As long as you don't have KDE on your hard drive, it's pretty pointless trying to run a non-existant program. You can either use the graphical package manager included with Gnome to do the job, or if you're feeling handy, start up the terminal and enter the following commands:
# su
[enter password, although it won't appear onscreen]
# emerge kde
And then wait for a very LONG time as Portage pulls in and compiles all the necessary packages to run KDE.
Once you've got KDE installed, it's fairly easy to start it. At the graphical login screen, under one of the menus, you'll get the choice of the window manager you'd like to use. Choose KDE, and when you login, you'll most likely be given the choice to set it to your default window manager. Click "yes", and then you won't have to worry about Gnome until you change the setting back.
Hope this helps
John A
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if you are new to linux why did you get gentoo?
gentoo is the hardest linux distro there is to learn
jbennet
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If you're new to Linux, I heavily recommend Ubuntu, Mepis and Mandriva.
If you would like to slowly edge your way into the Linux world, try LinuxXP - a linux distribution based off of Fedora Core 5, with full Win32 EXE support, and a Windows XP-like desktop environment.
indienick
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Gentoo isn't all that bad except for the compile times. If you just run emerge kde , it will take a while. If you've not done that yet, you might consider using the split ebuilds .
Infarction
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try PCLinux OS
it comes with drivers and multimedia codecs that many distros dont
jbennet
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I am running Mepis now...
...which you absoloutely love because it's so user-friendly. :cheesy:
John A
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...which you absoloutely love because it's so user-friendly. :cheesy:
Sounds horrible :twisted:
Infarction
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Don't knock MEPIS till you have tried it. A remark like yours seems biased. I have used every version of MEPIS since 3.3, released in 2004. I can boot to 3.3.1-1, 3.4.3, 6.0, 6.5 beta 7(two installs) 6.5 rc1 (also two installs) knoppix 5.1.1 and the latest debian etch last was out last week. MEPIS is the best for new users or for old pros. It just works. And now with ntfs-3g we can read and write to ntfs so there. MEPIS is the best. :D
I couldn't get the MEPIS 6 installer to run when I tried it and I didn't feel like burning another image, but it cant be that different from the other popular distros. and ntfs-3g is available for anyone, so there.
And next time I knock it, I'll use [sarcasm] tags...
Infarction
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>Don't knock MEPIS till you have tried it. A remark like yours seems biased.
Me and Infarction were making those remarks in response to this thread...
Although I can't really say much here, as I've never tried installing or using it.
John A
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i downloaded mepis. didnt like it . IMHO PClinux OS is better
jbennet
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what's so special about mepis?
I say, if you're planning to use a *nix OS, go for the known distros - RH (based), SuSE, Debian, *buntu, Mandrake(riva), Gentoo
or if you're a real guru - Slackware, *BSD, OpenSolaris, HP-UX
everything depends on your particular needs. and in any case any distro can be brought to look and operate the way you want it to, all you need is knowledge, patience and free time
DimaYasny
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Linux needs to be unified... Someone needs to set the standard, and stick with it. That is why MS windows is so great. They have unity.
While it might be handy for some aspects to be standardized, I think you'll find that most Linux users would not like it to be unified. The locked down "unity" of Windows is actually kind of annoying to me anymore...
Infarction
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linux at a heart is essentially unified in that you only ever really need to learn a few distributions in order to know them all (as most distros are related)
jbennet
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All Linux distributions run more-or-less on the same kernel. That means that at the core they behave the same way, have the same hardware support, etc..
Then they usually run the same software, such as KDE, Gnome, and others. Most people simply choose a "favorite distro" on basis of the time it takes them to set it up for their purposes, and the ease of setting it up.
Ubuntu is popular because it requires little setup. Why? They install everything, so it has lots and lots of software. This appeals to newbies because it supports so much hardware right out of the box, compared to others where you must manually download and configure each driver.
The downside to such a distro is that it takes experts super-long if they want to trim down a distro to make it run faster and tweak it, and in many cases it's faster for them to take a base distro such as Gentoo or Slackware and add on what they need instead.
John A
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