[YLUG] compatibility of Gnome and KDE

[Anthony Edwards]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 08:16:15PM +0000, nigel white wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm still going strong with Ubuntu, following the install weekend.
> 
> Newbie question coming up....
> 
> I have Ubuntu 8.04 and Gnome. In general, can I run KDE programs or
> should I stay away from them? What is the general advice on this?

I haven't personally found any issues with installing and running
KDE programs when running a default Ubuntu installation with GNOME
as its desktop environment.

At present I'm running 32-bit 8.04.1 on two machines and 64-bit
8.04.1 (which flies!) on another.  I have Kaffeine installed on all
three machines since it's the best media player I've found (with,
in particular, excellent support for DVB-T, at least the equal of
the Windows based software shipped with Hauppauge DVB tuners) , and
often also install Konsole and any other KDE app that takes my fancy.

Installing a KDE application results in your package management tool
of choice (I usually use command line aptitude but have taken a liking
to Synaptic lately) resolving all required dependencies and installing
the required KDE libraries.

You can query the packages which any given package depends on, either
before or after installation, using the apt-cache depends command e.g.:

anthony at catfish:~$ apt-cache depends kaffeine
kaffeine
  Depends: hdparm
  Depends: kdelibs4c2a
  Depends: libacl1
  Depends: libart-2.0-2
  Depends: libattr1
  Depends: libaudio2
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libcdparanoia0
  Depends: libfontconfig1
  Depends: libfreetype6
  Depends: libgcc1
  Depends: libice6
  Depends: libidn11
  Depends: libjpeg62
  Depends: libogg0
  Depends: libpcre3
  Depends: libpng12-0
  Depends: libqt3-mt
  Depends: libsm6
  Depends: libstdc++6
  Depends: libvorbis0a
  Depends: libvorbisenc2
  Depends: libx11-6
  Depends: libxcb1
  Depends: libxcursor1
  Depends: libxext6
  Depends: libxft2
  Depends: libxi6
  Depends: libxine1
  Depends: libxinerama1
  Depends: libxrandr2
  Depends: libxrender1
  Depends: libxt6
  Depends: libxtst6
  Depends: zlib1g
  Recommends: gdebi-kde
  Recommends: kdesudo
  Conflicts: <kaffeine-xine>
  Replaces: <kaffeine-xine>

And, of course, you can if you wish have the best of both worlds.
If you have sufficient space on your hard drive, a broadband connection
and a bit of time, you can install the entire KDE desktop environment
by installing the kubuntu-desktop meta package as explained at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/config-desktop/C/other-desktops.html#other-desktop-kde

You will then have the option to log into either KDE or GNOME each
time you log in thereafter.

-- 
Anthony Edwards
anthony at yoyo.org