KDE 4.1 on FreeBSD

Paths

KDE 4.1 installs by default to a custom prefix ${LOCALBASE}/kde4, which means that by default the executables are not immediately accessable from the command line.

If you wish to access KDE 4.1 executables from a shell or another desktop environment, you should ensure that ${LOCALBASE}/kde4/bin is in search path in your environment.

Note that by default, ${LOCALBASE} is /usr/local

EXPERIMENTAL: if you add "KDE4_PREFIX=${LOCALBASE}" to /etc/make.conf, KDE 4.1 will install to /usr/local. NOTE: You cannot do this if you have any part of KDE 3.x installed, as they woud conflict.

Sound

For sound to work, it is necessary to have dbus and hal enabled in your system. Please see the respective documentation on how to enable these.

Typically, these would require the following in your /etc/rc.conf file

dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"

Performance

There can be a noticable performance problem with some graphics hardware when running the KDE 4.1 desktop, especially when "Desktop Effects" are enabled.

This is a known issue, not exclusive to FreeBSD, and the following links have further information

• http://techbase.kde.org/User:Lemma/GPU-Performance
• http://techbase.kde.org/User:Lemma/KDE4-NVIDIA
• http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/nvidia-on-kde-41-a-greedy- problem/
• http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11044
• http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916

KDM (Login Manager)

If you wish to use the KDE 4.x KDM as your login manager, the correct entry to put in /etc/ttys is

ttyv8   "/usr/local/kde4/bin/kdm -nodaemon"     xterm   on  secure

If you would like to log into KDE 4.x with the KDE 3.x Login Manager (KDM), create a file /usr/local/share/apps/kdm/sessions/kde4.desktop containing

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=XSession
Exec=/usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde4
TryExec=/usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde4
Name=KDE 4.x
Comment=The K Desktop Environment.

Similarly, if you want to continue using KDE 3.x from your KDM 4.x, you should create a file /usr/local/kde4/share/apps/kdm/sessions/kde3.desktop containing

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=XSession
Exec=/usr/local/bin/startkde
TryExec=/usr/local/bin/startkde
Name=KDE 3.x
Comment=The K Desktop Environment 3.x

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