I've recently tried a testing installation, but ran into so many problems I created a total system crash. Yup.

Most of the time I know what I am doing, but when I ran into dependency problems (never ran into any any before) I kinda freaked out a little and tried to do all sorts of things to fix them. I installed packages from stable and unstable to get testing working without dep issues. Once I restarted the computer a couple of days later turned out I totally F'ed up X.

Me being the not so brightest crayon in the box decided to play with settings and config files knowing there were dep issues with things and this would not matter. When that didnt work I started removing packages with apt. Having dep issues removing packages I started manually removing things with 'rm'. Yup. Crash and burn. A few small errors turned into a total system nightmare that I dont think I could have fixed easily because I'm an idiot and had to play around.

Anyways... While testing was working, I liked the new KDE 3.4 - it ran smoother and looked nicer. I like the little boxes that appear when you hover the task buttons. I like the desktop wallpaper thing where you can download them in the control panel. etc etc.

So now I am wondering if there is a safe way to install KDE 3.4 onto my stable Sarge system. By safe, I mean not having to upgrade a majority of my packages to testing or even unstable.

I'd like to keep my stable apps (k3b, xchat, gaim, bluefish, firefox, etc etc), but I'd like to use KDE 3.4 to run them.

Is this possible? If so, how do I install 3.4 without upgrading the rest of the KDE apps? Is this even worth the hassle?

I'm guessing probably not? I broke KDE when trying to upgrade it to the version in testing. It upgraded to a non-KDE system! Sheesh! Anyway, if I switch to unstable and add a source for KDE 3.5, everything looks good. I'm planning to do that soon and hopefully I'll remember to fill everyone in on how it went. Unfortunately, I will also have to do an entire dist-upgrade from Stable to Unstable, but I suppose that's okay (except for the 500mb download . . . BTW, is there a way to copy all these to a CD to upgrade other systems rather than re-downloading?). I've heard that Stable is best for servers and Unstable for desktop terminal users (who've already broken enough stuff to know better now, like me! ), as Testing breaks just as much as (or more than) Unstable, and stays broken longer (this I can believe, due to recent experiences).

I've been told that KDE 3.5 is VERY nice.