I am about to take a (for me) leap into the unknown. I am currently downloading the files to install KDE. Normally I work from rpms either directly or via apt-get, but I am using the zipped files for KDE. My questions are:

is there a particular install order for the files, or can I start anywhere?

Are there any pitfalls to avoid? Do I need to anything special like uninstall anything first?

On the KDE site, it says I need to check and amend my PATH. What, how? I don't understand.

Any recommendatins for what to do after the install? Other stuff to install to make life easier.

Basically, number of posts notwithstanding, I am still pretty much a newbie. I know how to do some things and am fairly confident with that list, but this is probably the biggest thing I have done so far.

Thanks in advance for help and advice.

Cheers.

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Are those zip source files?

I don't think installing from source files is a good solution if you never deal with source files before... try using rpm instead...

I thought I'd be clever and try to avoid all the dependency errors I normally get when I use rpms.

I'll have a hunt for the rpms and see if that's easier.

I see... I have a bad experience too with rpm dependencies, btw compiling it by yourself sometimes need a few dependencies to be fullfilled.

Anyway... here's a simple to do to compile KDE files by yourself:

get all KDE's packages, basically you only need to do extract, cd to package directory, and type:
./configure && make && make install
for each package sources, for KDE, there is some order for base installation, first arts, then kdelib and kdebase, after it you may compile the rest of them unordered (some package do have dependency with other package).

As my experience for RH9, I need to add /etc/profile.d/mykde.sh to export new KDE default path:

--- mykde.sh ---
#!/usr/bin
export PATH=/usr/local/kde/bin:$PATH
--- end of mykde.sh ---

you can avoid changing path file with prefix dir while doing configure, check available option with ./configure --help

Thanks - I'll give it a go. Thinking about it, I may just wait until the release of 3.2, save myself the hassle of repeating it again.