how to install KDE on Debian

To install KDE on Debian you have several options.

1. Use the KDE Debian CD

2. Use a minimal install (e.g. netinstall) CD to install a base system then perform one of the following actions.

For a minimal KDE installation:

aptitude install kde-core xorg kdm

For a full KDE installation:

aptitude install kde xorg

For an installation of KDE analogous to the KDE CD including the desktop-base goodies (GIMP, Iceweasel, debian-specific artwork):

aptitude install kde-desktop

Alternatively you can boot a netinstall CD by feeding the following command at the boot prompt:

install tasks="kde-desktop, standard"

Or for the graphical installer

installgui tasks="kde-desktop, standard"

• apt-get could be used in place except when install kde-desktop as this is a task and requires aptitude or tasksel

Users for whom English is not a native language may want to install a localization package. The name of those packages has the form "kde-i18n-language", where language is a code representing a locale which usually has two letters resembling or identical to the value of $LANG for the same language. For example, kde-i18n-fr for French.

It is unlikely that any KDE user will only use the packages installed by kde-core. People installing kde-core will usually add extra packages they want one by one. The main advantages of not installing kde is to save disk space (typically, a single-user system with kde-core and extra KDE packages installed manually can save about 300 MB) and installation time. Installing kde-desktop installs even more. It is more difficult to install only kde-core before getting a first touch with KDE, because many features will be missing. Installing kde the first time lets see the potential and eventually know that something is missing and should be possible to get if only kde-core is installed in a later installation.

However, if disk space is missing or some other reason makes one install only kde-core on a first installation, one may check the dependencies of kde to see what packages look useful and could be added. The kde metapackage depends only on other metapackages, such as kdeutils. One can look at the descriptions of the dependencies of the metapackages that the kde metapackage depends on and decide which ones should be installed. For example, kdeutils depends on ark, which is worth installing for most KDE users.

kde meta-package will install the following additional meta-packages which may also be selected individually with apt-get or aptitude:

courtesy  http://wiki.debian.org/KdeDebInstall