KDE Frequently Asked Questions

First, send us any errors that you may find. Also, any suggestions that you might have, are appreciated. Better yet, send us everything that you think is unclear, and if possible, send us what you think would be a clearer solution. Our email address is (kde-doc-english AT kde.org).

Second, send us your solutions of those frequently-asked questions which are still not in this FAQ. We will put them in as soon as possible.

Last but not least, please make full use of this FAQ. Read this FAQ (and other relevant documentation) well before asking questions on the various KDE mailing lists or newsgroups.

Actually, it is very easy to become an FAQ maintainer, and we are always in need of fresh blood. :-) Just send us an email at (kde-doc-english AT kde.org).

KDE is the K Desktop Environment. It is a project initiated by Matthias Ettrich in 1996. The aim of the KDE project is to connect the power of the UNIX® operating systems with the comfort of a modern user interface.

In short, KDE will bring UNIX® to the desktop!

If you want further information about KDE, have a look at What is KDE?

KDE is a Desktop Environment for all flavours of UNIX®. While it is true that most KDE developers use Linux®, KDE runs smoothly on a wide range of systems. You may, however, need to tweak the source code a bit to get KDE to compile on a not-so-popular variant of UNIX®, or if you are not using the GNU development tools, in particular the gcc compiler.

For an almost complete list of systems KDE is running on, please refer to this list of systems for KDE

No, KDE is not a window manager. While KDE includes a very sophisticated window manager (KWin), KDE is much more than that. It is a full-blown Integrated Desktop Environment.

KDE provides a complete desktop environment, including a web browser, a file manager, a window manager, a help system, a configuration system, uncountable tools and utilities, and an ever increasing number of applications, including but not limited to mail and news clients, drawing programs, a PostScript® and a DVI viewer and so forth.

No, KDE is not a clone. Specifically KDE is not a CDE or Windows® clone. While the KDE developers have and will continue to glean the best features from all existing desktop environments, KDE is a truly unique environment that has and will continue to go its own way.

Yes, KDE is free software according to the GNU General Public Licence. All KDE libraries are available under the LGPL making commercial software development for the KDE desktop possible, but all KDE applications are licensed under the GPL.

KDE uses the Qt™ C++ crossplatform toolkit, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the GPL.

It is absolutely legal to make KDE and Qt™ available on CD-ROM free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.

The main distribution site for KDE is ftp.kde.org. However, this site is often under heavy load, so you might prefer to use download.kde.org which automatically redirects you to the mirror nearest to you. You can also have a look at the list of KDE mirror sites.

Yes, major Linux® distributions already ship KDE. As building a distribution takes some time, they might not always contain the latest version, but for a start or to avoid downloading from the Internet, they do provide a good starting point.

You can find an up-to-date list of distributions that ship with KDE here.

Currently, the latest stable version is 3.2

The KDE 3.2 Info Page contains a lot of information specific to this release.

You can get the latest snapshots from ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/snapshots. You might also want to consider setting up your own CVS client in order to maintain the latest snapshot at all times. Please refer to Anonymous CVS and KDE for further information.

Qt™ is a product of the Norwegian company Trolltech. You can always get the latest Qt™ version from their FTP server.

And with most up-to-date Linux® distributions, Qt™ is already included. Please see Q: 4.3 for the version of Qt™ you need.

Qt™ is a C++-based class library to build user interfaces. It also includes many utility classes like string classes and classes to handle input and output. It provides most of the widgets you will see in a KDE application: menus, buttons, sliders, etc.. Qt™ is a cross-platform library that allows you to write code that will compile on UNIX® systems as well as Windows® and embedded devices. You can learn more about Qt™ at http://www.trolltech.com.

So you have heard the rumours. Or you have seen the screenshots. And you are dying to get hold of KDE. But you know next to nothing about this whole “alternative OS” business. Don't worry! You only need to do some (well, maybe not some) reading, that's all!

KDE does not run on any version of Microsoft® Windows® or OS/2 (yet). To run KDE, you need to have a UNIX® system. Please refer to Q: 2.2 for more details.

Decide on a platform and set it up for your system. This FAQ can not help you with this, since KDE runs on many UNIX® platforms.

Finally, you are ready to commence the KDE installation. Please start reading from the next section. To get KDE, please refer to Q: 3.1. Last but not least, if you encounter any problems while installing KDE, please do not hesitate to make use of the KDE mailing lists and newsgroups. But do bear this in mind: no question is too silly to ask, but some are too silly to answer, especially when they are already answered in this FAQ.

Good luck and have fun!

You can find several kinds of binary and source packages for different distributions and operating systems on the ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/. The binary packages are not made by the KDE Team, but by the distributors themselves, or some dedicated individuals. Please refer to KDE Package Policy Explained for information about the KDE Package Policy. The only “official” release is the source tar.bz2 packages. Please refer to the READMEs and INSTALLs in the several binaries folders. For a list of the available packages for a release, refer to the relevant info page. For the latest release this is the KDE 3.2 Info Page.

For KDE 3.2, you need the Qt™ library version 3.2 or greater. Please make sure you download the correct Qt™. You will also need the header files, if you want to compile KDE yourself. They are all available, at no cost, from http://www.trolltech.com/download. In addition, there are optional libraries that might improve KDE if installed on your system. An example is OpenSSL which will enable Konqueror to browse web pages securely and is needed in a version >=0.9.6. These should be provided by your distributor; if not, ask for an update.

The base distribution currently consists of eleven packages. Some are required, while others are optional. Each package is available in each of the aforementioned package formats.

aRts and then kdelibs should be installed before everything else, and kdeaddons last. The other packages can be installed in any arbitrary order.

Most package management tools will let you put all these packages in one folder and install them all at once, figuring out the dependencies as they go.

First of all, please make sure that you have added KDE's binary installation folder (e.g. /usr/local/kde/bin) to your PATH and KDE's library installation folder to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (only necessary on systems that do not support rpath; on Linux® ELF, it should work without). This environment variable may be called differently on some systems, e.g. it is called SHLIB_PATH on IRIX®. Then set the environment variable KDEDIR to the base of your KDE tree, e.g. /usr/local/kde.

Even though you can use most of the KDE applications simply by calling them, you can only benefit fully from KDE's advanced features if you use the KDE window manager and its helper programs.

In order to make it easy for you, we have provided a simple script called startkde which gets installed in $KDEDIR/bin and is therefore in your path.

Edit the file .xinitrc in your home folder (make a backup copy first!), remove everything that looks like calling a window manager, and insert startkde instead. Restart the X-Server. If you use kdm/xdm, you will have to edit the file .xsession instead of .xinitrc. And if there is no .xinitrc or .xsession in your home folder, simply create a new one with just one line containing startkde.

This should present you with a new shining KDE desktop. You can now start to explore the wonderful world of KDE. In case you want to read some documentation first, there is a highly recommended Quick Start guide available. Furthermore, every application has an online help that is available via the help menu.

In principle, this is not necessary. RPM and Debian packages should take care of all dependencies.

If you compile the source code yourself, you should take more care. Instructions for running two different versions of KDE on the same system are given at http://developer.kde.org/build/kde2-and-kde3.html. However, please note that running two different versions of KDE from source can lead to problems if you are not careful.

The most comfortable method to start KDE is to use the startkde script. Simply put the line startkde at the end of your .xsession file (or your .xinitrc or .Xclients file if you are not using kdm or xdm). Please also remove the lines that start your previous window manager. If there is no .xsession, .xinitrc, or .Xclients in your home folder, simply create a new one that contains just one line: startkde.

Yes, you can install KDE in any folder you want. What you have to do depends on the kind of packages you want to install:

You probably tried to start the X server with startkde. The X server is started with startx. startkde is the script that should be run from your .xinitrc, .xsession, or .Xclients to activate the window manager and the necessary server daemons for KDE. See also Q: 4.8.

IBM now officially support KDE on AIX®. You can find details at http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/index.html. There is also some older information at http://space.twc.de/~stefan/kde/aix.html.

If you can get X Window System® to run on your laptop, you should not have any problem getting KDE to run on it. In addition, you might find the following links helpful:

On some laptops using the 2160 chipset (MagicGraph 128XD) the following options in XF86Config are needed to avoid a lock-up of the graphic engine:

Option "XaaNoScanlineImageWriteRect"
           Option "XaaNoScanlineCPUToScreenColorExpandFill"

If you have experienced desktop hangs while using KDE please try this option.

Assuming the default is /opt/kde and you want to move it to /usr/local/kde, here's what you have to do:

This will put all your KDE files in /usr/local/kde but everything is still accessible from /opt/kde.

There should not be any need to keep the .c and .o files, but you might want to keep the .h files, as they are used by includes if you ever want to compile your own KDE programs. But if you wish to add patches to the source programs as they become available (rather than downloading everything again), then they should stay.

No. In most cases KDE will be able to transport your settings intact. You may need to reenter passwords in some applications (such as KMail or KNode) but most other settings will be safe.

There were mixed reports of results between some previous versions of KDE. To be safe, you may like to back up your entire KDE configuration.

Settings are kept in the $HOME/.kde or $HOME/.kde2 subfolder in your home folder. Copy your old .kde/.kde2 folder to a backup location, install KDE 3.2, and then copy back any necessary mail and news settings. That said, most people can make a direct upgrade, without removing the old .kde folder, without a hitch.

You can override the use of $HOME/.kde by setting the $KDEHOME variable.

KDE uses several temporary files during its operation. These are usually to be found in the following locations:

If the symlinks get broken, usually because a cron or shutdown script is emptying out the /tmp folder, then strange things will happen. These files, and the symlinks, will all be created automatically at the start of KDE so you can safely remove them while KDE is not running.

If you are only getting a grey screen when you start KDE, or if you get an error message telling you to Check your installation, then shut down X and delete all the files listed above, then try to restart X.

Normally (i.e. when not upgrading between KDE versions) it's quite safe to leave these files intact, and you may shave a few seconds off your KDE startup time by doing so.

You need the GNU msgfmt which is part of the GNU i18n package gettext. You should be able to download it from any GNU mirror.

You can uninstall your programs by typing make uninstall in the folder where you did make install. If you have already deleted that folder, then there is only one way, and it is not good: go to $KDEDIR/bin and start deleting files one by one.

If you expect to find yourself in this situation, you might want to consider a program such as GNU stow, found at http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html.

This has to do with issues with Unisys' LZW patent. GIF support is turned off from Qt™ 1.44 onwards by default. When you want to use GIFs and have the relevant license, recompile Qt™ with GIF support. ./configure -gif.

Theme support in KDE has been discontinued with this version. However, there are many opportunities to personalise and add eye candy to KDE Look at, for example, Appearance & Themes in KControl.

There are several ways to add an application to the panel, of which the easiest is to right-click on the panel, and from the context menu which appears, select Panel Menu->Add->Application Button and then the application for which you want to add a link.

For more ways of adding buttons to the panel, refer to the Kicker Handbook.

Just choose the desired application from the K menu and drag and drop it to the Desktop.

For applications not listed in the K menu, use the right mouse button on the desktop and choose Create New->File->Link to Application... and fill in the configuration for the application you want to link to.

First, make sure you are allowed to mount/umount the relevant device as a user.

Then you can add any device via right mouse button on the desktop and then choosing Create New.

The icons can be found only in $KDEDIRS/share/icons or $HOME/.kde/share/icons or $HOME/.kde2/share/icons. To use icons stored in other locations, you must either copy them into one of the above-mentioned fixed KDE locations or make symlinks.

Mouse wheel support comes with Qt™ 2.0 and above, so KDE based on that will automatically support the use of the mouse scroll wheel.

System sound currently does not work on non-FreeBSD and non-Linux® systems. This is being worked on. If you use FreeBSD or Linux®, you have found a bug, so please report it.

KDE comes with a program called kstart. To start an xterm on the second desktop and then activate it use: kstart --desktop 2 --activate --window "xterm" xterm.

Note that the --window option is important. It takes an argument which is a regular expression matching the title of the window to apply the settings to.

Please read kstart --help-all for more magic available with kstart (and there is an abundance).

$HOME/Desktop. You might need to refresh your desktop after you have saved your files.

Yes. Please refer to "The K Window Manager Handbook" for the list of shortcuts available.

Yes. Launch the KDE Control Centre and select Regional & Accessibility->Keyboard Shortcuts to configure window manager bindings like maximising windows, etc..

With many X Window System® GUIs, the minimise button (a little dot) will erase the window that the program is running in and create, instead, an icon on the desktop. KDE does not do this. Instead, when a window is iconified it is simply hidden (but the program is still running).

There are a few ways to access “disappeared” windows:

Provided your window is not already maximised, clicking on the maximise button with the left mouse button/middle mouse button/right mouse button will maximise fully/vertically/horizontally respectively.

By “shading” a window we mean “rolling up” the window leaving just the title bar visible. You can do this by double clicking on the window title bar.

Konqueror can be used with HTTP and FTP proxies. To set up the proxy server in Konqueror, just select Settings->Configure Konqueror... from the Konqueror menu and go to the Proxy tab.

Right-click the folder, select Properties, click on the large icon in the dialogue which appears and choose another icon.

To change the icon displayed for entries in the K Menu, use the Menu Editor, located at Settings->Menu Editor.

Normally, if you enter a URL like ftp://ftp.somehost.com, Konqueror will attempt an anonymous login to the FTP server. If you want to login as a particular user, enter a URL like ftp://username@ftp.somehost.com instead. Konqueror will ask for your password and connect to the server.

They are used by all KDE applications (since they are implemented in KApplication and all good KDE programs create a KApplication object before they even look at the command line arguments).

A standard line for a KDE application looks like this: foo ... %i %m -caption \"%c\". Pretty confusing, but it has been designed in that way so that it can integrate legacy, non-KDE applications as smoothly as possible. Konqueror, when executing the line above, will extend the command to foo -icon something.png -miniicon something_mini.png -caption \"The Foo\". Both the icon and the mini-icon as well as "The Foo" are properties defined in the .desktop file. If the icons are not defined, they simply default to the executable name foo.

This way a user can change these things in KMenuEdit for his or her applications. The -caption option is important, because no user will accept that the menu item Editor starts something called kedit-0.9pl4-build47. Instead, he expects a window called Editor. Furthermore these names are localised, i.e. an American user launches CD-Player and gets a window called CD-Player while a German user launches CD-Spieler and gets a window called CD-Spieler.

Using the right mouse button, click on the Home icon and choose Properties. Under the Application tab you will probably find something like kfmclient openProfile filemanagement; just append file:/whereever/you/want with the folder you would like Konqueror to start in.

There is no need to import anything at all. Netscape® bookmarks are automatically available under the Bookmarks menu in Konqueror with no configuration on your part necessary. The Bookmark Editor is able to convert Netscape® bookmarks to the format used by Konqueror, if you want this.

In Konqueror, select Settings->Configure Konqueror... and in the configuration dialogue, select Browser Identification. Default and site-specific browser identifications can be set from here.

Choose Settings->Configure Konqueror... from Konqueror's menubar and then select Java & Javascript. Set the Path to Java executable correctly. If it doesn't work, please check the Konqueror + Java HOWTO.

This new policy attempts to block intrusive JavaScript popup windows. If the user does not click on a button or submit a form to trigger the popup, then the popup is not permitted. Some sites will open a second new window from within the first and in that case, the second window will not show.

Make sure you have Javascript enabled, and the default JavaScript web popups policy set to Ask or Allow. The Smart policy is not always sufficient for some banks. Many banks also require Java™ support. You can find more help on enabling this at http://www.konqueror.org/.

It is because you did not enable GIF support in Qt™. Please see Q: 4.20 for more details.

Simply right click on the file and select Rename or click once on an already selected file. The default keyboard shortcut to rename a file is F2.

There are two ways to set the language KDE uses in the messages it will display:

Yes, you can configure it using the KDE Control Centre Regional & Accessibility Keyboard Layout configuration page.

First, you need to change to the “xdm runlevel” (runlevel 5 on Red Hat® and SuSE® systems) by editing your /etc/inittab file. In the file, you should have a line saying id:3:initdefault:. Change it to id:5:initdefault:. Now, at the end of the file, comment out the following line: x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/X11/xdm -nodaemon and replace it with x:5:respawn:/opt/kde/bin/kdm -nodaemon.

For changes to take effect immediately, type init 5 (for Red Hat® systems) at the shell prompt.

For FreeBSD, you should edit the file /etc/ttys and change one of the lines that look like

ttyv8   "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   off secure

Open the KDE Control Centre and choose Desktop->Behaviour. You can now choose the behaviour of mouse clicks on the desktop. To have the K menu open from a single left mouse button click, change the entry labelled Left button to say Application Menu.

Go to http://kde.themes.org/ or http://www.kde-look.org.

If you are using Konqueror, do this instead: first, open a Konqueror window and choose Settings->Configure Konqueror, then File Associations. Find the type you want to change (e.g. text/english or image/gif), and set the application preference order to whatever you want.

The login managersxdm and kdm do not run a login shell, so .profile, .bash_profile, etc. are not sourced. When the user logs in, xdm runs Xstartup as root and then Xsession as user. So the normal practice is to add statements in Xsession to source the user profile. Please edit your Xsession and .xsession files.

You need to install TrueType® font support into your X Window System® configuration. Please take a look at x.themes.org for the fonts, and xfsft: TrueType® Font Support For X11 or X-TrueType® Server Project Home Page for the font servers.

If you have a bunch of TrueType® fonts from Microsoft® Windows®, edit the XF86Config file to get the fonts from the font folder. Then just tell KDE to use these new fonts with the font administrator utility.

Yes and no. For details, look here: http://www.koffice.org/kword/euro.php.

Many KDE users report problems using KPPP. But before you complain about KPPP, make sure you have already checked the following:

The KPPP documentation can be accessed through the KDE Help Centre. Last, but not least, the KPPP homepage is at http://ktown.kde.org/~kppp/.

Now, if you still encounter problems, here's what might help you solve them:

KMail has its own home page at http://kmail.kde.org where an FAQ is available.

Start the KDE Control Centre and in Appearance & ThemesColours uncheck the Apply colours to non-KDE applications checkbox and click Apply.

Pop up the Run Command window (Alt+F2 by default) and type:

You can also enter any of these in the Location text box in Konqueror.

Or you can use the KDE Help Centre if you are using KDE 2. Simply start the KDE Help Centre by clicking on the icon (the blue book with the yellow key) on the toolbar. Once the KDE Help Centre has loaded, the window on the left will contain an entry called Unix manual pages. Click once on this entry, and you can browse through all the installed manual pages on your system.

To move a window, use Alt+left mouse button. Alt+right mouse button will resize the window. Last but not least, Alt+middle mouse button raises/lowers the window. The KDE Control Centre allows you to change these mouse bindings.

There is a standard keybinding (Ctrl+Alt+Esc) that gives you a skull & crossbones cursor. Click that cursor on a window to kill it. The keybindings are viewable/changeable from the KDE Control Centre.

These kind of locks tend to occur when an application locks up while it has a so called “mouse/keyboard grab”. When that happens you can try to select a virtual text console with Ctrl+Alt+F1 and login. With the following command you will get a list of all running processes:

        ps -aux | more

By killing the process that has the mousegrab, your desktop will come to life again. Unfortunately you ca not see which process that is, so you will have to find out through trial and error. To kill a process use:

        kill -9 pid

Here pid is the process id of the process, which is the first number on each line reported by ps -aux.

You can switch back to the desktop with Ctrl+Alt+F7 (or F8 through F9 depending on your operating system) to see if things work again. When you press Alt+Tab you should get a response from the window manager. If not, you need to get back to the text console and try to kill another process.

Good candidates to kill are: the application you were working with, Kicker, Klipper and KDesktop.

Qt™ is a very sophisticated toolkit that provides everything that is needed to build a modern user interface. Qt™ is written in C++, thus allowing object-oriented development which ensures efficiency and code reuse in a project the size and scope of KDE. In our opinion there is no better toolkit available for UNIX® systems and that it would have been a grave mistake to try to build KDE on anything but the best.

There are a number of toolkits available. To provide a consistent user interface and to keep used resources such as memory to a minimum, KDE can use only one of them. Qt™ was selected for the reasons mentioned above.

It is! As of September 4, 2000, version 2.2 of the Qt™ libraries were licensed under the GPL, thereby fulfiling all aspects of “free software”.

Yes and no. Konsole has the ability to simulate transparency by redrawing the background of the window inside the Konsole window. This gives the illusion of transparency, but if you place Konsole on top of another window, the transparency is lost. Eterm should work fine under KDE if you desire more complete transparency.

Create them using your favourite image manipulator, for example, GIMP, or the KDE Icon Editor and put them in $KDEDIR/share/icons(/mini) or $HOME/.kde/share/icons(/mini).

Use KMenuEdit. To access it use the right mouse button on the K button and select Menu Editor.

Yes, and it is none other than your favourite file manager, Konqueror. You can drag and drop remote files into local folders.

Simply click on the K button and select Logout. In addition, if you right click on an empty area of the desktop, you will be presented with a menu containing logout as one of the options.

KOrn will do the job. If you are not connected, it will just sit there (idling).

We recommend to always use the latest stable release. If you don't, it will probably be difficult to get answers to your questions. If you have a problem with an old version, the answer will probably be “Please upgrade and try again”. Note that new versions also sometimes fix security problems.

The simplest method is to use your mouse:

Click on the K button and select System->Appfinder.

It stands for Concurrent Versions System. It is a version control system and is based on RCS (Revision Control System), but offers more functionality. It is used to maintain source code under development. It will keep multiple versions of things (handy if you broke something and have to back up and get a clean old version), and allows people remote access over the Net to pick up the latest source code and even to check in new files if they have permission. It is also open source (you pay for support if you want it), and since it is free it is the system of choice for people writing more free products, such as KDE.

Yes, you need to have a multi-headed X server (e.g. MetroX or XFree86 4.0 and above) and a KDE >= 2.2.1

You should upgrade to XFree86 4.2.0 for this to work properly.

Fire up your KDE Control Centre. It comes up with an Info Screen including the version of KDE The KDE version is also included in the application's About dialogue.

You can use the KDE libraries to write “commercial and closed source” as well as “commercial and open source” software. If you write open source software you can use the Qt™ free edition. But if you write closed source software you may not use the Qt™ free edition; you need to obtain the Qt™ professional edition from Troll Tech.

If you want more information, please contact Troll Tech directly.

Go see http://artist.kde.org.

Yes. But future versions of LyX will be GUI independent. Check the progress of the various GUI frontends here.

You might want to subscribe to the various KDE mailing lists available, especially kde-cvs, which lists all commits done to the KDE CVS repository. Check http://lists.kde.org if you want to read without subscribing.

The KDE homepage is located at http://www.kde.org. If you prefer a local mirror, there are several to choose from. For a current list of web site mirrors sorted by location, please visit http://www.kde.org/mirrors/web.php.

There are several KDE mailing lists. Each focuses on a different aspect of KDE. Some are for developers, so they are not discussed in detail. Some of the more important lists that users might be interested in are:

For the complete list of mailing lists available, please refer to http://www.kde.org/mailinglists/.

Please note that it is not a good idea to ask questions which are already answered in this FAQ.

To subscribe, send an email to list-request, that is:

The email must contain subscribe your_email_address in the subject.

To unsubscribe, send an email to list-request, that is:

The email must contain unsubscribe your_email_address in the subject.

There is also a complete list of all KDE-related mailing lists, and a web interface for subscribing and unsubscribing located at http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo.

Yes, there is a searchable mailing list archive hosted by Progressive Computer Concepts. The URL is http://lists.kde.org. There you will see a folder listing of the mailing lists. Note that you can only do a subject/author search at this level. You probably will not find what you want doing this kind of search.

To do a body search, you have to enter one of the mailing lists. Just click on the folder you want to search (e.g. “kde” or “kde-user”) and then the pull-down menu by the search box will default to “Body” searches. To be thorough, you should probably search the “kde”, “kde-user”, and “kde-devel” folders.

Yes, there is! It is at comp.windows.x.kde. In addition, there is also a German newsgroup at de.alt.comp.kde. Please note that it is not a good idea to ask questions which are already answered in this FAQ.

Yes. Here is a list of them:

KDE is a free software project that lives from voluntary contributions. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to KDE. Not only programmers are welcome. There are many ways in which you can help to improve KDE:

There are several places to look for more information if you want to get involved in the development. The first step is to subscribe to some of the mailing lists. You will soon see something that can be improved or added.

There is a bug tracking system available at http://bugs.kde.org. The system features a wizard to submit new bug reports and a list of all known bugs.

The easiest way to submit a bug is to select Help->Report Bug... from the menu bar of the application with the bug. This will open a small dialogue box with a link to the bug tracking system. Please make sure to follow the instructions of the bug reporting wizard.

Everybody is encouraged to develop software for KDE. What you should do first depends strongly on your experience, e.g. whether you have already learned C++ or have experience with the Qt™ toolkit and so on.

To get into KDE programming, you will need some basic tools: automake, autoconf, and egcs. You should look to http://developer.kde.org/ for more tips.

Another excellent resource for learning KDE programming is the Qt™ online tutorials. These are installed along with Qt™. To view them, open $QTDIR/doc/html/index.html in Konqueror and bookmark it. The tutorials can be found under "Using Qt". The source code for each lesson can be found in the $QTDIR/tutorial directory.

There is, however, one thing that everybody interested in programming for KDE should do: subscribe to the developers mailing list. To subscribe, you have to send an email to kde-devel-request@kde.org with the subject subscribe your_email_address.

The KDE project uses CVS to develop the core parts of the software. Usually, when you have changed one of the parts (e.g. fixed a bug), and you want to commit this change, the best way is to create a patch against a current snapshot and send this patch to the developer/maintainer of the respective program.

If you are doing this more or less regularly, you can ask Stephan Kulow, (coolo AT kde.org) for direct access to the CVS server. But be aware that more users will slow down CVS access for all developers, so we want to keep the number of people with direct CVS access reasonably small. But feel free to ask!

Yes. It is possible to get read-only access to the CVS repository with cvsup or cvs utility. You can find more information about how to set up cvsup for the KDE repository from How to use cvsup to get KDE.

In addition, anonymous CVS service is also available. To find out more about how to set up and use anonymous CVS, please see here.

Yes. The main KDE server is normally very busy. Please take a look at http://developer.kde.org/source/cvsupmirrors.html and http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html for the list of available mirrors.

Once you have selected a new cvsup server, simply replace

 
*default host=cvs.kde.org

 
*default host=cvsup.your.new.host

The instructions to change the anoncvs server can be found on http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html, too.

Look at the The KDE Translators' and Documenters' Web Site to see whether your program is already translated (most are). Otherwise you will find information there on how to do it yourself.