i am officialy a moron, i was installig a style not a theme!! lol, i beg your pardon

dude, i thought i was bad....

right, i think i'm a bit out of my depth here, sure when i used mandy 8.1 for two weeks installed these themes no probs!

i didn't have the kdebase-dev libs, now i have.

i still don't know if it's working tho because i'm not sure what is supposed to happen when it does! lol. i hope this total idiots guide proves useful to someone else in the future!

more help! pls!

im no expert by any measure whatsoever but seein as im the same boat as you, what was the name of the theme/widgets/window decoration you installed? it may sound ridiculous but i thought the same as you seem to be now and i found what i was looking for in style lol, not themes (where i was looking...)

plastik and thinkeramik. it also crossed my mind that it might be a style or something else (based on what you said) so had a look in those bits of the control centre, still no plastik tho...i think....i'll double check later tho...

still think my compile isn't quite working tho

im not positive, but if your compile wasnt working i think ./configure would throw errors would it? or make...either one, you got gcc? thats what i had to install as most new distro's (my experiance with suse) dont actually come with a compiler???

what id do is go here Easy URPMI and select the nearest mirror for "main", "contrib" and "updates" then click "proceed to step 3" and then execute the commands it shows one by one as root in your console, then go into "install packages" on your drake, then make sure you have libqt, libpng, gcc and xfree86-devel (make sure its the one for your xfree86, the way i found this out was by going into control centre for KDE and going information -> X-server). When you do all that it should install some other packages too.

As i said, this might be REALLY bad directions but it worked for me so hey why not give it a try? besides you may as well add those sources to the mandrake RPM installer as they can give you access to loads more packages than you have now (i only installed CD 1 so i had VERY limited packages)

anyway try it out, let me know how it goes!

i've finally managed to compile this package!

However, I am almost certain it is supposed to install an actual theme and a style but i just have the window decorations and colours!

any ideas?

i've totally given up on the compiling. it's not an experience i've enjoyed. had the sudden realisation that i could prolly find an RPM of the themes i want...i did...i uninstalled my failed attempts...i hang my head in shame and vow to return another day...when i have the first clue of what i am doing!

cheers for all you help

That's part of learning. Have patience, it will come to you.

Most themes are in tar.gz format. Good luck finding them in .rpm.

If your at kde-look.org, then click on the little link that says "how to install" and it walks you through it.

Lostman,

Just for info, if you check the "how to install" all you seem to get is generic instructions on how to use the theme/style/colour scheme/whatever after you've compiled it, and very little about how to go about getting it unpacked in the first place - which is a bit of a pain/shame.

Though I've also noticed even if the unpacking stuff goes without a hitch, then more often than not, you've still got to hunt around your system to find where it's been put.

It could also be large portions of stupidity on my part

regards

John

Whatever the case, I've only been doing this for 2 weeks and I feel pretty good about it. Just get past the first few days and read what you can. You'll be fine.