so those are my 2 questions. I downloaded a ton of KDE 4.5.2 tar.bz2 stuff and I have no idea what to do with it.
I have the gkrellm theme invisible installed, but using it just causes some minor changes to the UI and no transparency. any idea whats wrong?

1st - if you got the kde sources from kde.org, then you can find build instructions here:
http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/KDE4

2nd - check to see that you have compositing enabled. You might need to use a different X display driver if compositing doesn't work with the one you're currently using.

I was curious and took a closer look at that techbase.kde.org article, and isn't great for the downloaded sources, it seems to be geared to svn. It's linked to from the sources page though, as the "Build instructions" to use.

I've seen people around who use KDE 4.5.*, could someone who is using it publish his secrets about the update process?

Well KDE 4.5.3 packages are already pre-built and released for Kubuntu (10.10), openSUSE (11.2 and 11.3), and they're "scheduled" for addition to Slackware-current any day now.

If you really can't wait, try getting them here:
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/i-po...-5-3-packages/

Note where it says: "A fully up to date Slackware-current (32-bit or 64-bit) is all you need."

Keep in mind that with Slackware-current you're playing with matches...

this stuff raised a few more questions:

what is -current or Slackware-current?

such folder (/deps) does not exist on any of the provided links to the packages. what's with that?

Slackware-current is the testing version of Slackware, where new and updated packages are tested before pushing to a release version.

I think it would probably be too much work and potential for nasty surprises to switch to -current just to try KDE 4.5.x.

My recommendation if you're really determined would be to read through the techbase.kde.org link I posted earlier, and try building it yourself from source. You should be able to use the 4.5.2 source tarballs you grabbed before, and skip the svn checkout commands, but as it says in the article things get moved around sometimes so I wouldn't be surprised if you run into issues.

ok, I'll try that. although I already installed the normal packages and screwed up my KDE

time to

Yeah I did not clean up the README... thanks for noticing, I have fixed that now. There is no "deps" directory because this time there are no additional dependencies to install or upgrade.

Eric