Three Wise Men

In a little bit more than a month before the release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx I decided that I want to try how KDE 4.4 behaves and if I am ready to switch from Gnome to KDE again. My heart was always with KDE and Qt but after KDE 3.5 everything went downhill and I switched to Gnome. I really want to try the new KDE, but going to Beta software on my primary workstation is not an option and I will stick with Karmic Koala for a while after the release of Lucid Lynx which will be shipping with KDE 4.4. The only option for me and others like me is to install KDE desktop on top of existing Ubuntu taking it from the backports repository. Here are simple step by step instructions on how to do this.

First you need to add another software source. Clink on the System menu then select Administration sub-menu and run Software Sources. Select the Other Software tab and click Add then copy the following line into the input box.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu karmic main

Now select the Updates tab and enable unsuported updates for karmic backports.

Close the Software Sources and open the terminal. It will make things easier, really. Type in the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You will first perform an update, then you will perform basic install of kubuntu-desktop. Unfortunately some things are so deeply rooted inside the distribution that in the end you will want to perform dist-upgrade. The process will take some time, depending on the speed of your Internet connection and the speed of your computer.

There is no need to reboot after the process is completed. All you need to do is to logout, change your session to KDE and log back in. You should see KDE splash screen and then whole KDE after few moments.