Well, here I am after a fresh hd-install of Knoppix and staring at my brand new Debian desktop. I've been playing around with apt-get a bit, and so far I like what I see. I know it is possible to use it to upgrade my system to KDE 3.2, but from what I've found on the web it's pretty confusing... Sticking lots of different entries in my sources.list, and trying different apt commands, ending up with an unloadable mess out of what was once KDE!

I'm a debian newbie, and fairly new with Linux, so I want to know if someone can tell me all the instructions of how to upgrade KDE 3.1 to 3.2 using apt-get... I really don't feel like re-installing again, so I need this explained clearly. For example, I assume I should be in text mode while doing this, not installing KDE when I'm in KDE, right? And what are the exact sources I need in sources.list, what commands do I use in what order, will this upgrade kde 3.1 cleanly without screwing things up, what additional things (if any) do I need to do, etc...

Thanks!

Take a look at DebianKDE ! I don't think they're ready.

* DebianUnstable (aka sid) currently contains a mix of KDE 3.1.4 and KDE 3.1.5

KDE 3.2 will go first into experimental (when debian/ scripts are updated). After KDE 3.2 final it will go into unstable when it's ready.

Thanks, So if I just keep using unstable for apt-get, KDE will automatically update once the new files are put in?

A couple other questions:

Is it possible to change my system completely to Sarge by just changing all references of unstable to testing in sources.list? Will this 'downgrade' my packages to the more stable sarge versions?

Also, if I don't want to wait until KDE 3.2 is put into Unstable, are there any unofficial sources to get it from? What packages do I need to upgrade?

Thanks!

Downgrading isn't quite that simple, no. You might be able to do it relatively easily using pinning, but I'm not so sure about it.

The "kde" package will have all the KDE stuff, "kde-core" will have a more minimal subset, .. and all the KDE-named modules are around too, like kdebase, kdenetwork, kdemultimedia, etc.

You can put this on your /etc/apt/sources.list:

and then apt-get update to update the package database then you have to find the packages that you need to upgrade with something like this dpkg -l | grep 3.1.[345] which should list all the packages for KDE that you have installed. Then you use apt-cache policy package_name for all the packages involved to find the exact version you need to install and you put them on one long command line to install eg. apt-get -s install konq-plugins=4:3.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm libarts1=1.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm kdelibs=4:3.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm kdelibs-bin=4:3.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm kdelibs-data=4:3.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm kdelibs4=4:3.2.0-0+cvs20040126+cm libqt3c102-mt/unstable ..... . Once it looks like everything is going well with the simulation then you remove the -s to actually install.

you could check out konstruct to updgrade to kde 3.2 but i havent tried it so i cant help u installing it.

http://developer.kde.org/build/konstruct/

Thanks, HappyTux; I added those sources and used apt-get dist-upgrade and it worked. When the quazi-official Debian packages are put into unstable, should I be safe to just switch to the default source and upgrade to the Debian packages?

And there I've been doing it the hard way all this time. You have the right idea ,you just comment out the line when the packages enter unstable then update and you should only have to upgrade to get the official Debian version.

Got Konstruct and successfully compiled...how do I set my knoppix to use 3.2 (currently in /home/username/kde3.2) as the default WM? I also want to uninstall 3.1 as well as all the other WMs knoppix installs.

Hi, to get KDE3.2 working you need to edit your paths in .bash_profile (it's in your home/whateveryournameis dir.

Add the lines:-

export QTDIR=~/kde3.2
export KDEDIRS=~/kde3.2

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/kde3.2/lib
export PATH=~/kde3.2/bin:$PATH

#This puts all of your KDE3.2 settings in a different dir, as not to mess up your original settings

export KDEHOME=~/.kdetest

It should then look something like this:-

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs

export QTDIR=~/kde3.2
export KDEDIRS=~/kde3.2

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/kde3.2/lib
export PATH=~/kde3.2/bin:$PATH

#This puts all of your KDE3.2 settings in a different dir, as not to mess up your original settings

export KDEHOME=~/.kdetest
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

export PATH
unset USERNAME

I hope this helps

V.

Great, I will try it soon
in the interrum, how do i uninstall KDE 3.x.x and Gnome, IceWM, all the other stuff that Knoppix installs (I've only got 4GB and I want to reclaim some of it)

No such file as .bash_profile, only .bash_history and .bashrm
Can't find bash_profile anywhere on system
attempt to edit /etc/X11/default-display-manager failed, kdeinit command says $DISPLAY not set.

That seems strange, although I am using Mandrake9.2, I would still have thought that you would have a profile for it.

What is your default shell? You should try looking for a profile for that, as that would be the file that gets executed when you fire up KDE.

As for removing the other WMs, I would not even know where to begin, I would hope there is some sort of removal scripts, but I am not sure. I used RPM's from Cooker to upgrade mine, so I didn't need to worry about it.

Sorry that I haven't ben much help, I hope you get it sorted