These are the generic installation instructions for the Trinity Desktop Environment. Please complement your reading with the README and INSTALL text files that come along with the package. Please read them carefully and try to help yourself if anything goes wrong. If you need further assistance, consider joining the &tde; mailing lists (see our web site instructions for joining the &tde; mailing lists). To the would-be converts You have heard rumors about &tde;. Or you have seen screenshots. You want test &tde;. Yet you know next to nothing about this whole alternate operating system business. Don't worry! You only need to do some (well, maybe not some) reading, that's all! &tde; does not run on any version of &Microsoft; &Windows;. To run &tde;, you need to have a &UNIX; operating system. Please refer to for more details. Decide on a platform and set it up for your system. This FAQ can not help you with this, since &tde; is intended to run on many &UNIX; platforms. To obtain &tde;, please refer to . If you encounter problems while installing &tde;, please do not hesitate to make use of the &tde; mailing lists. No question is too silly to ask, but remember to first look for answers in this FAQ. Good luck and have fun! What kind of hardware do I need to run &tde; ? To run &tde; consider at least a Pentium III processor, 512MB of memory, and 500MB of free disk space for a basic installation. A full installation will require about 3GB of hard drive storage space. While &tde; will run on slower hardware, performance likely will require some patience. Generally, if your computer runs other desktop environments then the hardware probably is capable of running &tde;. Available package formats You can find binary and source packages for different distributions and operating systems on the Trinity web site. The binary packages are made by dedicated members of the &tde; community. The only official release is the source tarball packages. Please refer to the READMEs and INSTALLs in the several binaries folders. Find the latest stable release here. Prerequisites You need the &Qt; library as provided by the &tde; developers. Previous versions of &Qt; will not work with the latest &tde;. Please ensure you download the correct &Qt;. You will also need the header files, if you want to compile &tde; yourself. They are all available, at no cost, from the &tde; repository. There are optional libraries that might improve &tde; if installed on your system. An example is OpenSSL which will enable &konqueror; to browse web pages securely. These additional packages should be provided by your distributor. Description of the base packages The base distribution currently consists of several packages. Some are required, while others are optional. Each package is available in each of the aforementioned package formats. tqt3 Required This package contains the foundational widget support needed by all &tde; applications. tqtinterface Required Necessary for supporting subsequent versions of Qt. arts Required The core sound system for &tde; tdelibs Required This package contains shared libraries that are needed by all &tde; applications. tdebase Required This package contains the base applications that form the core of the Trinity Desktop Environment like the window manager, the terminal emulator, the control center, the file manager, and the panel. &arts; Required The &arts; sound server. A powerful, network transparent sound server. tdeaddons Optional but recommended Various plugins for &kate;, &kicker;, &knewsticker;, &konqueror; and &noatun; tdeartwork Optional Additional wallpapers, themes, styles, sounds ... tdebindings Optional Various bindings for other languages, including &Java;, Perl, Python, ... tdegames Optional Various games like &kmahjongg;, &ksnake;, &kasteroids;, and &kpatience;. tdegraphics Optional but recommended Various graphics-related programs like &PostScript; previewer, &DVI; previewer, and a drawing program. tdeutils Optional but recommended Various desktop tools like a calculator, an editor and other nifty stuff. tdemultimedia Optional but recommended Multimedia applications like a &CD; player and a mixer. tdenetwork Optional Network applications. Currently contains the instant messaging client &kopete;, the download manager &kget;, and several other network-related programs. tdepim Optional but recommended Personal information management tools. Contains the email client &kmail;, the newsreader &knode; and other related programs. tdeadmin Optional but recommended System administration programs. tdeedu Optional Educational and entertaining applications for &tde;'s younger users. tdeaccessibility Optional but recommended &tde; accessibility programs such as a screen magnifier and speech synthesizer front end. tdetoys Optional Toys! tdevelop Optional A complete Integrated Development Environment for &tde; and &Qt; tdewebdev Optional Web development applications. Contains such applications as &quanta;, an integrated web development environment and other applications useful in web development tdesdk Optional &tde; Software Development Kit. Contains a collection of applications and tools used by &tde; Developers. Information about compiling all packages is available at the Trinity wiki. 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. Installation instructions for the different package formats As &tde; is intended for many &UNIX; systems, please consult the installtion procedures and package management document for the system being used. Post-installation procedures There should be nothing to do after installing the packages except use them! Nonetheless, should problems arise, there are some common problems to consider: System search path Be sure all &tde; binary files are installed in a location listed in your system's PATH. Library files Be sure the &tde; library files are installed in the expected locations for your system. TDEDIR environment variable Be sure the TDEDIR environment variable is correctly set. starttde script installation Verify the starttde script is installed to $TDEDIR/bin and therefore in your system's search path. starttde script is run correctly Be sure the starttde script is being run from within the appropriate xinitrc or xsession script. This should present you with a new &tde; desktop. You can now start to explore the wonderful world of &tde;. In case you want to read some documentation first, there is a recommended A Quick Start Guide to the Desktop available. Furthermore, every application has an online help that is available via the Help menu. Should I remove old version xyz before installing a new one? In principle, this is not necessary. The various distro package managers should handle all dependencies. If you compile the source code yourself, you should take more care. How do I start &tde;? There are only two methods of starting &tde;: using a login manager such as &tdm; or from the command line, using startx. The respective startup scripts should contain a reference to the starttde script. starttde fails with can not connect to X server. What is wrong? You probably tried to start &tde; directly with starttde rather than letting the login manager or startx process run that script. From the command line the X server is started with startx. starttde is the script that should be run from your .xinitrc, .xsession, or .Xclients to activate the window manager and the necessary server daemons for &tde;. See also . Will I lose my current settings when I update &tde;? You shouldn't. &tde; should transport your settings intact. All settings should be safe. I updated &tde; and all seemed to go fine, but when I start &tde;, I get a blank gray screen, and nothing happens. There are errors in the console about DCOPserver. What's going on? &tde; uses several temporary files during its operation. Usually these directories and files are found in the following locations: $HOME/.DCOPserver-* (there are usually two of these; one is a symlink to the other) $HOME/.trinity/socket-hostname $HOME/.trinity/tmp-hostname, which normally is a symlink to the next file: $TMP/tde-USER $HOME/.trinity/socket-hostname, which normally is a symlink to: $TMP/tdesocket-USER If the symlinks get broken, such as when cron or a shutdown script is emptying the /tmp folder, then strange things will happen. These files, and the symlinks, will all be created automatically at the start of &tde; so you can safely remove them while &tde; is not running. If you are only getting a gray screen when you start &tde;, 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 (&ie; when not updating between &tde; versions) it's quite safe to leave these files intact, and you may shave a few seconds off your &tde; startup time by doing so. Is &tde; backwards or binary compatible with KDE 3? While many programs originally designed for KDE 3 will compile on Trinity, binary compatibility with KDE 3 is not a goal of &tde; developers. Is &tde; backwards or binary compatible with previous releases of &tde;? Possibly, but binary compatibility is not a project goal with major point releases. A package that built on a previous version of &tde; but no longer builds on the current release should be brought to the attention of the developers. Is my KDE 3 profile directory compatible with Trinity? Not quite but don't worry. Some "scrubbing" cleanup is required to migrate a KDE 3 profile. For new users or those with little customization we recommend creating a fresh profile. For those long-time users who cringe at the thought of recreating their desktop, we provide a migratekde3 shell script. That script copies a $HOME/.kde3 profile directory to $HOME/.trinity and performs the required "scrubbing" cleanup. Although the script has been tested we provide the tool "as is" with no warranties or guarantees. (The script works really well, actually. :-))