I'm sure I will be using KDE 3.5.6 for most of my personal Linux time over the next few months. And I'm evenly sure I want to follow the KDE4 developments (esp. regarding KDEPrint). But I'm also curious to have another look at Beryl and Compiz. (I'll certainly not be using it for any length of time -- last time I had a look, about a year ago, my head was dizzy from all the wobbly-ness of the windows moving, and the bottle-genie-ness of windows minimizing+maximizing; however, I'm looking for some cool 'demo-ware' to impress and make envy my collegues if I happen to give a scheduled presentation to them coming June...)
So how do I set it up best if I want to install (and use) KDE3, KDE4, Beryl and Compiz side by side on the same box? Are there any tutorials, guides or howtos available?
Could I have 4 different demo users (kde3, kde4, compiz and beryl) which by default run their respective environments?
Regarding Beryl+Compiz: I'm not in any way familiar with either one of them, and I'd not be surprised if both of them did RPM-conflict (and I had to install one of them exclusively at a time for playing with). Just tell me if it is so.
Regarding KDE3 and KDE4: that's what I'd spend most of the time to set up. My hope was the openSUSE build service will make this a breeze. But that hope was replaced by a somewhat bleak outlook, after I downloaded a rather small kde4-$something RPM from the build service to poke into it: it looks like it installs all binaries into /usr/bin/.... which to me sounds like a recipe for more failures and problems than should necessarily have to happen.
I'd *love* to be proven wrong; but my gut feeling would be better if I could spot a "clean" separation like "everything goes into "/opt/kde4/{bin,lib,...}/". With that big hotch-potch kettle of mixed kde3 with kde4 binaries in any user's $PATH I smell problems after problems after problems coming along when I'm going to run that setup...
Also, I did not find any "Howto run+test KDE4" type of document in the openSUSE wiki; maybe it's just my imagination that I think I'd have to define different $PATHs and $LD_LIBRARY_PATHs and other $env_vars for each of the test users. Maybe it is all solved and prepared in a user friendly way already? Maybe I just have to select at the KDM screen which type of session I want to run? Maybe I'm just putting thoughts were no thoughts are required any more?
P.S.: I'll surely read any replies and hints from you -- but it may be only after May 5th until I can respond again myself.
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openSUSE is THE distro for these things
It's a little intriguing that you think openSUSE handled these things badly, since it's really the ultimate distro for not only developing KDE4 (the KDE4 repository is updated insanely regularly, unlike other distros who only ever package snapshots, which come every few months), but for Beryl and Compiz as well. A few issues:
* KDE4 *is* in /usr now, but this doesn't conflict with KDE3 at all, since it was in /opt/kde3. This has also become a standard, so it's something all distros should be adhering to anyway.
* Environment variables *are* set up correctly, and KDE4's $KDEHOME is ~/.kde4 as you'll find, and it appropriately adjusts PATH to prioritise /usr before /opt/kde3 when you're in a KDE4 environment. See Binner's blog for a live CD with kde4 running, even! Just demonstrates the flexibility of the OBS and KIWI.
* Beryl packages are often updated quicker on openSUSE just because we have a wonderful build service which takes the pressure and time off developers. There's also a guide for setting it up at http://opensuse.org/Beryl It should be very easy to follow, but if you have any problems drop by #suse to let us know
* Compiz can of course be installed just fine along beryl, but being another WM at this moment (despite them merging soon), you can only run one at any single time. Again, openSUSE has the very latest compiz packs all the time in the same repository that Beryl has them, so check above for those.
Beineri's linked to the KDE4 guide above, but it was always accessible from the openSUSE.org KDE page. The wiki does indeed need a cleanup in some areas, and we're working on that
. Feel free to drop by #opensuse-kde as well for any KDE-related openSUSE queries.
KDE 4
> it looks like it installs all binaries into /usr/bin/
Exactly, that's where it's supposed to reside according to FHS/LSB.
> which to me sounds like a recipe for more failures and problems than should necessarily have to happen.
And the reason that also these early packages install there is to discover such failures early and to fix them.
> I did not find any "Howto run+test KDE4" type of document in the openSUSE wiki
Your best match is opensuse.org/KDE4.
> Maybe I just have to select at the KDM screen which type of session I want to run?
That's the purpose of the kdebase3-session respective kdebase-session packages.
Beryl and Compiz cannot be
Beryl and Compiz cannot be installed simultaneously, AFAIK. However, you could install one of them in a chrooted environment and make a KDM profile that logs into that. (Yes, I realize that this means putting most of your OS on the computer twice, but I never said it was pretty.) However, Compiz and Beryl are going to merge at some point in the (hopefully near) future, so you might just want to wait for that.
Also, I'm not sure about OpenSuSE, but you might be able to use something like Kubuntu's KDE4 system.