Switching to KDE (was kde or gnome)

[Dave Feustel]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 05:35:13PM -0400, Eric wrote:
> At 05:21 PM 9/28/2008, Dave Feustel wrote:
>
> >>>>>
>> I'm running F9 and I would like to switch from gnome to kde,
>> but I have not figured out how that is done. Can someone
>> explain how?
> <<<<<
>
> Good evening, Dave.
>
> First of all, you need to have KDE installed, if it is not already  
> installed.  It isn't installed by default, in an initial F9  
> installation.  So, you need to log on as root, open up a terminal  
> window, and say "yum groupinstall "KDE Softwarre Development"" ("yum  
> groupinstall KDE" may also work but I didn't try that).
>
> Then, you have one of two ways: switchdesk, or selecting it in a little 
> box on login.
>
> switchdesk is a command-line utility where you log on as yourself, open 
> up a terminal window, and say "switchdesk KDE".  If you try that and KDE 
> isn't installed, it will tell you that you need to use "yum groupinstall 
> "KDE Software Development"" to install KDE.
>
> If switchdesk isn't installed, you have to log on as root and say "yum 
> install switchdesk" first.
>
> The other way is, when you click on your userID in the login screen but 
> before you type in the password, a small pulldown box will appear at the 
> bottom center of the screen, containing all of the desktops you have 
> installed.  Click on the arrow and select "KDE" from that box, and from 
> then on, until you change it, all of your logins will be to KDE (again, 
> as long as you have KDE installed).
>
> Note that you could use the graphical "Add/Remove Software" to do all  
> the KDE installation (and installation of other things like switchdesk), 
> but I have had that crash on me once too many times, in the middle of a 
> software install session, leaving things in an indeterminate state.  So, 
> I use "Add/Remove Software" to get a list of everything I need to add, 
> then I use the command line "yum install..." or "yum groupinstall..." to 
> do the actual installation.
>
> Hope this helps...

Thanks for the explanation. I managed to get kde installed via
add/remove..., and then selected kde prior to login. But kde is
even worse than gnome since it has nothing at all on the desktop
and I can't install icons either on the desktop or on the system panel
in either gnome or kde4 as I could in kde3. So I went back to gnome.