# Installation instructions

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 `README`s and `INSTALL`s 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. :-))