I never much liked kde. I find it too slow,looks..etc. Im going to assume I can safely uninstall or not install it at all with out breaking too many little things. Has anyone had any breakage from not installing it? Just wondering because this is the only system I have/use. I should probably create a test partition, but this is more for information purposes at this moment.

KDE and the KDE libraries are only needed if you actually use KDE. Removing it will have no effect on the rest of the system.

Keep in mind though that even if you don't use KDE, you can use KDE applications in another WM if you leave KDE installed. This might be the better solution, as some of the KDE applications are really very good and you might end up wanting to keep them around. For example, K3B is the only graphical CD/DVD burning application included in Slackware (at least, as far as I am aware).

I was thinking that, I actually install graveman because k3b annoys me. But it does have some cool multimedia features that I like. I was mostly worried about sym links and was unsure which apps built off what libraries. Are all the QT apps included within the KDE set (ie. amarok and k3b)? I'll have to dig around the DVD.

Thanks for the response.

No. Sometimes I've had to add parts of KDE to install other software, but in the short time I've been using Slackware I usually don't install it, and it has not given me any trouble thus far.

Sounds promising. I'll have to watch those third party apps. I just can't understand for the life of me why apps (ie ..firefox) take so long to load in kde. Darn things snaps right up in xfce. My computer isn't slow by any means.

Linux symatic 2.6.24.5-smp #1 SMP Wed Apr 30 13:18:13 CDT 2008 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

I torn a ligament in my knee it appears I'm gonna have some extra time on my computer...heh.

Presumably it would be due to the overhead you are getting in KDE. KDE is a much larger beast than XFCE.

I installed Slackware 12.1 without kde and had ZERO negative effects from it.

It made for a much lighter system, both in hard disk space used and the overall speed of the system itself. Kde loads a LOT of crap I don't use. My machine was quite zippy and I never once encountered an error of any kind. In addition, all the software I use (openoffice, mplayer, etc) compiled fine without the kde libraries and ran without hassle. During install, I simply unchecked kde at the 'package series' window, then selected 'install everything' at the next window. Worked great.

Since them I've reinstalled Slackware (yes i do like to play) and the second time around I went ahead and installed kde as well because I have the extra hard disk space and I know I can use xfce just fine whether kde is installed or not.

If xfce had a configurable menu and there was a dvd-burning app equivalent to Kb3, I would seriously not bother with kde at all.

Dig

If you want to uninstall the kde series after your install you can use slackpkg to easily do it. It respects series names (see man page). Also, keep in mind that the qt library is not a part of the kde series.

Xfce's menu is configurable - it's an XML document, and instead of mucking about with the default, you can override it with a local (ie. in your ~/ directory) copy, tailored to your needs.

K3B is nice; a GTK+ equivalent is GnomeBaker. I actually prefer it to K3B (call me crazy).

You can just as easily use the included Menu Editor to change the XFCE menu. Simply disable the automatically generated menu from the list (it's called "system", I believe), and enter in your own submenus and launchers.

So far the only error I have had is with hplip. It must build off some of the KDE libraries. That was the kind of breakage I was talking about. Oh well I don't use it, but that makes me wonder.

Not sure if it's an xfce-specific problem or not, but I just had to install pyqt3 and then hplip ran fine. Slacky.eu has it here:

http://repository.slacky.eu/slackwar...t/pyqt/3.17.3/

You can also run hp-check to see if there's anything else you need, but pyqt3 should be enough.

Dig

Also check the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT for sections concerning hplip. My Upgrade HowTo shows this as well. See the Miscellaneous Fixes section for three different things concerning HP printing.

I wasn't trying to use it it to print. It is autostarted in Xfce, and when the KDE set is not installed the GUI fails. Also fails from the command line to bring up the gui.

Since PyQT is not installed on 12.1, possibly some kde binding or libs are used. Since I don't not know that much about such things I'm trying to gather info.

Yes symatic you are correct. In an Xfce-only install (I just performed another one last night), pyqt3 does not get installed and the hplip gui will not work without it. This is aside from the whole UTF8/lp business that is discussed by PatV in the readme and in shadowsnipes' very excellent tutorial. You don't need to install the whole kde set though. I only needed pyqt3 to make it work and then followed PatV's additional instructions which apply to everyone. I do see this as a minor bug though, since the dependency for hplip should be loaded regardless of which desktop environment you choose. Surely I am not complaining though.