KDE Pre-installation Configuration

Installing in /usr

One option is to put KDE into the /usr hierarchy. This creates a simpler setup but makes it more difficult to try multiple versions of KDE.

export KDE_PREFIX=/usr

Installing in /opt

A method of building multiple versions installs KDE in the /opt hierarchy:

export KDE_PREFIX=/opt/kde

If you are not installing KDE in /usr, you will need to make some additional configuration changes. Best practice is to add those to your system or personal profile:

cat > /etc/profile.d/kde.sh << EOF
# Begin /etc/profile.d/kde.sh

KDE_PREFIX=/opt/kde
KDEDIR=$KDE_PREFIX

pathappend $KDE_PREFIX/bin             PATH
pathappend $KDE_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig   PKG_CONFIG_PATH
pathappend $KDE_PREFIX/share/pkgconfig PKG_CONFIG_PATH
pathappend $KDE_PREFIX/share           XDG_DATA_DIRS
pathappend /etc/kde/xdg                XDG_CONFIG_DIRS

export KDE_PREFIX KDEDIR

# End /etc/profile.d/kde.sh
EOF

Add to your /etc/ld.so.conf:

cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << EOF
# Begin kde addition

/opt/kde/lib

# End kde addition
EOF

Several KDE packages install files into D-Bus and polkit directories. When installing KDE in a location other than /usr, D-Bus and polkit need to find these files. The easiest way to achieve this is to create the following symlinks (as the root user):

install -d $KDE_PREFIX/share &&
ln -svf /usr/share/dbus-1 $KDE_PREFIX/share &&
ln -svf /usr/share/polkit-1 $KDE_PREFIX/share