%general-entities; ]> $LastChangedBy$ $Date$ Starting KDE4 After Kde-workspace has been installed, the first important milestone has been reached. Now you need to configure your system to start KDE4. Starting KDE4 from the command prompt To start KDE4 from the command prompt, you first need to modify your .xinitrc file: cat > ~/.xinitrc <<EOF # Begin .xinitrc exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch --exit-with-session startkde # End .xinitrc EOF If you are not using ConsoleKit, remove ck-launch-session. You can now start KDE4 using the startx command. Starting KDE4 at boot KDE4 comes with a graphical login interface called KDM (the KDE Display Manager). KDM provides a customizable graphical login at boot. To use KDM, you need to edit your /etc/inittab file (as the root user). First, setup run-level 5 to start KDM by adding the following line (adjust the path to kdm according to your system): kd:5:respawn:/opt/kde4/bin/kdm Additionally, you need to change the default run-level from 3 to 5. This is done by changing the line: id:3:initdefault: To: id:5:initdefault: You can now restart your system and see the beautiful KDE4 login screen. Installing further KDE4 packages Every subsequent package can be built while having KDE4 up and running, but remember to keep &kde4-dir; and $QT4DIR set.