Get going with KDE and KDM

With this information you can get a full-blown graphical desktop in 30 minutes (45 minutes max). Of course you have all packages needed already on a fast accessible file system. One way is to just download all packages from a mirror.
You should always install the ports tree. Not all ports are available as a package. For KDE this isn't an issue, but there are interesting programs that need to be manually built. You can also use a graphical front-end like pb-browser for this.

This information is geared towards windows like newbies/users and therefore it contains a few steps which are relatively unsafe. You should know that running kde as root is not a wise thing to do. Just be careful with root!

1. Introduction.

KDM is a display manager that comes with KDE. It is a replacement for xdm. Obviously you have to install KDE from packages, which is the recommended method for adding applications. You also need a working X setup.

Although you can almost configure KDM without using any UNIX console text editor, it is better to learn some vi or another editor you can use in a console. But if you don't want to, you could do it all from X. Once you are in KDE you can use a graphical text editor like "Kate".

2. The way of the elephant.

This is a 10-step list to get a working KDE desktop. The use of a KDE text editor is a "heavyweight" way to edit configuration files, hence the name of this chapter.

3. Using the system

To use a UNIX-like operating system is not hard, especially if you can work in a nice graphical environment. This does not mean that all configuration or administration work can be done with graphical tools. In fact more powerful configuration can be done by manually editing configuration files. At least the documentation is more accessible and you can use copy and paste more easily.

Some tips and disciplines for using OpenBSD:

4. Configuring KDM and KDE

Adding users

You should never login as root, so you have to create a normal user with useradd. When you run it for the first time you can set the default options. Just press Enter for each prompt to use the default options. If this is done, you have to:

Getting packages

The easiest way to get all the right packages is use an official OpenBSD CD, download them all or use the right options for pkg_add. If you make a personal mirror for all packages you can install packages more quickly later on and get on with exploring OpenBSD.
If you decided to download all packages, make a directory on a partition with 2GB of free space.
machine# mkdir -p /path/to/package/dir
Change to this directory
machine# cd /path/to/package/dir/
and use this command.
machine# ftp ftp://ftp.your_mirror.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.2/packages/i386/*
This will download all packages available for the i386 architecture on ftp to your disk.

installing packages

Now you can install KDE with pkg_add or pkg add. This is a list of KDE packages without version number:

Language packs look like this: kde-i18n-language   kde-i18n-en

Updated to 4.2 and modified by Fred Crowson.