K Module -> Kubuntu kde-core
My kde-core Adventures
1. Background Story:
This is mostly a sort of hangover from having used MEPIS 6 a few months back. When I tried the newly released MEPIS 6 while I was still running Kubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake), I was greatly impressed by the "apparent" speed. At least, it was noticeably faster and more responsive than my Kubuntu system. I say "apparent" as I did not have any tool to do benchmark tests, other than my own eyes and a clock. Anyway, I sought for ways to "optimize" Kubuntu to be just as fast or even faster than MEPIS 6. I came across the concept of installing a very minimal system by installing only the kde-core metapackage. I tried it for a few days on Dapper. But during that time, I was (supposed to be) busy with some things, so I couldn't stay on an experimental system for long.
But with Edgy comes the call to go over the edge, to be courageous, and to try out new things. So instead of installing a default Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) system, I installed a kde-core system and decided to stick with it. I'm still running it right now, and I couldn't be happier. This blog post is a sort of journal of the things that I did to get this system up and running, of the packages I installed to make it usable (for me), and for some packages that other users might be interested in. I can offer no guarantee or warranty that this guide will work exactly on each and every system. This is a sort of journal on what I did to get my system up and running. Always take things with a grain of salt.
2. Prerequisites:
This journal presupposes a clean installation/system. I prefer to build from the ground up. For those who already have an installed Kubuntu system and don't want to go through the procesfile:///home/jucato/Documents/Personal/Blog/Posts/023%20My%20kde-core%20Adventuress of installing from scratch, aysiu has made an excellent guide on Moving from Kubuntu to kde-core.
A word of advise: following this kde-core path is not as easy as it seems. It is definitely not as easy as installing a default Kubuntu system. It required me to know KDE a bit, and to also know what I needed and wanted. It doesn't install a lot of stuff. It doesn't install the stuff you need to make printers work. I had to find out which packages were needed. It's a good learning experience though. And the thought of you knowing your system as best as you could, knowing what you installed, what they were for, etc., is well worth it.
3. What I used:
- A clean partition/hard drive
- Kubuntu 6.10 Alternate Install CD
- a good internet connection (for installing other apps that you want/need)
Regarding the internet connection, I haven't fully tested this, but the "base" packages you will need to install may or may not all be in the Alternate Install CD. I can probably test this for confirmation, but as of this post, I have not done so yet.
4. The journey:
I boot into the Alternate Install CD and chose to "Install a command line system". This is equivalent to the server install of previous installers. I follow the usual procedure of installing a system. No special instructions here. Once the installation is finished, I reboot. I'm presented with a command line login screen.
After logging in, I immediately setup my internet connection (using pppoeconf) and edited my sources.list to enable the main, restricted, and universe repositories.The command to edit sources.list would be:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Replace nano with your favorite command line text editor. Update with:
sudo apt-get update
Now to install the graphical part of the system. Of course, you need to install the X Window System in order to get any graphical capabilities. Then you will install the kde-core metapackage, which in turn, installs kdebase (the most basic KDE apps you will need), kdelibs (core KDE libraries) and aRts (the official sound system for KDE 3.5). Lastly you will probably want to install KDM to give you the KDE graphical login screen (You can install GDM instead, but why would you want to do that?). Installing these three major components is covered by this command:
sudo apt-get install x-window-system-core kde-core kdm
Now sit back and relax as you watch the packages get downloaded and your system get installed. Or better yet, do something else. It may take some time, depending on your internet connection.
Once everything has been downloaded and installed, you need to login (graphically) into KDE. You do this by entering this command:
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start
If all went well, and I'm presuming it did, you will now be presented with your familiar login screen. Type in your username and password, and log in.
That's it! Welcome to your new kde-core system! Take a look around your new desktop. Of course, it's just a very minimal system, with very few apps installed. You only have Konqueror, Kate, KControl, KInfoCenter, KSysGuard, KHelpCenter, and a few other apps. What you will probably notice is how it boots faster (there's no bootsplash anyway) and how things start up faster. You would also probably notice how very few packages you have installed. My kde-core base installation only had 475 packages installed, compared to the 1012 packages in a default Kubuntu installation. That's a lot of savings. The problem is that this is barely a desktop that you can use. So now comes the fun (at least it was for me) part: installing apps.
5. Dressing up you kde-core system
The choice of what applications or components to install is really up to each individual. The packages that I installed were the ones I needed or wanted, or the ones that I thought were sensible to have. Your taste may be different. Also, during the time of installation, I had no printer or scanner, so installing the packages related to those were unnecessary. I did get one later on, and I will note what packages I installed to get it working (perfectly, I might add). Also, the number of packages installed by certain "metapackages" will probably vary from case to case. I'm listing only what were installed on my system during that time.
HAL - this is absolutely necessary for automounting. It installed four packages: dbus hal libdbus-glib-1-2 pmount
Kontact, Akregator, and KNotes - my preferred Personal Information Management suite. Installing Kontact will install the basic components like KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressBook, etc. But it will not install Akregator and KNotes, so you have to install them separately. Installs 16 packages.
Graphics - Digikam and Gwenview for images, KPDF for documents, KSnapshot for taking screenies, and KSVG for SVG support. Total of 20 packages installed.
Internet - Konversation, Kopete plus qca-tls (for Google Talk), KTorrent , and KGet. 6 Packages
Multimedia - Amarok (of course!), Kaffeine, K3b plus cdrdao, and KMix. A whooping 45 packages!
System - other utilities for managing your system. Adept Package Manager, KSystemLog, Hardware Device Database (hwdb-client-kde), and KDE Guidance (kde-guidance), which installs the control settings/modules for User Management, Monitor & Display, Disks & Filesystems, and others. 30 Packages
Utilities - Ark and Katapult, 2 packages only.
Others - other stuff you might be interested in, but may not be necessary. Total of 10 packages.
- System Settings (kde-systemsettings) - Kubuntu's lightweight alternative to KControl
- Moodin KSplash Engine (ksplash-engine-moodin) - for those nice Splash Screen themes
- Crystal Window Decoration (kwin-style-crystal) - the buttons on Edgy are nice...
- Binutils (binutils) - in order to open .deb packages in Ark
- Network Settings (knetworkconf) - network settings module for System Settings/KControl
- USplash (usplash and kubuntu-artwork-usplash) - if you want that pretty bootsplash at boot and shutdown
- Kubuntu Documentation (kubuntu-docs) - always handy to have around, specially when your offline.
- KDE Wallet Manager (kwalletmanager) - manage your passwords in one app (doesn't manage your user's password).
Konqueror stuff - Konqueror addons that help make your life easier. 16 packages. Take your pick. You don't have to install them all.
- konq-plugins - very useful stuff in here, like Konqueror's Crash Monitor/Handler. Once installed, check in Settings -> Configure Extensions in Konqueror
- kdemultimedia-kio-plugins - gives you the audiocd:/ kioslave, which allows you to browse your Audio CD and directly rip into support media formats (OGG or MP3)
- kio-apt - the apt:/ kioslave, a very convenient GUI front-end to apt-cache, dpkg, and packages.ubuntu.com. Type apt:/ in Konqueror to check it out
- kio-locate - locate:/ kioslave. The name is self-explanatory
- kmplayer-konq-plugins - Embedded KMPlayer for Konqueror
- Other Konqueror plugins - kdegraphics-kfile-plugins, kdeadmin-kfile-plugins, kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins, kdenetwork-kfile-plugins, kdepim-kio-plugins
KOffice - my preferred productivity suite. The default kde-core installation doesn't come with an office suite, obviously. Choose which one you like. You can go for OpenOffice.org, KOffice, or GNOME Office (Abiword, Gnumeric, Gnome-DB). I personally prefer KOffice, so that's what I installed. 25 packages.
And that's it! You're practically done! 475 base kde-core install plus 174 extra packages to make your system more "desktop-friendly", for a total of only 649 packages! Of course, depending on your hardware, you may need to install a few more packages. So if you have bluetooth, printers, scanners, etc., you might want to dig up a bit on which packages are needed for those. To get my HP PSC 1350 working properly, I installed these packages. Again, the packages may vary from system to system:
- CUPS [13] - cupsys cupsys-bsd cupsys-client cupsys-common cupsys-driver-gutenprint gs-esp libcupsimage2 libglib1.2 libgutenprint2 libslp1 openssl poppler-utils ssl-cert
- HP Linux Printing and Imaging System [4] - hplip hplip-data libsnmp-base libsnmp9
- Foomatic [5] - foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-hpijs foomatic-filters hpijs
- Kooka [2] - kooka libkscan1
You might also want to install a whole bunch of multimedia codecs to get your media playing. But that's already beyond the scope of this "guide." There are literally dozens of resources out there for this kind of stuff, but I greatly recommend searching in the official documentation, the user documentation, and the wiki pages first.
Now all that's left for you is to use and enjoy your newer, faster, and more responsive system. Have fun!
Screenshots: (click to view a larger image)
This is the default KDE (kde-core) desktop:
This is what my desktop looks like:
And this is my desktop, with Konqueror open:
