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Setting up KDE 3.3

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CIOL Bureau
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After a six-month development cycle, KDE has finally rolled out its fourth major release-the KDE 3.3. There are a number of ways to get this latest release. One is to install it using the KDE RPMs we distributed on our last month's DVD. But even we encountered lot of dependency errors while installing it using those RPMs. Plus, they will only work either with PCQLinux 2004 or Fedora Core 1. 

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If you've got some other Linux distro, or are using Fedora Core 2, then the only other way is to use the official KDE source builder called Konstruct. While it's pretty easy to use, it does take a toll on your Internet bandwidth. Of course, if you don't have the bandwidth then the only other option left is to wait for a stable Linux distro to be released with KDE 3.3. Having said that, we'll see how to install KDE using Konstruct. A copy of Konstruct is available on this month's PCQ Essential CD.

First check whether you have the right version of 'autoconf' installed else you might get dependency errors for its latest

versions. You can check the version by running the following command.

# rpm -qa autoconf

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Applies to:

Linux desktop users
USP: Understand how to install KDE using Konstruct and find out what's so great about the new release
More Links:

www.kde.org
On PCQ Essential CD:

system\cdrom\linux

If you get an output like autoconf-2.59-3 or greater than 2.59, you don't need to worry. But if your output is lesser than 2.59 then you have to install the latest version of autoconf. Copy it from this month's PCQ Essential CD and run the command:

# rpm --Uvh autoconf-2.59-3.noarch.rpm 

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After this, take a copy of the Konstruct tar ball from this month's CD, unpack it and run the following to connect to KDE's website and automatically downloading, compiling and installing it.

# tar -jxvf konstruct-stable.tar.bz2



# cd construct/meta/


# make install

KDE now ships with an integrated Web 



development IDE

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If you have good bandwidth, KDE will be up and running after a few hours. The time required for installation is completely dependent on the bandwidth. It took us nearly 8 hours to install on our machine. 

What's new?

This time KDE hasn't focused on adding too many new components; Instead they have modified the current packages and improved them. For instance, Konqueror is now compatible with instant messengers and can support protocols like

IRC.

KMail is also integrated with IM and now you can see the IM lists in your mail client. Koepte, the famous all-in-one IM client, can now stream music over the Web using 'amatoK' and shows the tag 'now playing music', just like the latest version of Yahoo messenger. Again in Kmail there are lots of security enhancements, such as anti-spam and anti-virus wizards and better support for cryptography. 

Some new components in this distribution are: 'kcolurpaint' (an easy-to-use replacement for KPaint), 'Kimagemapeditor' and 'klinkstatus' for designing websites and managing images and links. KSpell2 is an improved replacement of Kspell. It also works with online forms on websites allowing you to check your spelling while filling out forms in your Web browser. This can be very useful for

bloggers.

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