Having it in your /root directory makes it only available for root. ( The better place would have been something like /usr/local/kde3.2.2
Anyway you need to set some environmental variables.
$KDEDIRS where ever KDE is installed.
$KDEHOME where you want to have .kde ( Useful for keeping two versions separate settings )
$QTDIR The version of Qt ( If you didn't use a different version of Qt then its fine where it is. )
You also need to add $KDEDIRS/bin ( and $QTDIR/bin if needed ) to the
front of your path. and LD_LIBRARY_PATH needs $KDEDIRS/lib ( and $QTDIR/lib if needed ).
the xinit $KDEDIRS/bin/startkde will start the new version of kde.
Its this complicated if you want to keep both versions at once. ( and not install it where it normally expects to be. ) I use it to keep CVS and current versions at once.
To simplify this I use a script
Code:
#!/bin/sh
# sets the Qt and KDE paths
QTDIR=/usr/local/src/qt-copy
KDEDIRS=/usr/local/kde-unstable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIRS/lib:$QTDIR/lib
PATH=$KDEDIRS/bin:$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
KDEHOME=~/.kde-unstable
export QTDIR KDEDIRS LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH KDEHOME
xinit $KDEDIRS/bin/startkde
.xsession if usually a simple file with something like exec startkde in it. If it doesn't exist simply create one.