There doesn’t seem to be any tray that shows which apps are open and it seems necessary to hunt through all the icons to find ones that will open apps. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to open a menu of apps.
When I open KDE Quickstart for OpenSuSE 11.2, a search for ‘plasma’ doesn’t yield any results.
Actually, when I sorted the icons on the desktop, it turned out that there were only icons for Office and OpenSuSE help. The one that had been there for Firefox was gone. So there seems to be no way to start any application other than Office–there isn’t even an icon for a terminal.
OK so I added everything–tho I fail to see how having kweather or kteatime would have anything to do with my problems. And I get the same results: no tray or panel, no dialog for opening programs, no access to a terminal. When I look at the OpenSUSE KDE User’s Guide, it just assumes that those things are there and doesn’t seem to say anything about dealing with plasma or turning it off to get a more normal desktop.
Great–now the volume control is missing from my Gnome tray. WHen I look for it, there seems to be something called Pulse Audio Volume Control, but when I click on it I get a message “Connection failed: Connection refused.” It looks like my effort to install KDE messed up my Gnome volume system. And apparently all that work is useless because the program I wanted to use, Quanta, seems to require KDE3 rather than KDE4. What a mess.
I think I’ll just uninstall everything from KDE. But how do I get my Gnome volume control/sound system back? When I click on the Sound button under Multimedia, I get a dialog that says, “Waiting for sound system to respond,” but nothing ever comes up.
So I uninstalled everything kde-related and rebooted to Gnome. Still no volume control. When I try to add the volume control to the panel, the volume control in the list has a very different icon than the one that used to be there, it’s labeled at ‘deprecated’, and it won’t add to my panel. So how do I get my volume control back? (And, if anyone has any ideas, how did adding KDE cause it to disappear in the first place?)
I went in and installed or reinstalled everything that seemed to have alsa or pulse in the title and that seemed to do it. Probably some overkill. Even got the volume icon back in the tray.
Thanks.
Will have to give KDE a try another time–maybe make sure I have it installed along with Gnome when I upgrade. And hopefully Quanta for KDE4 will be ready by then.
>
> Will have to give KDE a try another time–maybe make sure I have it
> installed along with Gnome when I upgrade. And hopefully Quanta for KDE4
> will be ready by then.
>
>
This is unrelated to the kde problem. Did you have a look at bluefish html
editor? It is what I use now, I used quanta some years ago.
will have a look at bluefish. for me, the reason I was trying to get KDE up was because quanta seemed to require it–eg, Cervisia and a number of other thing which didn’t seem to work from within Gnome when I loaded them individually . Turns out, it seems, that Quanta requires the KDE3 versions of these, so from that perspective all my work on KDE4 was besides the point.