KDE or Gnome on AA1, is it possible?

First of all sorry if the topic is in wrong place


I am just wondering is it possible (without changing OS)

In the Software manager in desktop environment section I see that Xfce is ticked but there are gnome and KDE as well, is it possible to install them (and uninstall XFCE). I suspect that it is, but has anybody tried to do this and was the try successful?


Or I am talking about something impossible :roll:

 

I actually thought Linpus was KDE, but a dumbed down 'special' version.

Kubuntu runs great on the 512MB RAM from the SSD. The only issue I've had with Kubuntu on the 512MB was during an update (38MB) and I tried to open Firefox 3 and it took about 2 minutes for FF to come up.

 

KDE is certianly possible, gnome is a bit harder though.

First, i recommend doing this viewtopic.php?f=29&t=732 (just in case you mess up X and need to back out)

First bring up a terminal (alt-f2 and type Terminal), the window manager is started from /home/user/.bash_profile, but first we need the window managers.

If you type "yum install -y kdebase" this will give you the minimum req's for running kde.

you should also do a "yum install knetworkmanager" so you can manage the network once you login (unfortunately the network manager doesnt actually come up corrently, once your in kde though, start a terminal, run "su -" to become root then run /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start).

Once that is done make a backup of your bash_profile (cp /home/user/.bash_profile /home/user/.bash_profile.bak). Now edit that file in your text editor of choice and change the lines:

Code:

        if [ "X${opid}" = "X" ];then

          startxfce4 &

          break

to look like this:

Code:

        if [ "X${opid}" = "X" ];then

          startkde

          #startxfce4 &

          break

This should startup kde rather then xfce as the default (looks kinda ugly, but you can do a

Code:

yum groupinstall KDE

to get a full suite of kde apps, which should include the ability to change most of the environment.

Gnome is just as possible, but not as easy. One of the modified packages from the linpus system conflicts with the gnome-menu's package so a simple yum install gnome-session fails. There are ways around it but none that i would personally recommend.

Basically what you need to do is
1) backup the conflicting files (in case you want them later, i backed mine up then copied them over the ones gnome provides)
2) download the gnome-menu's package manually (or use a program called "yumdownloader" - get it via yum)
3) rpm -i gnome-menu...rpm --force
4) yum install gnome-session -y
5) start gnome-session rather than startkde in the bash_profile.

Again, network manager wont startup correctly so you'd need to bring up a terminal, login as root and run /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start (or service NetworkManager start).

 

shihan

Thanks for instructions!

And one more questions is it worth to use KDE on 8GB AA1? Does it lose its speed much?

 

Speed wise it seems perfectly ok. no noticable difference between kde and xfce.

Took a little work to make it look usable however as the default font and icon sizes are gigantic. But a few changes in the control center and she quite ok.

 

huge thanks for this guide. now i'm removing all the buttons as I dont want to get back to the default window system. is there a fix for the network manager at boot time?

 

best way i've found around the networkManager thing is to add an autostartup thing that runs the command "sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start"

 

wait, so how do you add NetworkManager to startup?

 

Thanks for the instructions to get kde working. The issue I'm now having is that I can't shutdown the system properly from kde menu : X keep running on a black screen and I have to switch to the terminal using ctrl+alt+f1 and type halt command from a root session.

Anyway, now I've spent some time playing with my A1, I realize how many modifications were done by Acer to get a very fast start-up : many services were hacked and do not work in the usual way anymore, when they were not simply removed, lots of common modules are missing (e.g. temp monitoring). Every little functionnality I want to put back requires me to reverse lots of changes (I keep breaking my system but hopefully have a live ubuntu on an usbtick to do repairs ) so I'm now considering installing a full kubuntu

 

Running into a missing dependency issue when using either the yum groupinstall or the -y install, says libgnutils.so.13 is needed as well as libraw1394.so.8.

Any ideas?

 

i reverted back to xfce4 as i became too frustrated to clean up the mess when i installed kde.

the sd card slot doesn't work, too many useless apps on the menu (arrow buttons), acer folders took a long time to load and it looks like thunar hates kde. konqueror is the default file manager, but for my documents et al, it's still thunar. anyway, i just posted these things to warn people who will switch to a different window system. it's like opening a new can of worms. a beautiful one.

PS. after installing KDE, never EVER uninstall the XFCE4 desktop completely. grab your recovery disk if you happen to do that.

 

Thanks for the guide, shihan, it's running excellently - better than Kubuntu does on the AA1.

I've sorted lots of issues out, my only problems that I know remain are the SD card reader and web cam not being detected - is there a fix for these? USB drives aren't detected either, really odd, they're not even shown in any device managers.