On request, a little mini-howto on how to compile kde from cvs It's probably a good idea to do all this in one terminal window. If you set an environment variable in one konsole window, that variable will not be set in another window, so stay in one window when you do this. First of all, make sure you have cvs installed. It is on SuSE's CDs. You also need gcc, gpp, automake, autoconf and yacc. I can't list here everything you need exactly. If you install the "development" setup in yast, you should get most, if not all of it. I never worry too much about that, because the compilation scripts will complain if you lack a certain package you need. Just install it as you go along. 1. Check out the code from cvs You need to tell cvs which server to download from, and you need to log in to it. export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.kde.org:/home/kde cvs login There is no password, so just hit enter when it asks you. You only need to login once. If you decide to update your code in two weeks you only need to do the "export", not the "login" then. make a directory where you put the source. I keep mine in /home/andjoh/src/kde-3.1. Then "cd" to that directory (in my case, "cd /home/andjoh/src/kde-3.1") Now download what you want to compile. You need the base bits, the rest is "if you feel like it". cvs co qt-copy to get an up-to-date version of qt. cvs co arts cvs co kdelibs cvs co kdebase Those three are needed. Then you can download "kdenetwork", "kdemultimedia", "kdegraphics", "kdegames", "kdeartwork", "kdeutils" "kdeaddons" and "kdeextragear-1" if you want them. But only the first three + qt-copy are actually needed to run kde. 2. Compile qt-copy You can find this info in the file README.qt-copy cd qt-copy export QTDIR=$PWD make -f Makefile.cvs ./configure -system-zlib -qt-gif -system-libpng -system-libjpeg \ -plugin-imgfmt-mng -thread -no-stl -no-g++-exceptions make symlinks sub-src sub-tools This will run for some time. 3. Compile kde First you need to decide where you're going to store the compiled binaries. I keep them in my home directory, in /home/andjoh/kde3.1 export KDEDIR=/home/andjoh/kde3.1 cd arts make -f Makefile.cvs ./configure make make install This is the magic sequence for compiling all the packages in kde. Simple, no? :) cd kdelibs make -f Makefile.cvs ./configure make make install cd kdebase make -f Makefile.cvs ./configure make make install Those four packages should be handled in that order. The procedure is exactly the same for the rest of the packages you decided to download. You can do them in any order, except that kdeaddons should be done last of all. Now, to use this, put these lines in your ~/.bashrc export KDEDIR=~/kde3.1 export QTDIR=~/src/kde3.1/qt-copy export WINDOWMANAGER=~/kde3.1/bin/startkde export PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export KDEHOME=~/.kde31-test Log out and back in and you should see the brand new kde3.1 start up and your old kde 3.0.x settings won't be affected. Comment out those lines in .bashrc to get back to the old kde. Note: with those lines in .bashrc, kde3.1 will start up regardless of what you select from kdm. This isn't really a "nice" solution, but it was the first one I could think of :) If anyone has a better idea of how to do this in a more "SuSE" manner, please speak up :) HTH Anders